Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

In this episode of Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business, we’re talking The Mentally Strong Leader with Scott Mautz. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and your other favorite podcast spots – follow and leave a 5-star review!

• Episode Summary & Player
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• Marketing Smarts Summary
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Classics: The Mentally Strong Leader with Keynote Speaker Scott Mautz

The best leaders are mentally strong. How do they get that way? Our guest, Scott Mautz, believes there are 6 mental muscles that equate to mental strength. And we have to keep working out those muscles – just like we do physical muscles at the gym. Scott is a Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, and passionate expert on mental strength, peak performance, change, employee engagement, and leadership. His latest book, The Mentally Strong Leader, explores why mental strength is THE leadership superpower of our times. This episode covers everything from mental strength to leadership. Here’s a small sample of what you will hear in this episode:

• What is mental strength?
• How does self-regulation work?
• What are the 6 Mental Muscles?
• How do you build habits?
• What is the secret sauce of being successful?

Reach out to us at: ForthRight-People.com.

Check out the episode, show notes, and transcript below:

Show Notes

• Classics: The Mentally Strong Leader with Keynote Speaker Scott Mautz
  • [0:00] Welcome to Strategic Counsel
  • [0:25] Anne Candido, April Martini
  • [0:32] Connect with Scott on LinkedIn and check out his book, The Mentally Strong Leader
  • [1:48] What is his background?
  • [2:48] What is mental strength?
  • [5:15] How does self-regulation work?
  • [6:08] Self-Awareness
  • [7:02] What are the 6 Mental Muscles?
  • [10:18] What are the most important mental muscles?
  • [11:38] Impostor Syndrome
  • [12:04] How do you build habits?
  • [12:45] Atomic Habits by James Clear
  • [15:32] P&G (Procter & Gamble)
  • [16:04] What is the secret sauce of being successful?
  • [19:05] Why do some people with strong mental muscles do well and some don’t?
  • [22:10] How do you know the tension you’re feeling as a leader is positive?
  • [25:04] What are some examples of mental muscles in action?
  • [29:04] Self-Acceptance
  • [30:24] Social Media
  • [32:53] How do you know you’re not overdoing mental strength?
  • [35:32] Brené Brown
  • [37:42] How should you assess risks?
  • [38:58] How do April & Anne assess risks?
  • [44:08] How does risk play into The Mentally Strong Leader?
  • [44:54] Have Anne & April ever been to a casino?
  • [45:52] What casino game do people stand around and watch?
  • [47:12] Google
  • Quick-Fire Questions
  • [49:59] What is Scott’s favorite book he’s reading right now?
  • [50:28] What’s his favorite band or concert he’s been to?
  • [50:58] What are 5 things he’d take to a deserted island?
  • [52:05] Connect with Scott on LinkedIn and check out his book, The Mentally Strong Leader
  • [53:19] Make sure to follow Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast spot and leave us a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts
  • [53:24] Learn more at ForthRight-People.com and connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn
  • [53:30] Shop our Virtual Consultancy

What is Strategic Counsel?

Welcome back to Strategic Counsel by ForthRight Business! Looking for Marketing Smarts? You’re in the right place. After almost 4 years of helping to make you savvier marketers, we decided to broaden this podcast to include more business-oriented topics that will make you savvier business leaders.

Thanks for listening Strategic Counsel. Get in touch here to become more strategic. 

Transcript

Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.

00:01

Welcome to the Strategic Counsel by Forthright Business podcast.  If you’re looking for honest, direct and unconventional conversations on how to successfully lead  and operate in business,  you are in the right place.  In our discussions, we push on the status quo and traditional modes of thinking  to reveal a fresh perspective.  This unlocks opportunity for you, your team  and your business. Now let’s get to it.  Welcome to the Strategic Counsel podcast.

 

00:31

I am Anne Candido. And I am April Martini.  And as we often do, and you know by now, we’re bringing you a previously recorded Classics episode. Today, we are talking leadership again and revisiting the mentally strong leader with our friend,  Scott Mautz. As many of you know, Scott has been a big supporter of ForthRight People in our leadership development over the years.  And we all agree that the best leaders are mentally strong leaders.

 

00:57

Scott believes that there are six muscles that equate to mental strength. So join us for this episode and pick up a copy of Scott’s latest book,  The Mentally Strong Leader, to further explore why mental strength is the leadership superpower of our times. And with that, let’s get to it. Yeah, and it’s interesting because we’ve all experienced good leaders  and not so good ones. Yes, we have. Right. And we’ll ask Scott in a second which one he thinks he falls into.

 

01:27

Unless it’s how we describe good leaders, we’ll say they are or were brilliant or they cared about their people or they were inspirational or motivational. But the common thread here is that the really good ones all exhibit certain mental attributes that allow them to be brilliant, empathetic, inspirational, motivational. And what’s more, these are actually muscles which we’re to talk about, which can be strengthened and not necessarily something that you have to be born with. Yep, exactly.

 

01:54

And for those of you counting, yes, this is Scott’s second time on this podcast. And as long as he continues to publish game-changing books and being our coach, you’ll probably hear from him again. That’s right. All right. So Scott, with that intro, please introduce yourself to the audience. Right on. I can’t wait to meet this cool guy you’re describing. By the way, you should call your show. I’ve decided, I’ve come to a big conclusion. Don’t call your show marketing smart. You should call it marketing smarter. Cause every time I listen to it, I feel like I got smarter.

 

02:23

After listening to your show and any marketer who doesn’t do that, then they could go listen to marketing dumb as far as I’m concerned. Or marketing getting dumber. Yeah. I really am marketing  getting dumber, which by the way, some would argue it is getting dumber.  But I really do enjoy your guys’ show, not just because we have a connection from way back, but you guys are doing really, really good work and I really enjoy it. Awesome. Thanks, Scott.

 

02:53

And yes, by way of introduction, so yeah, it’s me. You already introduced who I am. I’m an author and ex-PNG-er and all that stuff. I’m a mental strength expert and I’m just glad to be here  chatting with you folks today.  Awesome. So with that, let’s get into the Mentally Strong Leader with Scott Mautz.

 

03:10

So  we have, and we’ve discussed your new book, right? But for benefit of the audience, let’s just start out with what exactly is mental strength? You just said you’re an expert in it.  So talk to us about that and then why write a book about it. Mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviors productively. Even in adversity, you can argue, you know, especially in times of adversity,  as I like to shorthand it, you guys may have heard me shorthand it this way before. It’s how we manage  internally.

 

03:40

so that we can lead better externally. And get ready for this, April and Annie, are you ready for this? Here’s something you guys  already know, all your listeners already know, that if you want to succeed at work and life, well, yeah, duh, you have to be able to self-regulate your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. But can I let you in on a secret? It’s really frigging hard to do that.  It’s  really hard to do that. It’s what puts the human

 

04:09

in human beings. Self-regulating is  really hard to do. And it’s why I was so passionate about putting a book together, a guide that can really help people to understand, like you guys said up front, that mental strength is not a fixed quantity. You really can improve it. And you can do it with the right set of tools in your hands. So I feel pretty strongly about uh doing that. And that’s why I’m here today talking to you. Well, it’s interesting that you say, Scott, that we all believe

 

04:39

that self-regulation is important. But if you saw people  and you kind of took a little bit of a landscape assessment about how people behave, you wouldn’t think that by necessarily watching how people act and behave in the workplace, frankly.

 

04:59

I’m making a very generalization, but everybody knows what I’m talking about in their own personal landscape assessment. Yeah, I’m going through all the examples in my brain right now. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And then, and on top of that, we have this other, call it mantra of being able to bring your quote unquote, whole self to work, right? Being able to act through your own sense of values and sensibilities and, being able to just say how you want to say things when you want to say them and be appreciated for all of that. So

 

05:28

How is this different than that style or that behavior? Mental strength, isn’t minimizing your emotions at all. It’s just really managing your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors and getting them to show up in the way that you want to. what you’re talking about is pretty common. It’s people, mental strength has a lot to do with self-awareness.

 

05:50

And you’re talking about people who aren’t necessarily self-aware at all. That is right. They’re showing up in a way that is destructive to themselves and to others around them. And the only self-regulation they do is, how can I continue my agenda in ways that things are going to work out for me and for my own interests? So for sure, while we may, as a human race, understand that you need to self-regulate to succeed, that doesn’t mean we all have the self-awareness to even know that we’re self-regulating. We may think we are.

 

06:20

And in truth, we really aren’t. Which is, know, we’ll get into talking about the six muscles. It’s really helpful to at least understand what the six mental muscles are that equate to mental strength. So you could start with that as a place of self-awareness. We have all met people like that, haven’t we? I mean, how many do you have in your life that could use a heavy dose of self-awareness in their life? Oh, I remember April that all the time. Oh, yeah.

 

06:43

I don’t have any. As you know, Scott, it’s one of my greatest weaknesses. No self-awareness. I don’t think I believe that for a minute, but that’s fine. We can let the listener believe that. That’s good. That’s all good. All right. So you mentioned the six mental muscles, and I think the point is really well taken of the tie to self-awareness here because

 

07:07

We joke about it, right? But I’ve met what I said when Ann started down that path, I’m reliving all the bad leaders that I had in my career and all of those behaviors. And it’s like,  they get so far out in front of themselves that it’s like, they can’t help it. And they just keep going and going. So to the point of this podcast and giving people tools, talk through the six mental,  oh my gosh, say that three times fast, the six mental muscles  that make up mental strength. And how do you figure out how and when to use them?

 

07:37

Yeah, I’ll just quickly outline the mental muscles and we’ll talk in a little bit about, you know, how I came to the conclusion that that’s the definition of mental strength.  Mental strength,  like I said, I’ll get into the research, but has proven itself to be built around six core mental muscles that we can choose to exercise and to build in. Those mental muscles are fortitude, confidence, boldness, decision making, which is both decisiveness and making a good quality decision.

 

08:05

goal focus, the ability to stay focused on your goals and keep other people focused on those goals, as well as what I call messaging. The ability to stay positive minded in the face of negativity and to stay engaged in the communications that you’re giving to others such that you’re sending a good message to the troops. So it’s these six mental muscles that equate to mental strength and you can determine which mental muscles that you have to work on by taking

 

08:33

the mental strength self-assessment that’s in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader. And it’s pretty cool, know, because honestly sometimes April and then self-assessments can induce an eye roll. Like, oh yeah, okay, I’m gonna take these and, you know, are they really statistically valid? So I mean, I put an awful lot of work in uh bringing uh even a data scientist on board to help me develop these 50 question questionnaire. It only takes you about 15 minutes, honestly, of introspective quiet.

 

09:01

Unless if your kids are running around screaming in here, then it’s going to double the time. We all know that, like it does anything. But you take 15 minutes, and the assessment gives you an overall mental strength score. And it tells you which tier that you might fall in with each one of those. And it also gives you a score for each one of your mental muscles that are contained within an assessment that I was talking about, fortitude, confidence, boldness, et cetera. And the good news here is, you know,

 

09:31

The opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We are all born with a baseline of mental strength that we can build from. You just have to know where to start and which muscles to work with.  If you guys were going to go to the gym, April and Ann, and you  you wouldn’t go to the gym and work every muscle in your body for 19 hours straight. You’d have, I don’t know, a leg day. Then you’d have an arm day and a back day or whatever it is you want to work on.

 

10:00

you would break it down and develop your own strength training program. That’s this assessment allows you to do. It allows you to see your overall mental strength and that which, which mental muscles do you really need and or want to level up so you could design your own customized mental strength training program that’s uniquely right for you. So you could build mental strength in the way that’s right for you, not just according to the masses and what we should think we should be mentally stronger at, right?

 

10:28

Does that make sense? I encourage you guys to try  the test. It’s pretty powerful. Absolutely. And I think that’s always a really good way to bring that self-awareness that you were talking about. So at least gives you a place to start, right? So  my question is,  is there one particular one that you see that people tend to over-index in and ones that tend to be kind of ones people struggle in? And is it different for men and women? It is. Although maybe the…

 

10:57

The difference may not be quite as pronounced as you think on men versus women, but overall,  I guess, I don’t know if this is good news or just news or it’s just a fact, it’s just data. We do see a pretty even distribution across all of the different muscles for sure. There’s a couple of caveats I have to give to this. When you talk definitionally about mental strength, the first thing that pops to people’s head is fortitude. Oh, mental strength, it must be being mentally tough, it must be resilient, it must be fortitude.

 

11:26

And that is certainly a big part of it. So when you ask people to list, what do you think mental strength consists of, we see in our research invariably fortitude is usually the first one that’s listed because it’s the one that’s the most common sense. Now, is it the one that people have to disproportionately work on? Not necessarily. The one that we see more often than not is probably confidence. And yes, we see it disproportionately so in women versus men. That’s probably  zero surprise at all.

 

11:55

And within the context of that, and I could talk about this more later, we also see the phenomenon, if you want to call that, of impostor syndrome, which is an element of a lack of confidence appearing even more in women than it does  with men.  So I can go into the confidence building muscle  in a bit. yeah, so that’s what we see. Confidence tends to burst. Fortitude is the one that you see most often associated with male strength.  Got it. All right, so you’ve explained that building mental muscles relies on habit building science,

 

12:25

You’ve hinted at the science a little bit throughout the conversation so far. So talk to us about how people build habits and why it’s key to enhancing  your own mental muscles, whatever one or ones you want to be working on. Yeah. So let me, let me just kind of check the core context and premise of my book. Would you guys agree with this? Yeah. Okay. You understand what mental strength is. Can we all agree? It ain’t easy to self-regulate. Your emotions, or behaviors. think I don’t know that there’s a human being alive.

 

12:54

that would say, no, no, no, I could do it all the time, it’s easy. It’s hard. So we need help. And the help that I wanted to build into the Mentally Strong Leader takes the form of habits. And I have been studying habit-building science forever. I was so upset, in a good way, when James Clear published Atomic Habits, which has sold like more copies than the Bible, because I was working on a similar book years and years and years ago, and he beat me to the punch. But I’ve been studying habit-building science for a long time. What I could tell you is that, and I think you know this,

 

13:24

A habit is that it’s what? It’s repetitions,  right? How about do you think? How do you get repetitions? Well, you get it through systems and frameworks. And when you don’t have systems and frameworks, guess what? You usually don’t repeat that behavior and therefore it doesn’t become a habit. So the first kind of, and I’ll cover really quickly, three  rules of habit, building a habit. First, you gotta get those reps in, man. You gotta build the systems.

 

13:52

and their frameworks to allow you to do that. So each of the tools in the book, the Mentally Strong Leader, there’s over 50 of them to help you build whatever mental strength element is right for you. There’s over 50 of them that are designed as systems and frameworks, specifically to help you get reps in. And I’ll give you an example of those in a little bit. Second principle habit-building science built in is I have for every habit and tool in the book, over 50 of them, I have a section called Your First Small Step.

 

14:22

will help you figure out like just where do you get started? We often don’t form habits because we don’t ever take the first step to do it.  I mentioned in the book something called the Zygernak effect, which is simply it’s based after researcher Bluma Zygernak who identified you get ready for this. You are much more likely to complete a task and actually form a habit or a repetition simply

 

14:46

by starting the task.  Earth breaking insight, your earth shattering insight, live brought to you here at Marketing Smart. Get started and you’ll be more likely to form that habit. So you gotta know what the first small step is. And the third principle of habit building I like to build in is what do you do in moments of weakness? Every single habit in the book, The Mentally Strong Leader, has a section said in moments of weakness, when you start to break down, when you feel your confidence faltering, when you feel that you don’t feel so bold anymore.

 

15:16

When you can feel your resistance wearing down and your focus straying on your goals, etc. What do you do in those moments? And you need that little bit of help. When you put these three things into a combination, systems and frameworks, the first small step to take, what do you do in times of weakness? You are going to be far more likely to build the habits that will actually lead to becoming mentally stronger. It’s how you train your brain for achievement because mental strength is disproportionately linked to achievement.

 

15:44

and the habits and the systems are how you train your brain for that.  was just having that thought in my head. So if I was going to go through all of those elements and I was going to take myself back to my P &G self,  would say I probably now maybe I should take the assessment and get real self-aware.  But I would say just kind of like, you know, doing a self scan of that, I would think I checked pretty well in a lot of those things. But

 

16:10

may not necessarily have achieved the level of success that I wanted to. And you mentioned the self-regulating part. And so  is that having to do with how to actually then put it all together?  And I’m not trying to lead you into an answer here, Scott, so you can tell me, know, that’s a different, let me take a different angle on it. But it just seems to me like there’s like, you’re not necessarily saying if you do all these things, all of a sudden you’re going to be successful, right? There’s got to be something else that allows you to like,

 

16:39

be able to manifest these in the way that allows you to get that achievement. So  what is it? What is that other secret sauce piece? think,  believe it or not, and you can tell me if this surprises you or not, at least what I’ve seen in my research is it comes together when you have tension in your life and a chance to put those things into place. Because you have to remember self-regulation, know, these mental muscles, they’re not randomly picked. They’re assigned to mental strength because they require self-regulation.

 

17:10

And self-regulation implies that there’s tension involved. So the cocktail in the mixture is,  do you have enough tension? Do you have enough  reason to put them all together to be able to succeed? And I’ll give you an example.  A pretty telling piece of data that  kind of led me to actually believe I have to write this book is, I have asked over 3,000 executives  multiple times, one single question.

 

17:37

thinking of the highest achieving organizations you’ve ever been a part of that overcame the most obstacles, right? There’s the environment we’re talking about that overcame the most obstacles. Describe that leader. What were the attributes of that key leader? Every time I’ve run this study, between 90 to 91 % of the respondents describe the same kind of leader, the same six mental muscles that I’m talking about,  which they may not have used the term mental strength. Some of them did.

 

18:07

But when, even when I said, oh wow, that’s interesting. So they were very bold, they very confident, they had incredible resilience. Was it a mental strength thing? Is that how you would describe it? You could see the lights turning on. And almost to the person, when I would offer it as a prompt if they hadn’t already offered it, they would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it. So  mentally strong leader,  I’m starting to learn is becoming that descriptor that we can use in today’s work world that describes the very best leaders at the,

 

18:35

very best time in the cocktail of, to your point, they were able to exude those and strengthen those muscles and show those muscles in an environment where you needed those muscles and that self-regulation to thrive. In an environment where there was perhaps adversity, where there was tension, where you as a leader felt like I really need to show up as the best, mentally strong version of myself to help us get through this. So it’s often when we see that cocktail of things happening that achievement

 

19:03

truly does happen and why it seems to be mental strength seems to be so strongly correlated now with achievement, right? If that makes sense to you. Well, I mean, that totally makes sense. mean, there was no adversity at P &G. So that’s probably why I didn’t realize.  You dominated it all the way through. That’s right. It so freaking easy.  No, I think that makes a ton of sense. I think the thing that I’m playing with with my brain then is

 

19:33

why do some people who have these traits do well and some people who have these traits don’t do as well? Why is there still,  or maybe you’re saying, no, anybody who exhibits these traits automatically kind of like accelerates to that level of  a strong leader achieving to that upper level echelon of leadership, but it feels like there’s still maybe levels within the level, if that makes sense. Does that question make sense? There are, yes, it’s a fantastic question.

 

20:01

It’s a level within a level and a consistency factor. And ah I often say this, I often say this in keynotes about this topic, but if you stop going to the gym, guess what happens to your muscles? Deatrophy.  Deatrophy. And so what we’ve seen is even though leaders can express certain elements and spike, and by the way, there’s a couple of things going on. There’s a consistency factor. They have to keep striking those muscles over time. That’s how this works. That’s how strength works. Number one, has to be consistency. Two,

 

20:29

There’s levels within the levels for sure. So we see that some of the highest achieving leaders of all score disproportionately high for every single muscle and they maintain that over time. Then three, there’s also a self-misattribution factor where the leader may think they score very high in those  mental attributes. But when you ask the employees, they would disagree. And we see this happen  all the time.

 

20:57

the self-awareness gap that can exist. And I’m not implying, that you thought you were actually stronger than I thought. set myself up for that one, I? I’m not implying that at all. this is why, when I conduct this research, I conduct it not only amongst the leaders, but amongst the employees to rate the leaders. And then I look for discrepancies. And the ones that line up that are truly achieving, it’s 100 % of the time.

 

21:27

the leaders that are accurate in their reflection of themselves, not just based on what they think, but what their employees think as well.  So there’s a misattribution factor involved here as well. So it’s that combination  of all of those things. You have to be consistent over time with it. There is tears within the tears. You have to understand you can always improve, even if you think you’re already mentally strong, then you have to be honest with yourself and self-aware enough. Are you really assessing yourself accurately?

 

21:54

Well, and I mean, my brain was also over here working  and where I got kind of stuck. it’s maybe an adjacent question or little bit of chicken in the egg. But  so I’m stuck on the tension piece. And what I mean by being stuck there  is totally get the idea that you have to continue to do it right in order like to the muscles atrophying, right? Totally buy in and believe that.  But when oh

 

22:22

We’re talking to our clients a lot of times we get into this whole like, what’s the right amount? What’s too much  and making sure that we’re setting our, we’re putting ourselves in situations to do exactly what we’re talking about here, but not so often that we’re burning out or we’re losing perspective or those types of things. So can you give some insight there into like,  how does the leader know like I’m pushing myself or being pushed in a positive way versus like, holy cow, it’s coming at me so fast every day that I could fall over.

 

22:52

You know what, you wanna know how? I could sum it up in four words with a tattoo that a client of mine actually had put on their hand, believe it or not. ah It  has to do with mental strength. And those four words were rise to the occasion. And what we see in our research is the mentally strongest people, when I say tension, it’s not that 100 % of the time you act like you’re in crisis mode.  Because that would be the opposite of it. You’d wear yourself out.

 

23:18

Mental strength has a lot to do with understanding when do I need the rise of the occasion? When do I need to roll model resilience from my organization? When do I need to roll model resilience from my family and step up and lead the way here? When do I need to  really elevate my level of confidence and stop listening to the self-doubt that creeps into my head? When do I really need to stay focused on my work, do deep work so that I can accomplish my goals, etc., etc., etc.? So there’s also lot of knowing

 

23:46

when it’s time to rise to the occasion  and  use those muscles disproportionately relative to just being at ease and relaxed. Does that make sense, April? Yeah. Excellent question. Good questions, ladies.

 

23:59

As always, we kind of do this for a living. We’re getting marketing smarter here as we go. like it. We’re not marketing dumber yet. Good self-awareness check on that. Good self-awareness check on that. right. I have to work on my fortitude, I think. Am I getting it? Yeah, I think you’re getting it. think you’re good. I think you’re We’re going to ask April to take the quiz about you after you take the assessment. That’s what I heard. That is what I heard. We should totally do that. That’s where I thought.

 

24:29

uh I  do it. It’s very, very powerful exercise if you find leaders that are willing to be that vulnerable and open to it. It’s a very powerful exercise. We should totally do that. We’ll have to do that over wine I was going to say I might need a drink.  That’s a three beer  thing right there. I’ll tell you.  The truth serum gets flowing out.  Exactly.

 

24:54

Well, not using ourselves as examples yet. I was actually going to ask if you could give us some examples of how people put some of these into practice and how it changed them and helped them to really exercise their mentally strong muscles. Yeah, sure. you’d asked before, OK, so is there one that disproportionately shows up? for sure, confidence does. By the way, that doesn’t surprise you, does it? Of all the tenets of mental that confidence would appear, you know, is it?

 

25:23

as the one that disproportionately shows up. And so, you I have a reader who recently sent a note out that found one of the tools in the Mellie Strong lid very powerful. I call it the  doubt continuum. It’s within the chapter about building your confidence muscle on it. It starts with a very important understanding, which is that confidence is not the absence of doubt. It is not. It’s  managing your relationship with doubt. Because we all have doubt to a certain extent and

 

25:53

I have talked to  so many people in interviewing for this book and I can tell you ladies, the most confident leaders that I met,  none of them would tell you, oh, doubt never appears. It’s always how they manage their relationship with doubt. And so if you think of  doubt on a continuum, where on  one end, it’s a danger zone because you can actually be  overconfident. You can blow through red lights and you can…

 

26:19

Assume everything in a vacuum and assume you don’t need any help in life and that’s on one side and on the other side of the spectrum of course is you know one of the ultimate forms of  Doubt which is you’re paralyzed by fear This client told me that one of the things that really struck her about the Mellie Strong leader was you know I kind of give a lot of  kind of Resolution to if you’re paralyzed by fear one of them simply being to remember that there’s really only three ways that you can fail When you quit when you don’t improve or when you never try?

 

26:50

or if you’re never invited on Marketing Smarts. To me, that would be a good choice. It would be the other one. It’s remembering this relationship with doubt and understanding that what you’re trying to do is neither be overconfident nor paralyzed by fear of failure. But be perfectly confident in that you have the right data, the right resources, the right balance, you have the right critics in your life to help you, give you impact, or you want to be embracing healthy doubt, which involves letting your…

 

27:18

that disquieting thoughts sit there, letting that doubt that you might have about whether or not you could lead that team quietly sit there and being okay with it and not letting it turn toxic and knowing, and this is really key, and as long as I’ve known you, I’ve known this to always be true about you. You’re very good at this. It’s being okay with not knowing everything and believing in your ability  to figure things out. That’s such small percentage of me.

 

27:46

Yeah, that’s it. 98 % of the things. Now I interrupted, but I thought the second part you said, yes, I permanently believe, yeah. Ability to figure things out, yeah. Just being able to figure things out. So being able to sit, to kind of sit in that. while we’re on the confidence meter here, I’ve also had people tell me, and I’m only strong leader, they have, I mean, I’ve had heartfelt letter, in one case, a heartfelt letter written to me already about a tool called the self-acceptance scale.

 

28:16

which is another element of confidence. And we were talking about this, that if you want to be fully confident, it starts by being accepting of yourself. And to be accepting of yourself, that requires the highest level of self-regulation we have as a human being. Because think of all the noise that comes into the system that makes you think you shouldn’t accept yourself. And so in The Mentally Strong Leader, I have this self-acceptance scale that…

 

28:44

I want your listeners to picture this scale. On the left side of the scale is self-acceptance. That’s what we’re gunning for. On the right side of the scale is the opposite of that, which is imposter syndrome, where your level of self-regulation is at its lowest, and you are literally convincing yourself that you shouldn’t accept yourself for who you are, what you’ve accomplished, what your worth is, what your skills are. And in  between, there’s all kinds of degradations of self-confidence. I’ll hit on some of them just really quickly.

 

29:14

Remembering again, you’re trying to stay on the left side of the scale, self-acceptance. But what happens is, life happens. That’s what happens. And degradations of confidence happen  one at a time,  slowly killing us with death by a thousand paper cuts. That first movement out from self-acceptance, that’s for degradation, is when we start to seek approval.  We start to chase approval.

 

29:41

instead of authenticity and slowly it starts to eat at our confidence. Another degradation out, I’ll just give you a few more examples, is when we start to compare to  Forgetting that the only comparison that truly matters is to who we were yesterday and whether or not we’re coming a better version of ourselves. And by the way, I’m not saying that comparing to others can’t be good.  I’m sure you guys compare to other podcasters and you think like, oh, I like what they do there. Let’s not do that. Let’s do this. Let’s not do that.

 

30:10

That’s good and that’s healthy. I’m talking about when you’re obsessed with comparison or it’s an irrelevant comparison. Which, to use an overused example, we do all the time in social media, right? We compare our blooper reels to everyone else’s highlight reels and it’s having a real impact on us. We assume their success, of which they’re only shown us a sliver of their life, right, is due to their brilliance and…

 

30:32

their amazing skill sets rather than their circumstances, rather than maybe they got lucky, rather than maybe they’re not showing us all the pain that happens outside of that slice of success they’re showing us in social media. So we can start to compare ourselves to others. On that scale, further degradations happen when we begin to just engage in negative inner chatter almost as a constant practice, constantly beating ourselves up. We could even evolve all the way over in the spectrum to the point where we believe

 

31:02

We’re not enough. And if I could, I’d like to say this to your listeners right now. If you’re listening, I want you to pull over,  put your engine in idle and listen to what I’m about to tell you. You are enough.

 

31:19

And you don’t have to take on everything by yourself. And I’m gonna repeat that. You are enough.

 

31:27

And you don’t have to take on everything by yourself. And degradation continues all the way to imposter syndrome. And in the Mentally Strong Leader, I talk about resolutions for each one of these problems. The big thing, the big takeaway here is to think the tool, the self-acceptance scale, it is so powerful when you could stop and either by yourself or even with a group to say, these are the ways that I let my confidence degrade over time.

 

31:56

and they get to different degrees of pain and they get to different degrees of a lack of self-regulation. If I can identify when I’m doing them, that awareness helps lift me up from that and stop those degradations of confidence from happening. You can tell I’m passionate about it. Let me shut up for a second to make sure this is all making sense to you.  Yeah, no, I mean, I think it makes a ton of sense and for all the reasons. The one question I think I have or the place where my mind kind of settled is,

 

32:26

So we talked about on one hand being confident and then we talked about, and we’ve talked several times about self-awareness. so  what about the, know, when do you know that you’re aware enough of what people are saying or inputting and those kinds of things and taking the right amount versus over indexing and then kind of heading into this bad place, if you will,  and making sure that you can check yourself in those moments  of,  well, that person said that, but I can let that.

 

32:55

leave that or that actually isn’t true  or that was in the context of this. Like, you know, what are the thoughts there? And let me just build on that question because my question was going to be somewhat similar  is that playing devil’s advocate for a second, other people’s opinions and other people’s perceptions do matter. Right. Oh, yeah. So if I was, you know, it’s like, well, yeah, I could be as mentally strong as possible and I could try to be authentic and I can try to  be all these things that you’re Scott, that your book is teaching me.

 

33:23

But  if my boss doesn’t think that I’m capable, my boss doesn’t think that I’m doing good work, no matter how mentally strong I am,  I’m not going to be able to deliver and I’m not gonna get the reading I need. I’m not gonna get the promotion I need or my image is gonna suffer if I fail or my reputation is gonna suffer if I fail. there are like real consequences to some of being at some areas of the spectrum. So to build on um April’s question about- you forget my name for a second?

 

33:53

You’re like, no, was like, why did I decide if I was going to say your name or not? Um, but, building on April’s question about like, how much do you take? It’s also like, how do you rectify this other side, which is it matters in a lot of cases, what other people think. Yeah, I think you’re 100 % right. And you know, there’s even a specific tool that I talk about in the Mally Strong Leader. Let’s, let’s follow that through. So I talk about, let’s use the, let’s use the purest of examples of, you know, when you get criticism in life, right?

 

34:22

So am I saying mental strength is just blowing it off? that what I’m saying? The criticism? Absolutely not. Couple of things to think about. And this one may or may not surprise you. I don’t know. But I would argue that first of all, you decide who gets to criticize you. Okay, your boss? Sure. Your boss’s boss? Yeah. Your spouse, your partner in life? Probably. Your children, to a certain extent.

 

34:49

Bob in accounting who doesn’t  like the way you show up in a meeting, he can pound salt. He doesn’t get  a vote.  So I’m not saying to start that  being mentally strong  is closing the world of people that can criticize you so much that you miss out on positive and useful feedback. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying start with intentionality of who actually makes the cut that you’re going to listen to.

 

35:17

Who’s actually in the arena, as  Brene Brown likes to say?  Who actually has that right to criticize you? And then if they do, like you said, and in the real world, we have bosses, when they say things, that matters. We have to do things about that. Mental strength, I’m not saying, is blowing that off. I think the next part is being really smart about finding the nugget of truth in what they’re saying. And staying confident is not  only hunting for nuggets that serve you well in the moment that make you feel better about yourself.

 

35:47

Confidence is just as much being willing to find that nugget of truth about you that you know that you have to work on, that you know that you have to act on, and not letting the emotions and the sting of criticism take over. It’s interesting,  neuroscience shows us that the part of the brain that registers social rejection is the same exact part that it registers physical pain. So when we get criticism, it could actually

 

36:16

physically feel like it stings. That’s what we’re up against here. So I’m not saying to block that impulse. You can and you should, part of mental strength is being willing to be open enough to find that nugget of truth that lies in what people are telling you, which I think is kind of the essence of what you’re getting at. Anne, that right? What you would hope people would take away? Yes, but I also think there’s some element  of what you were saying. Maybe  I didn’t internalize it the way that you attended it.

 

36:45

which is  if I’m going to be confident, I’m trying to be confident and I’m trying to play the spectrum of confidence versus doubt, my doubt puts me at risk,  right? So it puts,  using words from another prolific writer, Adam Grant, like the whole psychological safety of where I’m sitting puts me at risk. It puts my reputation at risk. It puts my credibility at risk. So if I’m trying to be confident in the face of doubt,

 

37:15

and maybe trying to lean in or  not trying to be a fate of failure. But when I do fail, I know there’s catastrophic consequences. How do I rectify where I should be playing on that spectrum in a way that feels good for me internally, but also is going to get me the external result that I’m craving? Yeah, I think we all have. I think we have internal monitors as well, I think, where you know

 

37:45

how far you should push something before it becomes a stupid risk that you’re taking in your life or at work.  Or  I think you have to monitor the other way as well where  I know I’m not pushing things hard enough. I know I’m not going to break through the clutter if I don’t work my way through this discomfort to a better result for myself. So you’re describing the beauty of being a human being in today’s world.  There is no easy answer to say  this is the exact moment

 

38:14

when I should push beyond my fears and say,  risks be damned,  or this is the exact moment when I know that I really need to kind of dial back or  either way. There’s no central truth to that other than sometimes you just have to listen to  your instincts and try to decide like, okay, I know what I’m feeling emotionally here is leading me this way, or it’s not leading me that way and kind of, know, as best as you can.

 

38:43

lean into it.  I would ask you too, how good have you become at discerning and figuring out when you should lean into a risk or not?  Where do you fall on that front? Well, it’s interesting you bring up instinct because that’s what I was thinking about. I found myself saying earlier today on a different conversation that as far as business is concerned, there aren’t very many situations given my years and like

 

39:11

breadth of experience where something is presented to me that I don’t feel confident that I’ve either seen it before or know the right first step to take  or feel confident that I can  go and figure it out based on all the things that I know. And I think a lot of that is a credit to both experience and intuition in pretty equal measure. Whereas earlier on in my career, I was given a lot of feedback  about

 

39:40

my approach  and bringing people along. And it’s just as important how you say it and those kinds of things. So, you know, making a little bit of a joke, but I think for the most part, your point is well taken in that if we  it’s all kind of a balancing act and we’re taking the inputs in at the same time that we’re using our experience and our instincts to do whatever we’re going to do as a result of that. And what do you think of that? I think that’s well said. Yeah, I would say I’m actually on the opposite. Well, yes.  And.

 

40:08

I’m on the opposite side of the spectrum in that I’m probably overconfident.  So,  I mean, I was making a little flippant joke when you were talking and I probably should have let you talk, but like, I don’t feel like I’m wrong a lot. And I feel like I’m really, really good at what I do,  but it makes me a little blind to being open to  feedback, being open to things that are maybe not in my purview, taking it all in. Cause I also like to move fast. I’m decision go, decision go.

 

40:39

April, on the other hand, is a processor, right? So I find a lot of value in having a processor as a partner who’s like, wait a second,  let’s think about this just for a whole hot sec. And I’m like, do we really have to? I’m like, why? And then she will say something. I’m like, oh  shit, that makes it better. And so it’s kind of like actually having a little bit of humbleness to be like, OK, slow down just a little bit for just a hot second, take some input, and then see if it makes it better.

 

41:06

I also will say  it’s hard to do that when you’re younger and you’re trying to be this hard charger. trying to show how good you are and you don’t want to accept that feedback. You just want to demonstrate your capability from the get-go. And this is what I’ll say. And this is to give Scott a ton of props because you’ve been my coach for a long time. It’s really, really, really, really important to have a coach.

 

41:28

not just a mentor who is like you can talk to and have lunch with every like couple of weeks, which is always nice to have a support group, which is what I call that, but a coach who’s actually looking at it and looking at you like you’re their project. their success resides in you being successful 1000%. And so that is I think

 

41:50

extremely important.  I get really disappointed, upset when people aren’t willing to invest in that, because I feel like it’s  a small investment for the potential that it unlocks. So  I love this conversation for that fact, because you can play on different sides. And I think what it demonstrates is like, there’s no good side necessarily, because it’s very circumstantial, it’s very moment in time. And I like what you said about flexing it and making sure that you’re being mindful about when you’re exercising those things, because

 

42:18

I mean, being overconfident, being high end on that spectrum isn’t always the best thing all the time either, right? Yeah, yeah, that’s right. look, different athletes need different developed muscles for different reasons.  And I’ll butcher this analogy, I’m sure. But  you wouldn’t tell a sprinter that they need to have a massive upper body.  They probably have to have incredibly large thighs to really.  So everybody, so OK, so Ann, you’re overconfident.

 

42:44

Great, as long as it’s not to a point of fault. That doesn’t mean you’re automatically at the pinnacle of mental strength. That means the confidence muscle, you have developed in certain ways. if that overconfidence runs away from you, that can be problematic if you have that in check. But that doesn’t mean there are other  muscles that you might have to develop. Even if you think they are developed, remember, going back to those levels within the level,  to be able to continue to be mentally strong. yeah, that’s why I love coming on this show. It’s always a really good discussion and debate.

 

43:14

I love it. Awesome. We could probably talk this all day, but I’ll ask one last question and then if you have another one, which I’m sure you will. Well, it depends what you ask. That’s true. question your question. So question. Yeah, exactly. Or build and say, and. The other thing that I don’t know, I think we touched around this, but when to take action kind of to what you were just saying, like racing ahead versus you talk, Scott, about like being paralyzed and in place of inactivity.

 

43:44

But there’s also this question of risk. And so to the  discussion we were just having about, you how do you feel about your abilities and those kinds of things? But also, I mean, there’s just  always different levels of risk, depending on  how impactful the decision is, or what could it do to the business, or all of those types of things. So how does risk play into  the mentally strong leader? And how is that something that you manage through these six muscles that we’ve talked about?

 

44:14

I think there’s a pretty important first starting point. I talk a lot about risk taking, obviously within the context of boldness, the boldness muscle in mentally strong leader, right? It makes a lot of sense. But I see organizations and individuals making a pretty common mistake. And to set this up, I’ll tell you a quick story. So let me ask you question first. Have either of you ever been to a casino before? Never.

 

44:40

Never. Oh, no, I’m sorry. I’m not talking about during the working day when you were at Procter & Gamble and you were supposed to be in that meeting. I mean, in general. was several of them at the casino. that. OK, yeah, that’s true. You killed two birds with one stone. had a the reason I asked that is I had a client. I won’t name the name of the company, but what I will say is they have heavy operations in Las Vegas casinos. And I was out. I was in Vegas for a leadership seminar. was doing for them a keynote in a workshop.

 

45:09

and they invited me out  for dinner the night before and they were telling me about a very, very interesting problem they were having. Again, I’m not going to tell you the name, but in this particular casino, they were having a throughput problem on the casino floor.  And what I mean by that is one of the games on the floor was creating a throughput problem in that the ratio of people standing around watching the game to the ones that were actually stepping up and spending their money on the game was not good.

 

45:36

such that it was just creating unproductive traffic flow for them. A whole bunch of people watching the game, no one’s spending the money, creating an overcrowded, unnecessarily overcrowded floor, and it was causing a real issue for them. What game, if you had to take a wild guess, do you think that game was that was causing this issue? Craps. Roulette. Well, you jump right on craps. You’re right. Why did you say that? Because her mom is a professional. Because my mom is a professional gambler.

 

46:04

Well, just because it’s too hard to understand how to play it. Well, so I uh actually and I, you know, we say this in jest, but I’ve spent my fair amount of time in casinos and actually I’m not much of a gambler to the point of risk averse and all that. But anyway, I jumped on it right away because I think there are people standing around for a variety of reasons at that table and it’s a bigger space. But like they’re either trying to learn or someone’s winning and everybody’s caught up in it and wants to watch.

 

46:33

And it just has a bigger presence and then the more people, just compounds, I feel like. There’s a lot of space around that table. There are elements to that and whispered the secret in between there. And would you repeat what you just said? They’re not playing because they don’t know how. They don’t know how. And if you’ve ever seen, so April, what you’re saying is 100 % true. The real core issue though is if you’ve never seen a craps table, go Google it now.

 

47:02

As I like to jokingly say, I play craps and I don’t know how to play craps.  I only remember after about three beers and I pipped a stick man to tell me where to bet.  For those of you that don’t know, craps is a game that it’s played on a table. It’s kind of a sunken table and you roll the dice. It’s a game of chance. You roll the dice and if the dice have certain outcome in certain cases,  you win or you lose. And if you look at the table, and like I said, if you haven’t seen one, Google it, it is intimidating.

 

47:28

There are all kinds of squares and rules and things that you look at you like, oh my god Yeah, I’m not gonna say I am so if you’ve ever heard the saying it comes from Vegas You’ve ever heard this thing, you know step up and roll the dice  That comes from the game of craps in Vegas and what they learned was people literally weren’t stepping up and taking a risk with their money Because they didn’t understand the rules of the game  and what we’ve seen in our research is back Meanwhile back at the office. Guess what if people don’t understand the rules of risk-taking?

 

47:58

they are going to be less likely to take the smart risks that you want them to. Perfect example, if you were a leader, imagine if you issued a simple one-page summary listing the rules of risk-taking. For example, a good risk looks like, dot, dot. A bad risk is, dot, dot, dot. Here’s what happens when you succeed with a risk. Here’s what happens when you fail with a risk. Here’s who needs to approve what level of risk, and so on, and so on, and so on.

 

48:23

And so in the Mentally Strong Leader, I have a list of questions, 20 questions you can use to help facilitate the discussion around what the rules of risk taking are. Because I have seen in my research repeatedly, when the leader can articulate those rules clearly or the subordinate asks for clarification of the rules, people are going to be far more likely to engage in that risk taking behavior.

 

48:47

I love that. I took you on a journey there. took you on journey there with a story and all. I don’t want to go to Vegas. just don’t think could take pain to Vegas. That would fix all their problems. Yes, that’s true. That woman’s worst. The three of us could go to Vegas and we’ll clean that place up and you know, oh no, you don’t like to gamble though April, so that’s right. Nevermind. You could sit at the bar. I didn’t say I don’t like a good time. just said I didn’t to gamble. There you go.

 

49:17

Fair enough. Welcome to gambling smarter with April and I’ll have to break Pam off for that one. That’s exactly right. That’s right. That’s right. Okay. So total departure before we let you bring us home and wrap us up and tell people where to find you. We like to do some quick fire questions. I don’t think we did these last time. So these are new to you. Right. And they likely have very little to do with what we just talked about. So.

 

49:45

I’m a listener so I kind of know what’s coming. Yeah, I know you do. Favorite book you’re reading right now other than your own or just recently read? Six of Crows by Lee Bardugo. It’s a young adult fantasy book. Really good. Yeah, very good. You probably didn’t expect that. I was going to say something, you know, like, oh, I don’t know. Good to great by Jim Collins or something like that. No.

 

50:11

I was totally expecting that. actually was too. I can’t lie.  Favorite band or concert you’ve been to?  I would have to say I’m a huge Mumford and Sons fan.  one.  the band, there’s my favorite band,  favorite concert. I saw Queen live out here in San Diego and that show was a lot of fun. Queen show. old Queen or new Queen?

 

50:37

I guess New Queen, you know, with Adam Lambert at the head. yeah, it just like last year. yeah, a lot of fun. Great show. Okay. And last one is five things you take to a desert island. don’t know if you’ve ever asked that one. Five things I take to desert. Number one, a portal that allows me to get to someplace other than the desert island. That’s cheating. So I don’t really think that that counts. Well, I would say I would take water. That’d be number one.

 

51:06

iPod so I could listen to music and help  pass the time for sure. I’d take a stack of uh books. uh I really like fantasy a lot, so I would take a stack of fantasy books and I would certainly do that.  Let’s see, and I’d take uh some snacks with me probably,  and  what else? A blueprint for how to build a vehicle that’ll get me out of the desert. How about that?

 

51:29

You really don’t want to be on a desert island. really want to be on a Ironically, he’s not bringing his wife. No doubt. No, no, no. She would have put me there. why would I? Why would I add insult to injury? Oh, shoot. On that note, this has been awesome. As all of you here, we have a lot of fun with Scott in addition to hopefully bringing lots of information.

 

51:59

and we’re super happy about your new book, The Mentally Strong Leader, but please cover anything we missed or anything I forgot to ask you about. Let people know where to find you. Just kind of wrap us up. Yeah, right on. You you can find me at scottmoutz.com and I always like to put together, you know, extra value for  you too, as you know, I try hard to do that. So one of the things I want to make available to your leaders, your leaders that are listening or just your human beings that are listening,  if you want to go to scottmoutz.com slash

 

52:28

Mentally Strong Gift,  can download for free a 60-page PDF that includes the Mental Strength Self-Assessment I was talking about earlier. Love it. And it includes some of the really best templates in the book. But also, prompts that,  I don’t know, like you guys, but I love prompt questions that help you to get the best out of a book. so, I included a lot of them in this  free 60-page PDF. So, again, if you go to scottmouse.com, mentally strong gift, you can download that. Awesome.

 

52:56

We appreciate that. All right. And with that, we encourage you to take at least one powerful insight you heard today and put it into practice because Strategic Counsel is only effective if you actually put it into action.  Did we spark something with this episode that you want to talk about further?  Reach out to us through our website, ForthRight-People.com.  We can help you customize what you have heard to move your business  and make sure to follow or subscribe to Strategic Counsel on your favorite podcast platform!