Episode 1461: Interview with Scott Mautz About Being a Mentally Strong Leader

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1461 of the Inspired

[00:00:05] Scott Mautz: Stewardship Podcast. I'm Scott Mautz. I challenge you to invest in yourself and invest in others. Develop your influence. Impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to build your mental strength is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this.

[00:00:26] The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer because if you think about it, there are no other, you know, first of all, they are the, the attributes that most correlate to achievement. Number one, thinking back to all the studies I've run multiple times, we keep seeing over and over again, the term mental strength correlates more than any other term.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling. In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:32] In today's podcast episode, I interview Scott Mautz. I asked Scott about his book, The Mentally Strong Leader. I also asked Scott about what mental strength really is and how important mental strength is to our success. And Scott also shares how you can discover your own mental strength. I've got a new book coming out called Inspired Living.

[00:01:54] Assembling the puzzle of your call by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You [00:02:00] can find out more about it and sign up for getting more information over@inspiredstewardship.com. Inspired Living. That's inspired stewardship.com. Inspired Living. Scott Mountz is the author of the Mentally Strong Leader.

[00:02:17] He's also the founder and CEO of Profound Performance, a keynote training and coaching company. Scott is a former Procter Gamble executive who successfully ran four of the company's largest multi billion dollar businesses. He is also the award winning author of Leading from the Middle, Find the Fire, and Make it Matter.

[00:02:37] Scott has been named a CEO Thought Leader by the Chief Executives Guild and a Top 50 Leadership Innovator by Inc. com. He is on the fence. Faculty on reserve at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business for Executive Education and he's also a top instructor at LinkedIn Learning. He lives in San Diego.

[00:02:57] Welcome to the show,

[00:02:58] Scott Mautz: Scott. Hey, [00:03:00] Scott. Great first name. Is it, I was happy. I checked out your show ahead of time and to learn that you don't only have people on that are named Scott. So that's no, yeah it,

[00:03:10] Scott Maderer: that would narrow that's, that would narrow the guest list a little bit.

[00:03:14] I could, however, I don't know. You could brand that it's the great Scott show. That's what you would call it.

[00:03:20] Scott Mautz: Only have people on that are named Scott. Yeah. Inspired Scots ship. How about, yeah, there you go. Hey,

[00:03:28] Scott Maderer: you know what? It would probably sell. That's all I got to say. So thanks so much for coming on today.

[00:03:34] So I shared a little bit in the intro about some of your work and the book you've put out the mentally strong leader, but I always look at introductions and bios and those sorts of things. It's the Instagram photos of our story. We kind of frame things and it always leaves some stuff out.

[00:03:51] Would you share a little bit more about your journey and what brought you to doing the work that you're doing today and putting out the message that you're putting [00:04:00] out?

[00:04:00] Scott Mautz: Yeah, like many of your listeners, Scott, perhaps, I started my journey in on the corporate track. I spent over three decades in corporate 25 of those years at Procter Gamble.

[00:04:10] And, about halfway through the journey, as much as I was learning about leadership and, and I pride myself in being a constant student of leadership, not just a teacher about it. I really started finding that I was really fascinated with trying to discern the difference between leaders that were great, And leaders that just happen to be in leadership positions because they were put there.

[00:04:34] And I found, I became so interested in the difference between a great leader and just merely a leader that's in there by position and title. And I started studying about halfway through my corporate journey, Scott, the really trying to deeply understand The differences between the two and I started the journey of studying mental strength about, about that same time [00:05:00] and, I think I found, and I'll share some of this data later in our discussion.

[00:05:03] I found some really clear points leading to. How much of a driver of leadership greatness, mental strength is and continues to be and will only continue to be more once I discerned not only the importance of mental strength and leadership, but started cracking the code on how to develop the mental muscles that consist of that, I knew that I was going to have to shift gear, Scott, and I was going to have to make a move to leave corporate and broad, broaden my platform for making a difference with the written and the spoken word to share more.

[00:05:35] what I have been learning throughout all these years of research and personal experience. Absolutely.

[00:05:43] Scott Maderer: So was there, was there a particular event or something during your development, before you got started that make you made you interested in leadership as a principal or what, what got you hooked on thinking

[00:05:57] Scott Mautz: about it?

[00:05:58] Yeah, I would think, Here's, I [00:06:00] can point it all the way back to a specific study that I ran, when I was I'd already written my first book when I was in corporate, so anybody paying attention knew that, I was going to be changing my journey from the corporate world to, to, to being a writer, author, speaker, but, I started learning about mental strike, and I'm going to, Take you on a short journey and pinpoint the exact moment in time, Scott, to your exact question, when I knew that this is what I had to do and go talk about let me just, by way of definition, mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors productively.

[00:06:33] Even in adversity, and you could argue especially in adversity, as I like to shorthand it, it's how we manage internally so that we can lead better externally at both work and yes, even in life. And most of us intuitively understand that, right? And I knew that in my corporate days, Scott, that if you want to be successful, you have to learn to Be great at self regulation of your emotions and your thoughts and your behaviors.

[00:06:57] You can't just do whatever you think, say whatever [00:07:00] you happens to come to mind, behave in whatever way grabs you in the moment. You got to regulate that. But newsflash, it's really hard to do that. And about halfway through my journey as a leader and in corporate world, I started to see a discerning difference between leaders that were really good at self regulation and ones that really weren't.

[00:07:21] And it started pointing to the power of mental strength that came to a head. Now, I'm going to go ahead after your question now. With this one study in particular that I began running, and I started I've run ever since, 3, 000 executives at a time. I will rerun the study where I ask one question.

[00:07:39] Thinking of the highest achieving organizations that you've ever been a part of that overcame the most obstacles, and despite that accomplished the What were the attributes of the key leader? And Scott, every time I run this study, including the very first time I ran it, Between 90 to 91 percent [00:08:00] of respondents described this same profile of a leader that was mentally strong.

[00:08:07] And let me just underscore what I mean by that. When you're talking about mental strength, there are six core mental muscles of mental strength. Leaders that show fortitude, boldness, They're great decision makers, both decisive and make high quality decisions. They have tremendous goal focus, and they're incredible at messaging.

[00:08:30] Meaning, staying positive minded, even in the face of negativity, so that people are drawn to them. They're a source of energy. They don't deplete energy in the organization with the way they message the troops. And so what I found in this study, to the exact moment in time, to your question, Scott, for that first, the first time I ran the study, I was astounded that over 90 percent of people could describe these same six skills.

[00:08:55] And then what's interesting is even though all of them didn't necessarily describe that in [00:09:00] summary as, When I provided them with a pick list of, here's one or two words to describe in one sentence, in a couple of words, what you just described to me, which one best summarizes it? When I put mental strength on the list and I buried where I put it, that's research 101, you got to show it in different, formats.

[00:09:20] When I, even when I varied where I put mental strength on the list of different attributes to describe those leaders, you People would pick up on it right away and over 95 percent of the time they would circle the words mental strong, mentally strong and say, that's it. That's what summarizes the best leader I've ever worked for that achieved the most, even in adversity, they were mentally strong.

[00:09:40] It was at that point, Scott, that I knew I was onto something. I believe that mental strength is the leadership superpower of our times, especially now more than ever. And it provides that term that we've all been looking for. How do you describe in one sentence? What makes the great leaders [00:10:00] great in times of adversity?

[00:10:02] I believe that term is mental strength. And once I discovered that, I knew that I had to get out into the world and start teaching what I have been learning about mental strength along the years.

[00:10:15] Scott Maderer: We'll dive some more into kind of the mentally strong leader and what that means. I've got some questions that came to mind, but before I go there, one of the things I like to highlight.

[00:10:24] In my show is that intersection between whatever our own personal, spiritual, or faith walk is or how we see that part of our ourselves in the world and our life journey and what we see playing out and what we do in the world. Would you talk a little bit about how your particular faith walk and.

[00:10:47] Scott Mautz: Yeah, very clear to me, Scott. Leaving any denomination aside, what I can tell you with great clarity is that my faith has intersected in a way of kind of two [00:11:00] words, kindness and service. And I have found that in my personal life, I'm at my happiest when I'm kind, when I'm kind. I'm at my happiest when I'm kind.

[00:11:09] When I'm in a mindset of servitude, when I'm finding ways to serve my fellow man and woman, and finding ways to blend that into the spirit of how I work, how I show up at work, how I teach, how I train, how I keynote, and how I show up at work. to my family and to my friends and to my community. So for me, they become, my faith has led me to core values of kindness and service that have been absolutely instrumental in providing a lighthouse for me to guide the way both professionally and personally.

[00:11:44] I'm sure that's not surprising to you at all to hear something like that.

[00:11:47] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. Let's dive back into that idea of these mental muscles and mental strength. You listed fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision making, goal focus and messaging. [00:12:00] What I guess, all of those are things that I think, people hear that list and go, okay, yeah, that's Those are good things, obviously.

[00:12:09] What is it about those six things that it's different than all of the other kinds of, vision caster and charismatic and, you hear all of this different kinds of terminology to describe. Great leaders. What makes this list different?

[00:12:28] Scott Mautz: Great question. I'm so glad you asked it. Because if you think about it, there are no other, first of all, they are the attributes that most correlate to achievement.

[00:12:40] Number one, thinking back to all the studies I've run multiple times, we keep seeing over and over again, the term mental strength correlates more than any other term. With organizations that achieve. So these are like the six muscles and skills that make up a cheat code for achievement, number one.

[00:12:58] And number [00:13:00] two, it makes sense when you think about it. You need self regulation skills to be good at all of these things that could, that connote mental strength. Confidence, let's just talk about that for a second. You can be the most confident person in the world, and then if you go backwards, if you have a bad meeting that makes you doubt yourself, you can go right over the deep end, and your confidence can very quickly start spiraling down.

[00:13:21] It requires self regulation skills, mental strength in other words, to stay on track. Same thing with fortitude. You could be feeling like the most resilient leader in the world, but then man, you Bam, you get whacked off your horse. Some major setback throws you into a loop that makes it hard for you to recover from.

[00:13:39] It takes self regulation skills or mental strength to get back on that horse. And it's true of not only fortitude and confidence, but with goal focus. There's so many distractions that could get in the way that require self regulation. Same thing with decision making. So many biases that could appear that require mental strength to, to mediate.

[00:13:58] So many things that can go [00:14:00] wrong in messaging that pull you into negativity and so forth. So it makes these six core mental muscles the key to achievement, and they require uniquely, self regulation skills, more than anything else that the leader has to engage and build over their tenure.

[00:14:16] Scott Maderer: So self regulation is not on that list.

[00:14:19] And yet you, you keep circle back and using that terminology. So unpack that term a little bit. It's somewhat self evident, but I don't like to take things at face value. I want to dig in. And then why is that, what you're describing, but not. Those skills, if that makes sense, what's different

[00:14:38] Scott Mautz: there?

[00:14:38] Yeah, because self regulation, Scott, it's a great question. It serves as the umbrella differentiator for, you could say. Okay, Scott, I got it. These six core skills make up mental strength. They're all important. I got it. But why not the other stuff like you were talking about? Like visioning.

[00:14:54] Visioning is important. So is, I don't know, collaboration skills. And so is innovation. Of course, those are all [00:15:00] absolutely important. But they don't, they might not necessarily require self regulation skills. The ability to consciously think about how are you emoting? How are you thinking? How are you behaving?

[00:15:13] How are you acting? So it's that self regulation umbrella that requires us to It encapsulates the six core muscles of mental strength. And here, this also might help you. Sometimes I get the question, Scott, of okay, I got it. Okay, so mental strength is a lot about self regulating your emotions, your thoughts, and your behaviors.

[00:15:32] How is it different than EQ, or emotional intelligence? And the way to think about that is, mental strength is the broader umbrella. EQ, or emotional intelligence, fits underneath the umbrella Emotional intelligence is getting your emotions to work for you rather than against you. That's only an element of mental strength.

[00:15:54] Mental strength is not just, managing your emotions. And by the way, notice I said managing your emotions, not [00:16:00] minimizing them. That is not what mental strength is. It is not check your emotions at the door because that never works. It's managing your emotions, but also your thoughts and your behaviors and your actions.

[00:16:12] In all the ways that we've been talking about to show resilience and great decision making and confidence and boldness and so on. I think it's important for people to remember that if that's true, we know all the attention that EQ has been getting for the last decade. If that's just a sliver of this broader thing of mental strength, I truly believe mental strength, Is the leadership superpower of our times is going to start getting the attention of E that EQ has gotten over the past decade.

[00:16:40] And I believe it deserves to as well.

[00:16:44] Scott Maderer: And you talked earlier about, the example of a leader that's managed well through times of struggle. And that's just the list that came up with, I'm sure people are capable of doing the inverse of that and talking about the characteristics of leaders that they've had that didn't lead well in times of [00:17:00] struggle and, and it almost would read the opposite list, they were, they threw off, they flew off the handle for no apparent reason.

[00:17:06] They couldn't control themselves. They, that kind of thing as well.

[00:17:10] Scott Mautz: I've run the inverse and you're 100 percent right, Scott, to test my hypotheses. We're talking thousands and thousands of data points now. I also did the inverse it added thousands more data points to the set and you're exactly right.

[00:17:22] That's exactly what you see the opposite for leaders that are not so great in achieving anything for their organization and in times of setbacks and adversity.

[00:17:31] Scott Maderer: So you've mentioned too, you kept using the words, mental muscles, skills, muscles and. That kind of has a connotation to it, but I want you to unpack that in terms of, you're not describing these as just inherent characteristics or things that you're born with, but rather, muscles are things you can make stronger skills or things you can get better.

[00:17:52] How, unpack that for us a little bit. Why do you describe these as skills and muscles rather than just characteristics?

[00:17:58] Scott Mautz: Yeah, and I really [00:18:00] encourage people to think about these, these six things I've talked about is mental muscles, because, first of all, the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak, Scott.

[00:18:09] We all have a baseline of mental strength to work from. And I find this metaphor to be very helpful to people, if. You just have to know which muscles to work on at what times. If you were going to go to the gym, Scott, let's say you, you have five days planned to go to the gym every day this week.

[00:18:26] You're not going to go to the gym every day working on every single muscle. It would take you 19 hours every day. That'd be ridiculous. Wednesday would be, I'm making this up, back day. Thursday would be leg day, or I don't know, Friday would be arms day, whatever. Similarly with your mental muscles. These six core mental muscles that we keep talking about.

[00:18:45] Once you understand which mental muscles you need to work on, and I'll talk about that separately in just a moment. Once you understand what mental muscles you need to work on, you can start to level them up as you see fit. You can come back to them and continue to strengthen [00:19:00] them. And guess what happens when we don't go back to the gym physically in our life, right?

[00:19:04] Our muscles deteriorate. They weaken. It's the same thing with mental muscles in the brain. You have to keep revisiting and building the habits and the skill sets, which is what you're able to do in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader, that I'm talking from. It's packed with over 50 plus habits and tools that you can build to work on each mental muscle, which over time so that it doesn't have to feel so daunting.

[00:19:26] It's not a one and done thing. You don't go through a set of exercises and boom, you're mentally strong forever. You got to keep going back to that gym with all the tools in the book, the mentally strong leader. And that's why I find that metaphor to be very helpful to people.

[00:19:39] Scott Maderer: Is this something too that, you mentioned having a setback or something that, that kind of pushes you backwards and confidence or decision making boldness, whatever area it is this one of those things?

[00:19:50] Or how does this play out? I think a lot of us have had. Periods on our leadership journey, periods on our life journey where, maybe you just have had that [00:20:00] year of everything going wrong, that, that kind of event in your life, the, I always tell people it's the six months where your life was a country song, right?

[00:20:08] It's a

[00:20:08] Scott Mautz: good way to

[00:20:09] Scott Maderer: put it. Yeah, that's right. My dog

[00:20:11] Scott Mautz: left me, my wife left, my truck broke,

[00:20:13] Scott Maderer: I've never done right. I only got beer. Yeah. And some, and that happens to, there are events like that, that happen that oftentimes because of things that are out of our control. So how does this mental Fortitude, mental strength.

[00:20:28] How does this play out, in light of that and when folks have those personal, so here, I'm not necessarily talking about a leadership challenge directly in terms of their company or their business or their whatever group they're leading, but more personal stuff. How does that play out for folks that have developed these muscles?

[00:20:47] Scott Mautz: Yeah. First of all, it's, really important to understand. When you enter those, what did you call it? A country song? Yeah, your life is a country

[00:20:55] Scott Maderer: song.

[00:20:55] Scott Mautz: Yeah,

[00:20:57] Scott Maderer: it's a Southern way of describing it.

[00:20:58] Scott Mautz: I like that. [00:21:00] When you're in the period where your life is a country song, part of mental strength is understanding and recognizing that you're going to have the downs with the ups in your life.

[00:21:08] And a lot of it comes back to understanding. Okay. Here's a perfect example. I have I'll just give you a perfect example of this. I have a ton of tools, for example, in the Mentally Strong Leader, in the Fortitude chapter, about how to build your fortitude muscle. And let's say you're going through one of those country song periods.

[00:21:24] I have one tool in there that talks about four lenses of resilience, and I won't go through them all here, but there are different ways that psychology teaches us, classic ways to deal with those. country song periods in your life. Just one example from one classic lens from psychology teaches you to remember the perspective lens, which is to say, a lot of times when we go through country song periods, we'll do it alone.

[00:21:48] We'll be in an echo chamber and we'll try to battle through thinking we have to do it all ourselves. And we'll forget that we all have resilience needs. And part of mental strength is remembering What, [00:22:00] where do you go to for perspective in those country song periods? Where do, what are your resilience needs?

[00:22:05] For example, Scott, like, when I go through those lulls in my life, I know that, I might call up one of my brothers or my sister to have a good laugh, because I handle adversity with laughter. Other people might say, I need to call a friend to just listen to me. Others might say, hey, my resilience needs are, I need to call someone to cry on their shoulder, I need to call someone that's wiser than me, and so on.

[00:22:26] So there's so many tools that you can put into place. You just have to, and they're in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader. But it starts with self awareness. And I guess, just being willing to be vulnerable and admit that I'm not here to go through this period alone. I can draw on resources around me.

[00:22:44] Scott Maderer: Yeah. What, one of the traps that I see people falling into at times, and I think it connects to what you're talking about in a way is what I call falling into the P's, which is it's in the letter P because it's when you start viewing events and [00:23:00] you start making them personal. pervasive and permanent.

[00:23:04] So you're viewing the situation and you're saying, it's about me, it's happening to me, pervasive. It always happens to me, it permanent. It will always happen to me, and it happens at all areas of my life. It's this kind of, we view the event through those lenses and it makes it, very easy to shift into.

[00:23:25] That victim mindset as opposed to, no, there's things I can do about this. Let me take some sort of action or activity.

[00:23:33] Scott Mautz: That's right. And the absolutism can even sneak into our language. Can it Scott? We start to believe things like, Hey, look, I'm never going to get that job because things like that don't happen to people like me, I am.

[00:23:45] Dot. Things like this always happen to people like me dot. And we, and those things become absolutisms and part of mental strength is even being wary of the language that you say to yourself. I have a lot of those examples in the Mentally Strong Leader, all the way down to the point [00:24:00] that I even talk about this thing called the Sapir Whorf hypothesis, which is a kind of proven science, Scott, that says that the words that we use can actually affect The outcome and the way we see things in the world, what we literally utter out loud.

[00:24:13] So you can look at a challenge and say, a country song moment in your life. And you could say, this is devastating and say it out loud. And it actually changes the way you view that thing. Or you could say, wow, this is going to be a challenge, which is a little bit more positive. And so this absolutism that seeks in can come all the way through to the very words we choose to speak out loud.

[00:24:36] Scott Maderer: And of course those words that sometimes we speak. I did an experiment once to your thing of, I was in a room about 500 very successful entrepreneurs in the room, all of these were business owners, all of them, from the outside looking in, I don't think anyone would have argued that they were successful.

[00:24:53] And I asked the question, how many of you have some form of internal voice, whether it's spoken, whether it's pictures, whether it's [00:25:00] whatever, you have that voice inside your head that kind of talks to you. Of course, everybody's hand went up and I said, great. Now, how many of you is that voice nice to you?

[00:25:08] And every hand went down,

[00:25:09] Scott Mautz: you

[00:25:10] Scott Maderer: know, and it's and yet here's this group of people that by any measure. Yeah. We're doing well, and yet the voice that's in their head sometimes is me, it's saying all those things that are negative. Is that part of

[00:25:22] Scott Mautz: this as well? That it absolutely is. And I, I always talk, I always tell people that, Hey, look, to your point, Scott confidence is not the absence of doubt in the absence of an inner voice.

[00:25:35] Confidence is the ability to manage your relationship with that doubt in that inner voice that you have. And, of the thousands of people that Scott, that I have interviewed for the Mentally Strong Leader, I can tell you that even the most confident leaders that I met out of that bunch, none of them would say to me, I never see doubt.

[00:25:53] I never had that inner voice. They've all learned how to interact with it. And I, I have plenty of tools in the Mentally Strong Leader to help you to do that, [00:26:00] but you're a hundred percent right. We all have that voice. I even, I've even named mine. I call mine, Vulgar. It's a, and I, it most happens for me when I compare, I catch myself comparing to other people and I call it the comparison drag and then I go through a process and I talk about this in the book where, I just remind myself that look, when you compare to others, all it does is shrink you.

[00:26:20] It makes you feel, So I just, remind myself that, when the dragon appears, I need to make it go away. I need to remember that comparing to other people makes me shrink and makes me doubt who I am. Yeah, the, what you're talking about is real in all of us.

[00:26:34] Scott Maderer: My mine is named Harry is my internal voice.

[00:26:38] And he's actually a purple platypus wearing a party hat. Give him a funny hat. I made him funny so that when he shows up, I just got to laugh at him and go, okay, there you are again. I got you, whatever it is. I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there and ask you those, is there anything else about the work that you do or the mentally strong reader, the [00:27:00] leader that you think is really important for the listener to hear?

[00:27:02] Scott Mautz: Yeah, just a couple of things that I really want to make sure the leader understands that, the most important step to the journey of becoming mentally stronger is, yes, of course, I, I really believe in the work I've done in the book, the mentally strong leader. Of course, I want people to get that to begin the journey, but I want to point out something in that book in rate.

[00:27:18] Up front in the second chapter, after I explained what mental strength is, why it matters, why I believe it's the leadership superpower of our times, the reader can take a mental strength self assessment developed with a data scientist or two, actually, and it boils down to 50 questions. That you can take.

[00:27:38] It only takes you about 15 minutes and all I'm asking for is 15 minutes of the reader's time to be honest, vulnerable, introspective, and take these questions. Proven with data science to link to determinations of mental strength. And here's what happens when you do that, when you do it, Scott, and I've heard back how powerful this is for people in eye opening, you get a overall mental [00:28:00] strength.

[00:28:00] score. And you'll find out which tier you land in. There's four different tiers. And this isn't a contest. Landing in any one tier above other doesn't make you a better person. It just tells you where you are in your journey. So you figure out which tier of mental strength you fall into. And then it also gives you.

[00:28:15] A score for each mental muscle, for your fortitude, boldness, confidence, decision making, goal focus, and your messaging, your ability to stay positive minded and engaged in front of the troops. And you get a score for each one of these. So what happens is, you have the ability to create your own tailored mental strength training program to level up the muscles that you want.

[00:28:38] Which you can do with, the only other point I wanted to make here was, you can do with, The habit building tools that are baked into the book The Mentally Strong Leader, right? We can't, if becoming mentally strong leader is hard, Then you need to build the habits to help you do it. Habits are repetitions, which you can repeat by systems and frameworks that you build into your [00:29:00] life.

[00:29:00] And that's what each one of the 50 plus tools in the Mentally Strong Leader represents. They're systems or frameworks to help you figure out how to create habits, to become mentally stronger in the ways that you need to, including the first small step that you need to take to get started, including what you need to do in moments of weakness.

[00:29:17] When you feel. You're self breaking down on fortitude or confidence or boldness and, so I think it's that combination of the mental strength, self assessment and the habit building tools that are in the book, the mentally strong leader. They're going to make a real difference.

[00:29:31] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. So my brand is inspired stewardship.

[00:29:35] And I run things through that lens of stewardship. And then, and yet I've discovered that's a word like leadership and probably sounds like mentally strong even that, it means different things to different people. So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:29:50] Scott Mautz: Yeah, for me I think it's, caring for something enough that you're willing to personally invest in it. And that means prioritizing [00:30:00] it over other things, that means investing in it when it isn't convenient to do that means investing in it when it may even be to your short term detriment.

[00:30:08] But you care enough about it to carry the banner as a champion, and to and, To really take the time and the investment it takes personally to advance that cause or that thing that's important to you. That, to me, is the essence of stewardship and how I use it as a really important tool in my life.

[00:30:28] And frankly, one of the reasons I was so interested in talking, coming onto your show, because I, I believe it's such a powerful tool in our lives.

[00:30:36] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a minute that I could invent this magic machine, and with this machine, I could pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future, maybe 150, maybe 250 years.

[00:30:53] And through the power of this machine, you were able to look back and see your entire life. Let's see all of the connections, all of the [00:31:00] ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind. What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

[00:31:05] Scott Mautz: Scott, I can probably boil it down to a sentence or two and it's the same driving thought that led me to leave corporate to begin with.

[00:31:13] A lot of people ask if I may share so, humbly I was on a really nice trajectory at Procter Gamble, and some people were like, wow you're leaving when you're, you're this high in the organization and all the Ceiling. You still have left and why, how did you make the.

[00:31:25] Decision to make that leap that had to be really hard to go out and be an entrepreneur and to be a thought leader and it always boils down to one thing to answer your question, Scott, in the future, I hope I can look back on my life and say, did I broaden my platform for making a difference in people's lives and use that platform as effectively as I could have.

[00:31:49] To simply help people become better versions of themselves in whatever ways that were important to them and mattered to them. And I know that's probably oversimplified. It [00:32:00] might even be cliche. I don't know, Scott. But I know that was the same question I asked myself when I was going to leave corporate.

[00:32:05] I simply asked myself, am I going to make more of a difference In helping people become even better versions of themselves by staying in corporate and running organizations of 500 people, a thousand people, whatever it was in the future, or leaving now to do this and taking the chance to broaden my platform, tenfold and increase it globally.

[00:32:28] And and that's how I view it. That's the impact I hope I've had when all said done.

[00:32:33] Scott Maderer: Awesome. So what's on the roadmap? What's coming next as you continue on this journey?

[00:32:39] Scott Mautz: Yeah. With there's a long tail on podcasts, so who knows when everybody's going to listen to this, I'm talking to you now from a point where the mentally strong leader has just come out and it's off to a roaring start.

[00:32:52] And I believe it's because, not because of the author, Scott, I believe it's because of the topic and the importance of its time and I really do believe it's going to be the [00:33:00] next ten layers above emotional intelligence that we need to embrace. Next for me is really trying to help the world get exposed to the work I've done on mental strength and why I believe it is the leadership superpower of today and how to help them get there.

[00:33:16] So you're going to see me focusing an awful lot on that for the next few years.

[00:33:20] Scott Maderer: Can find out more about Scott Mautz over at his site, scottmautz. com. Of course, I'll have a link to that so you can find it in the show notes as well. Scott, is there anything else you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:33:33] Scott Mautz: Yeah, if you I also put together a gift for them. That if you go to scottmautz.

[00:33:37] com slash Mentally strong gift. You can download a free 60 page PDF that includes the mental strength self assessment I was talking about earlier, plus questions and prompts to help you get the most out of the book, The Mentally Strong Leader. So you can find that at scottmouths. com slash mentallystronggift.

[00:33:58] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. That's so [00:34:00] nice. And I'll make sure I put a link to that over in the show notes as well. For anybody that's maybe driving right now and can't capture that. You can always come back to this episode show notes and find that and access that free gift there. Thanks so much for being here today.

[00:34:13] Scott Mautz: Thanks so much, Scott, for inspiring stewardship, all around the world, I really appreciate it.

[00:34:17] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor We'd Go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:34:40] com slash iTunes rate, all one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. [00:35:00] Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures develop your influence and impact the world.