From Fortitude to Fulfilment: Guide to Strong Leadership with Scott Mautz

Ever wonder how mental strength could redefine leadership? In this episode, we host Scott Mautz, author of "The Mentally Strong Leader," who shares groundbreaking insights on how mastering your mental muscles can propel you to leadership success. Scott's extensive research involving over 3,000 executives reveals key mental attributes like grit, confidence, and decision-making that are essential for overcoming organizational hurdles.

Explore the fascinating concept of "grindfulness," a blend of gratitude and mindfulness, and discover how it can fortify your mental resilience against daily challenges. Scott also breaks down effective techniques like the "redirect rhythm" and the three C's of cognitive behavioural therapy—catch it, check it, change it—providing actionable strategies to master your emotions and respond thoughtfully rather than impulsively. These insights are not only pivotal for leadership but can significantly enhance your personal life as well.

Finally, we journey through the evolution of Scott’s bestselling books, from "Make it Matter" and "Find the Fire" to "Leading from the Middle" and his latest, "The Mentally Strong Leader." We discuss the layered responsibilities of a CEO and the importance of managing relationships with various stakeholders. As we wrap up, we leave you with a heartfelt reminder to embrace mindfulness and appreciate each moment's gift, fostering a sense of fulfilment in life and leadership. Tune in for a transformative conversation on becoming a mentally strong leader.

Guest website: https://scottmautz.com/
Guest book: https://scottmautz.com/mentallystrongbook/
Self-Assessment: https://scottmautz.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/The-Mental-Strength-Self-Assessment.pdf

Scotts gift: https://scottmautz.com/mentallystronggift/

Sponsored by Nico Van de Venne CommV

Chapters

• 0:00 The Mentally Strong Leader
• 5:31 Building Mental Strength for Leadership
• 18:52 Grindfulness and Redirect Rhythm
• 25:37 Mastering Emotions for Effective Leadership
• 30:31 Leadership Evolution and Mental Strength
• 39:40 The Gift of Mindfulness

Transcript

Scott: 0:00

Meaning is a motivator that if you want employees to give more, be more, do more, you have to help them find meaning in the work. If you're a CEO, I argue you're a middle manager, because you also have to manage up to the board, down to a whole bunch of employees across, disappears.

Nico: 0:19

I wonder if there is actually one person who can be the boss, because you always have all these different sides. If it's not in the company, anybody who's?

Scott: 0:29

good at making decisions knows they're not going to make them in a vacuum, in an echo chamber by themselves.

Nico: 0:35

Every time you step a little bit higher on the ladder, there's even more people that you report to in essence, but it doesn't look that way because everybody thinks the boss has something to say. I've learned something very important there that I have to ask questions after questions until I am satisfied with a negative answer, because if it's too good to be true, it probably is. Let me invite you to sit back, drop your jaw, tongue and shoulders, take a deep breath and, if you wish, close your eyes for a moment and feel the beat within. In a few seconds. You just jumped from your head to your heart and felt the beat within opening up to receive even more value and fulfillment of your business and life.

Nico: 1:26

And today's episode? I'm your host, nico van de Venne, confidant to successful CEO founders and entrepreneurs striving to achieve everlasting fulfillment. Welcome to the Everlasting Fulfillment Podcast with our next guest, scott Mautz. Scott is the author, mentally strong leader. He's the founder and CEO of Profound Performance and is a former Procter Gamble executive who successfully ran four of the company's largest multi-billion dollar businesses. Okay, scott, that's certainly something on your name.

Scott: 2:06

Yeah, yeah, they weren't tiny businesses, that's for sure.

Nico: 2:10

He's also the multi-award winning author of Leading from the Middle, find the Fire and Make it Matter. Scott is named CEO Thought Leader by the executive, the chief executive guild and the top 50 leadership innovator by Inccom. That's one hell of an intro, scott.

Scott: 2:35

Oh, thank you, Nick. I can't wait to meet that guy you just introduced. He sounds like an interesting cat. I'm hopeful to bring everlasting value to your listeners and watchers today. Thank you for having me here.

Nico: 2:51

Yeah, that's. It's wonderful to have you. I we met on a very beautiful platform, podmatch, and I've been meeting a lot of very interesting people there and very knowledgeable people. So what I wanted to talk to you about is you've done a lot of research, I can imagine, and in that research, what's one of the things that pops out coming down to mental strength of a leader? Could you take us through that research and how you found that out?

Scott: 3:22

Yeah, let's start with the definition of mental strength, nico, just so we're all on the same page. And I'll start with what mental strength isn't. Mental strength is not by any stretch of the means. It's not mental health. That's a different discussion, worthy of its own, separate whole set of different people.

Scott: 3:39

Mental strength is not mental health, nor is mental strength merely EQ or emotional intelligence, which has been like the term of the past decade, eq being the ability to get your emotions to work for you versus against you. That said, eq is a part of the much bigger umbrella of mental strength, which is the ability to regulate not only your emotions but also your thoughts and your behaviors productively, even in adversity. It's, as I shorthanded, it's how we manage internally in a variety of ways so that we can lead better externally, at work and in life. And it's most of us, nico, intuitively understand that if you want to be a success at work and in life, you have to be able to self-regulate your emotions and your thoughts and behaviors. Most of us understand that. The problem is is that it is really hard to do that, really hard to do that?

Scott: 4:39

It's what makes mental strength the leadership superpower of our times, and I believe, nico, that we're going to start seeing mental strength becoming the next EQ, especially because it's a level above EQ in terms of empowerment. Eq is a part of mental strength. It is going to be the next EQ for the next decade the skill for leaders to learn, because we live in a world that is becoming more and more spread out, more and more disruptive. There's more and more distractions in our way, more and more sparks of things that cause self-doubt in ourselves and a lack of confidence in ourselves that's only increasing. So I really believe over the next 10 years, the leadership superpower of our times is mental strength and it's why I'm so proud of all the research and work I've been doing to bring readers today the book the Mentally Strong Leader.

Nico: 5:31

Yeah, I can imagine that and I find it very interesting. I started reading your book. I got a pile of books that I am reading right now and one of them I always read three or four at the same time, so I only started reading your book. But what I find amazing is you incorporate a lot of your experience as well, and it's not only research from other parties. Now, in your own experience, within your own leadership role, what are the biggest struggles that made you come to the point to do this research? Because I think you probably have? You didn't do it alone. Probably you found somebody who aided you or where you evolved with.

Scott: 6:10

Yeah to the question of what drove me to write when I was a mentally strong leader. To continue the definition of mental strength, there are six core mental muscles that equate to mental strength, nico. They are fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision-making, goal-focused, the ability to keep yourself and your organization focused on their goals, and what I call messaging the ability to stay positive even in an increasingly negative world and negative environments, staying engaged and positive in your messaging to the troops around you. All six of these mental muscles require self-regulation skills, and that's a really hard thing to do. I really decided to start pursuing writing a book about this when a certain set of research that I did took place, and I keep repeating this piece of research, nico. So I interviewed and or surveyed over 3,000 executives and I've done this multiple times now 3,000 executives at a time. And I ask one question in the interview or in the survey, thinking of the highest achieving organizations that you've ever been a part of, that overcame the most obstacles, what were the attributes of the key leader in that position at that time? And every time I run this, nico, between 90 to 91% of respondents describe the same kind of leader a mentally strong leader exhibiting the six mental muscles fortitude, confidence, boldness. They're decisive, they make great decisions, they're focused on the goals, they're very positive in the face of negativity. And here's the amazing part.

Scott: 7:47

I knew I really had to write a book about this, not just from that result, but when I would follow up with these 3,000 people and I would say that's okay. So you describe a leader that, in a time when you achieved the most and overcame the most obstacles, in this way you describe these six mental muscles. Now I want you to boil it down to a word or two. How would you describe that leader? And they wouldn't all just say mentally strong right away, right, but when I would give them a prompt, a list of different things, you could call that leader to describe that leader in a word or two, and I would put the words mentally strong in the list somewhere.

Scott: 8:33

95% of the time, respondents would circle mentally strong as a descriptor in one or two words of that leader. And I started getting really excited about that, especially when I kept repeating this research and getting the same result. Because what it told me, nico, was that we may have finally found that term that describes the best leaders we've ever worked for, that overcame the most adversity to help our organization achieve the most. That leader that term was mentally strong, like you were describing, nico, with my own experience of a mentally strong leader who I didn't have the words at the time to describe him, but he was unbelievable His fortitude, his resilience, the boldness of his decision-making, the quality of decisions he made, how confident he was. And now, in retrospect, looking back, I have the term to describe him, which is mentally strong, and I do believe it is the skill that we're going to need to focus on for the next decade, and that is what drove me to write the book the Mentally Strong Leader.

Nico: 9:32

Okay, that's a beautiful buildup to where you are right now. But if you look at my experience as well, I must admit I probably would have circled the same words, because I've had a couple of leaders that have shown me a path where I was amazed in the way they handled everything. In addition to that, what I found amazing is also even they made their decision and they acted on it and they pushed everybody into the right direction, but even if that was a wrong decision. So if they found out in the end, it's like, oh, we're going the wrong way, we need to do it differently. They were also still that decisively strong leader who said guys, I know I made a mistake, or in such words, and directed everybody to another path that might have been that has been more successful. What kind of person can become this strong leader? Is it limited or how do you?

Scott: 10:29

see it. Excellent question, nico. And here's, I think, a really important thing for the listeners and watchers to understand which is the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline of mental strength that we can build from. The key is to just understand where are you currently at in your mental strength journey. And here's the good news In the book the Mentally Strong Leader, you can take a mental strength self-assessment.

Scott: 10:59

It's 50 questions that it took me quite some time to put together, working with a data scientist to make sure the questions were valid to demonstrating mental strength. You could take a 50-question questionnaire. It takes you about 15 minutes. The only requirement is that you have time to think, it's quiet around you and that you're honest and maybe even vulnerable in your answers. And what you get after taking this assessment for 15 minutes?

Scott: 11:32

It produces an overall mental strength score that tells you what tier do you fall in in mental strength, and no tier is any better than others. Nico right, the goal isn't to just be the top tier mentally strong. Maybe that's a goal for you someday. But the important answer is where are you, what tier? And then what do you need to do to level up from those tiers. It also gives you a score by mental muscle. So you get a score on your fortitude, on your boldness, on your confidence, on your decision-making goal focus and your ability to message positively to the troops. And so what you walk away with, nico, is an understanding of what you specifically need to work on. What muscles do you need to strengthen, to level up? What muscles do you need to maintain that are already pretty darn strong, so that you can create your own customized mental strength training program?

Nico: 12:17

It sounds amazing. That's a good way to start reaching for that next level, but not that the level is already needed, but it's always good to have something to strive for. One of the things that I have been using in the last couple of years within my confidence role is changing from always building towards a goal to enjoying the journey more.

Nico: 12:37

So I can imagine that within this story, even if you're not there, as being the mentally strong leader it's already a path that might the steps towards is also wonderful to experience when you realize it and become very aware of it. So that's also something that I've noticed that when you talk about mentally strong leader, it's not left or right or black or white or anything like that. There's a certain way of evolving for every unique person. Have you met people who had very deep struggles to get to that mental leadership or to get to that certain step where they enjoyed it a little bit more, instead of always striving towards?

Scott: 13:22

Yeah, it's a great question. Here's an important thing to understand. So if let's equate the mental muscles that I'm talking about to physical muscles, right, if you went to the gym to exercise your physical muscles, right? You wouldn't go in and exercise every single muscle in your body every time. It'd take you like 20 hours to do that. You'd be exhausted, you wouldn't enjoy it, you'd start hating your workouts, right? But now the way it really works in the real world is you go in and I'm making this up, nico, maybe Wednesday is your leg day and you work on your leg muscles, and then Thursday is your back day and Friday is I'm making this up, I don't know stomach and arms. And so you parse that over time so that you can build each muscle individually, strengthen where you need to strengthen, push the ones you really need to push, and it becomes more enjoyable because you can get into a rhythm of it. That's doable, it's consumable. You can go into the gym for an hour a day and get that done. And that's what it's like with building your mental muscles. You don't go in and work every mental muscle all the time you develop. You take the mental strength, self-assessment, which muscles I don't need to work too hard on these. I just need to maintain them. Which muscles really need an overhaul and a lot of work? You create your unique, customized plan and then you can enjoy it more, because it's your individual journey. First of all, it's you, unique to you. No one will have the same exact regimen, right, number one. But then the second thing, though that makes it more enjoyable to your point, nico, and the ones that really struggle really benefit with this, which is when you can build the habits to become mentally stronger. Habits are like that arm around you that helps you along the way, and I think it makes sense when you think about it, nico.

Scott: 15:08

The subtitle of the book the Mentally Strong Leader is build the habits to productively regulate your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviors. And why habits? Because we establish up front it is really hard to be mentally strong sometimes it's really hard. So habits in the book the Mentally Strong Leader is built on habit-building science to make it more enjoyable, to make it a little bit easier for you to get mentally stronger. Habits, of course, are repetitions right. Just like when you want to build bigger arm muscles, you do curl repetitions. Same thing, mentally right. You do repetitions, which you do with systems and frameworks. So there are over 50 plus tools in the book the Mentally Strong Leader that are all systems or frameworks to help you get repetitions in so that you could become mentally stronger.

Scott: 16:00

That includes advice on what's the first small step you should take in building that you could become mentally stronger. That includes advice on what's the first small step you should take in building a habit to become more confident. For example, what do you do in moments of weakness, when you feel yourself breaking down? That's a lot oftentimes where our habits don't stick, because in moments of weakness we falter. We feel generally confident. Then we have a bad meeting and our boss yells at us and we feel like an idiot and our confidence spirals down and in that moment of weakness the habit is broken. So what do you do in those moments? So, with the habit building, science built into the mentally strong leader and the fact that you follow your own routine, it can become enjoyable. You can fall in love with the work to get there over time because you don't have to do it all at once.

Nico: 16:40

Yeah, absolutely. I understand. It's the compound effect basically as well. It's the little things every day. It's one of the beautiful things that I do. For instance, in the morning I take my moment of gratitude, I write it down. I've got this red journal right next to my bed and I got a black journal which is the actual day-to-day writing down what happened, what insights do I have, and I always try to finalize it with a quote that I invent at the time or remember, and it always closes it off. And it's all these little habits that create a feeling of on one side it's the gratitude. On the other side, it's the realization of the inspiration that you had during the day. And then, at around eight in the morning, I have five alarms that go off. Every five minutes I have a different alarm. It's one of the podcast episodes has all these alarms defined, and recently the last one that I created was hope equals choice.

Nico: 17:34

So hope is a choice and it's something that kind of brings me towards the feeling of understanding that even the struggled moments that we have, the hardships that we meet, are moments where our form of hope is challenged in moving forward. So it's a choice of moving forward. Have any moments within your experience, within being Procter Gamble's pretty big environment, where you, as executive, have found these struggles come up and these habits used, the habits that you used at the time, let's say that, what kind of habits did you have at the time that brought you through those big struggled moments?

Scott: 18:19

Yeah, I want to build on something you said and I'm going to flip it for a second. An obvious answer right, nico, could be I'm going to tell you the obvious answer, then I'm going to give you the non-obvious answer. The obvious answer would be like okay, wait a minute. So this guy ran multi-billion dollar businesses. He probably needed to use his boldness muscle a lot. He probably needed to be super confident. Another mental muscle, mental strength. He probably really needed to be great decision maker Of course, all of those on the big stage, when you're making big decisions for big brands.

Scott: 18:48

For sure, there's tons of tools to help with all of that. One of the places that helped me the most and this might surprise you, and I want to build on what you were talking about you were talking about gratitude I found the importance of mental strengths in helping me through the daily grind, when the grind was really starting to wear me down and I was tired and just the day-to-day duties were just making me exhausted and wearing me down and wearing down my confidence and my outlook and my optimism and my brightness that I brought to the day. So I started using a very powerful tool. I'm going to build on what you talked about. You're talking about gratitude and gratitude journals. There's a tool in the Mentally Strong Leader that I call grindfulness. It's a combination of gratitude and mindfulness. It's how you find joy in the small little moments of your daily routine that are wearing you down, so that you can then elevate those up, find joy in them and improve your outlook. And I'll give you an example. I just had someone who told me about this not so long ago, and I put it in the book. It was so powerful. I've been teaching grindfulness for a while. Here's an example of grindfulness Someone that I know.

Scott: 20:01

They had lost their job. They got laid off at work, and they were out there pounding the pavement every single day looking for a new job, interviewing, getting no after no, and it was really starting to wear them down. As you can imagine, it was exhausting. It was wearing down their outlook on life. It was wearing down their energy, and they found, though, in that daily routine that was starting to really tire them out. They found how much they enjoyed the quiet breakfasts that they could take in the morning to themselves. They'd have their coffee and their eggs, where they could think about their day, relax, do some meditative breathing.

Scott: 20:36

You opened up the podcast with that in a way right, and they learned how much they enjoyed that and that grind, the grind of being out there every single day interviewing, getting no after no. They clung to that detail in the grind of that nice detail of a quiet breakfast to start the day of interviewing out. And then they built on that and they said you know what, that's a really nice thing and they found joy in that and they elevated the importance of that. That's grindfulness, it's appreciating the detail in the small little things of the grind in life, and I would build on that just as much as I would the big hitter things like fortitude and boldness to become mentally strong. My point being, mental strength can be things both large and as minute as appreciating a morning cup of coffee to yourself. Right, does that make sense, nico?

Nico: 21:24

Yeah, absolutely, I also enjoy my coffee in the morning.

Scott: 21:27

It's important.

Nico: 21:31

Let's say it's a life-saving for my children.

Scott: 21:34

Yeah, I understand. I understand it's dangerous if you don't get it. I get it, I'm not addicted.

Nico: 21:42

No, that's right, it's dangerous. If you don't get it, I get it. I'm not addicted. No, that's right, I'm lovingly attached. Let's call it that.

Scott: 21:49

It's a good, positive routine in Rushman. Yes, indeed, I get it.

Nico: 21:52

I get it, but it's the same thing where I've learned to have my Sunday mornings with my family. So I work, I think, six, sometimes seven days a week, but Sunday morning we all even if the kids are they stayed up till really late 8 am. Everybody's at the table and we're there, we're eating our pistoles, as we say, a little piece of bread, and that's the moment where I'm like what a gift, and that's why I understand what you mean. The combination of that gratitude and that being in the moment, pure mindfulness, because lately I found that a lot of these words were turning into hype words and getting a little bit of a different tendency, a different value, let's say. But they are still valid.

Nico: 22:38

The little moments in life where you're just stopping I think that's one of the most important things is that learn to stop and listen to the silence, because I love working with silence in all the things that I do In meetings.

Nico: 22:54

I have moments where I just stop talking and that's the moment where you give yourself the opportunity to think and then move on instead of just moving on and giving answers. And because the expectations these days of a lot of people towards their leadership is you have to have giving answers, and because the expectations these days of a lot of people towards their leadership is you have to have the answers, you have to know what we need to do. You are the one that X, y, zs, and I find that, as a leader, when you come to the point where you're saying I am here, I am the person. I am grateful, I know, I am very aware of what's going on and I take the time to think about it In that moment of silence. I will give you a lot better answers than just blurring out stuff, because I've seen leaders do that as well People who just run with the crowd and try to solve every problem and then a little fire pops up and they add wood to the fire instead of putting it out.

Scott: 23:54

It's interesting you bring that up and that particularly happens, nico, when we're angry in a moment right, or we can feel a negative emotion surging inside us and it spills out in an unproductive way. One of the tools I talk about in the Mentally Strong Leader is in the messaging chapter, where you know, again, messaging being all about as a leader. You live in a fishbowl and everybody's watching you swim around and they're repping on the glass to see where you're going to go next. Every move you make is magnified, so you have to message in a way that connotes positivity and feeds the culture that you want. Now it's the opposite. Messaging is a big part of being a leader, but when you're in a negative moment, especially as a leader, that could really go sideways and have a negative impact on everybody around you. And so I have a tool in the book that I call the redirect rhythm that I wanted to share with you very quickly. It's how you navigate negative emotions in the moment, and it really works. I've been teaching it for years. I'm going to teach it to you now as well. It's just a couple of steps that you take, and as you practice them, you get better at them and they become much more automatic. So, step one let's say you're in a moment, nico, where you are to your point right. You're experiencing something that is really frustrating you, it's really hard to contain and not just let your emotions flow right out into an unhelpful activity.

Scott: 25:12

Step one, first of all, is something that you had us do when you opened the podcast. You have to create space, you have to take a breath. You just have to stop. When you can feel your temperature rising inside, you have to take a breath. Now, most of us know that, intuitively. If listeners are thinking, oh, that's really insightful, your first step is take a breath. Yeah, we know that intuitively. If listeners are thinking, oh, that's really insightful, your first step is take a breath. Yeah, we know that. You might not know the science behind why that's so important. When you take a breath, besides the fact that it slows your heart rate down, it slows the stress hormone down. It actually allows you to think more clearly, which we all know. What it also does is it creates distance from the intensity of the emotion that you're feeling. It helps break the gravitational pull of the emotion that's dragging you somewhere you don't want to be. So you have to create that moment of space. You do that first by taking a breath. Then you go right to the next step in the redirect rhythm exercise, which is then quickly, right after you take that breath name the emotion you're feeling. That's your next step, right away. What am I feeling right now?

Scott: 26:20

Once you name what you're feeling, it begins to lose its hold over you. It becomes this entity outside of you that's not part of you, and you don't have to follow that entity down the drain. So, for example, nico, let's say you and I are talking and I'm making this up. I'm getting frustrated with you and I can feel the emotions coming up because I don't feel like you're listening to my answers or whatever. In that moment, after I've taken a breath, rather than reacting and biting your head off, I could say okay, name the emotion. I'm feeling frustrated. Now that I know what that is, I've identified it, it's outside of me. I can go to the last step, which is you really reassess and redirect. Right In that moment, you say, okay, so what's really happening?

Scott: 27:00

I'm going to reassess. I'm frustrated because I don't know that Nico is really listening. So what am I going to do about it? How am I going to redirect that? What's next? I'm just going to tell him hey, let's just pause for a second. I just want to make sure you really heard what I had to say.

Scott: 27:12

Right, just like that. I managed my emotions. I didn't minimize them. That old check your emotions at the door, that doesn't work. It does not work. We're human beings, we're not robots. So if you take a breath, you name the emotion oh, I'm feeling this. And then you ask yourself okay, so what's really happening because of that and what am I going to do next about it? That's productive. That rhythm becomes habit, and habits almost happens, almost instantaneously over time. A cognitive behavioral therapy calls this the three C's, if you prefer this. You have to catch it, check it, change it. You're the emotion that you're feeling. Catch it happening, check it and ask is this really the best for me? Change it to a more productive outcome. It's a really powerful tool. You'll find in the book the Mild and Strong Leader.

Nico: 27:57

Yeah, it's so simple, right, when you hear the step? Of course it's. You need to exercise and execute it several times before you make it a habit. Of course, yeah, that's right.

Scott: 28:06

That's right, that's right.

Nico: 28:07

That's an amazing one. Yeah, indeed, the breath thing a lot of people take it very lightly. I find it has helped me. It has helped my clients many times. Me too, me too, yeah, when those emotions are there and, like you said, do not leave them at the door, because that's I've learned so many times.

Nico: 28:28

That is not how you handle emotions. We've been from kids age on. We've been learning that emotions, as a man, it's not what you want to show, et cetera, et cetera. But I find it amazing that last couple of decades at least, that is something that is becoming a breakthrough, where men are allowed to show tears or just grundleness or those pure, raw emotions are allowed to be shown. You don't have to act on them in a physical way and all that stuff. That's a different story. I found the analogy where you're saying with fish in a bowl yeah, I always love the comparison when a fish talks to another fish how's the water? And they look at him and say what water? And it makes me realize that sometimes you're actually in the S-H-I-T. Yes, yes, and you don't even realize that you're in that emotion and you're not taking away the power of the emotion, you're actually flowing in it and making it worse.

Scott: 29:23

That's exactly right, as I like to say, just to build on what you're saying, you have to react internally, respond externally. You can't crush the thing that you're feeling inside because you're not a robot, you're a human being. But that's why taking a breath is so important, because it puts that line in the sand, it says okay, it gives you a moment to distance yourself from the gravitational pull of that negative emotion that you could feel, taking you to somewhere that you're not going to want to go. You're going to respond in a way. You don't want to respond, and that's why it's so important to do that.

Nico: 29:55

Yeah, I think it's being a parent, isn't it? Yeah, yes, yeah, an intentional parent, yeah, yeah.

Scott: 30:02

It's very much the redirect rhythm. I've talked to as many parents as I have quote unquote leaders and managers, and all those are often the same thing.

Nico: 30:13

Only the kids might react a little bit.

Scott: 30:14

Yeah, yeah, employees so sometimes better than employees, frankly, oh yeah yeah, yeah, indeed, I can tell you a couple of stories anyways, yeah, yeah, I bet, I bet but so this is your radio, your latest book mentally strong leader.

Nico: 30:31

I wanted to quickly jump back into the other books that you've written. I didn't read them yet because I've been very intrigued about what you're saying here. It comes in line to what I want to put into the world with everlasting fulfillment. But those books are those based on a completely different story, or are they a buildup towards what you've created?

Scott: 30:51

now based on a completely different story, or are they a buildup towards what you've created now? Yeah, it's an evolution, really, nico, a natural evolution. The first book, make it Matter, is about finding meaning in the workplace. Meaning is a motivator that if you want employees to give more, be more, do more, you have to help them find meaning in the work that they do, in a sense of fulfillment, which is something that you and I are very much on the same page for. So that was the first book Continuing the journey. The second book was called Find the Fire, and that's what happens when the meaning has drained from your work. What happens when the inspiration for your job that you had on day one when you showed up and you were full of energy and you were full of vinegar and ready to change the world, when that you no longer feel that way, how do you reignite that spark in your work once again?

Scott: 31:37

The next book I wrote, the last one prior to the Mentally Strong Leader, was called Leading from the Middle, and that's a love letter to middle managers in the organizations, the ones that are often looked from a motivational perspective, and it's a book about hey look, we're all middle managers If you have to lead up, down and across in the organization to do your job, you're a middle manager.

Scott: 32:00

If you're a CEO, I argue, you're a middle manager because you also have to manage up to the board, down to a whole bunch of employees, across to some peers. Even if they're outside on boards, you sit in an industry. If they're outside on boards, you sit in an industry. So that leading from the middle is about the difficult dynamic of how to manage those interesting dynamics that happen when you have to lead in so many different directions and stay motivated to do that. And then that all culminated now with the mentally strong leader, which is again obviously about helping people to regulate their emotions, their thoughts and their behaviors productively, even in adversity, at work and in life. So to me it has felt like a natural progression.

Nico: 32:38

Yeah, that's a beautiful the beautiful steps, of all those parts that it resonates a lot with who I am and what I do. I think we're in sync there on so many levels. And when you came up to the point where you're saying about the CEO also being in the middle, it's a perception that a lot of people have is like CEO is the big man, the boss, et cetera. I wonder if there is actually one person who can be the boss, because you always have all these different sides sides if it's not in the company, or from the board, or from your stakeholders around the company, your clients, your consumers. There's always somebody that you are reporting to in a certain way, and you're not always directing them either. So is there really somebody who has the final arrow in his hand saying this is the way that we are going? I don't think so.

Scott: 33:33

I don't know what you think about that, yeah, when it comes to decision-making, sometimes the buck has to stop with somebody, or the euro has to stop with somebody, like as the saying goes. And I think the difference and the reason why I agree with you, nico, is that anybody who's good at making decisions knows they're not going to make them in a vacuum, in an echo chamber by themselves. They're going to make them surrounding themselves with the best possible information, people that purport to them peers, ceos in other industries. They're going to consult their board, the people above them. So while there might have to be, from a figurehead standpoint, someone who makes the final call, that doesn't mean that they're operating by themselves in a silo.

Nico: 34:17

Yeah, indeed, that's the view that I have as well, which is pretty funny. Years ago, I was always looking up to the founders, the CEOs, the leaders of companies, while I started to realize that every time you step a little bit higher on the ladder, there's even more people that you report to in essence. But it doesn't look that way because everybody thinks the boss has something to say. No, they take decisions, like you said, with enough information. I just hope that that's one of the things that I that I'd like to bring into the world is called a CEO disease and founderitis, where you have a CEO that has this veil in front of his eyes because people don't give him the right information.

Nico: 35:00

I worked at IBM and people who listen to my podcast have heard this story before but I left IBM because I didn't like the Excel sheet management. So there was a lot of middle management who made everything almost perfectly green, but everybody that was walking on the floor was running their legs from under them because there was so much stuff going wrong and they always painted a beautiful picture toward higher management and I didn't like that. That's where I cut the line from IBM, but I've learned something very important there that I have to ask questions after questions until I am satisfied with a negative answer, because if it's too good to be true, it probably is. It's the same with buying something on the internet If it's too good to be true, stay away. There are exceptions, absolutely.

Scott: 35:48

Exactly right. That's very well said, that's right.

Nico: 35:53

So is there anything else that you want to tell us, Scott, about content from one of your books, or your specific, the Mentally Strong Leader that you want to round off our conversation with?

Scott: 36:04

I think, nico. Just regards to the Mentally Strong Leader and building mental strength, First of all I want people to understand that, yes, leader is in the title of the book the Mentally Strong Leader and for sure it's incredibly applicable to help leaders become and create the organization that achieves the most. Help leaders become and create the organization that achieves the most right. Mentally becoming mentally strong is like a cheat code for achievement, because building those six core mental muscles we talked about quarter to boldness, confidence, decision-making, goal focus and messaging correlate with achievement more than any other leadership skill. So for sure it's for leaders, but it's also for people that want to just lead in life. They want to be better parents, they want to make better decisions in their church groups, they want to be better in the community. So it's more, it's broader even than the title number one. And second, I just want to make sure people aren't intimidated again by the thought of becoming mentally stronger. The opposite of mentally strong I said this earlier is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline to build from.

Scott: 37:03

Where you fall after you take the mental strength self-assessment in the book, is you. It's your unique journey. There's no right or wrong answer to where you fall. It's just the different tiers. It just helps you pinpoint what you uniquely need to work on. And you shouldn't be intimidated by that, because the book is built with habit-building science to give you this specific playbook what to go do to become more confident, to become bolder and to take more risks, to have more resilience and fortitude in your life, to make better decisions and so on. And that's all available to you in the book. The Mentally Strong Leader.

Nico: 37:38

That's amazing stuff right there. I think this book is so deeply valuable. If you're in even starting off as maybe having a small team, just being a team leader with a couple of people, or if you're in a big organization managing thousands of people, I think you would find value in all aspects of what you said. Like the questionnaire, it gives you a good step to reflect on where am I now, what else can I improve or grow upon? And if you listen to all the little techniques that you've already brought with us, thank you very much for giving us the little exercise for people to go back into the podcast and try to take those three steps. When it comes down to emotion, I think that's something that's so valuable because in a meeting room where the shit hits the fan to put it bluntly and pardon my French, but when it hits it it's really the moment that you need those three steps to be calm and decisive and flatline the emotion a little bit, go outside afterwards and shout whatever that's right.

Scott: 38:40

That's exactly right, nico, they should take the road.

Nico: 38:43

That's right. That's exactly right, Nico. So, Scott, what can people do to reach out to you if they want to know more, understand more or follow anything that you've put into the world?

Scott: 38:51

Certainly, they can go to scottmautzcom S-C-O-T-M-A-U-T-Z or Zed, depending on what part of the world you're in scottmautzcom and you can learn about the keynotes I give, both online and virtual, the workshops I give, the trainings I give. You'll find the Mentally Strong Leader there and all my other books. And I put together a gift today for your listeners, nico. If they go to scottmoutscom slash Mentally Strong Gift, they can download for free a 60-page PDF that includes the mental strength self-assessment that I was talking about and it has prompts on how to get the most out of the book the Mentally Strong Leader. So if you want that 60-page PDF for free that includes the mental strength self-assessment, go to scottmouncecom slash mentallystronggift.

Nico: 39:36

And those links will be added to the show notes as well. And this is like a gift-giving story here. It's a podcast full of gifts. Thank you so much, scott, for your time. I know you're an absolutely busy person, so thank you for your time and to the listeners, remember to take a breath and feel the beat within. Have a great one, everybody. Bye-bye.