The Indispensable Attribute: Mental Strength in Leadership

Starting the conversation:

Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses helps you take a pointed look at how to develop your ability to lead your company. Professional and personal success come from fortitude. Scott Mautz, CEO at Profound Performance, shares what must-have leaders need today to be mentally strong, and the six muscles needed to achieve your biggest goals.

Mental strength is the next evolution of emotional intelligence. To begin this self-work, understanding where doubt and fear are stopping you will provide a clue to the catalyst you need to grow into the person needed to reach your goals. And, the journey you will take to develop your mental strength will include self-reflection, habit formation, and continuous learning. This makes up your fortitude — which is the cornerstone to guiding others.

In this program, you will discover how to manage your relationship with doubt; learn how to productively regulate yourself to lead better in your relationships personally and professionally; and hear about how to get started building habits to be disciplined, developing — and keeping — your muscles for being mentally strong. Jess Dewell talks with Scott Mautz, CEO at Profound Performance, about cultivating your mental strength.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Scott Mautz

What You Will Hear:

1:30 The tipping point in Scott Mautz’s life: need for more boldness.

• Courage to write a first book.
• Statement of who I am: I am _ because I say I am.
• Challenge: take time to do the real work to fill in the blank for this exercise.

8:03 Failure is only an event.

• Doubt is part of life, it’s how you manage it.
• There is a continuum of doubt.
• Fear is a reminder, and there is healthy doubt.
• Be pessimistic — get real — and then bring your belief in yourself to go get what you want.

12:30 Mental Strength is the next generation of Emotional Intelligence.

• Productively regulate yourself to lead in your work and life.
• There are six muscles in the Mentally Strong Leader Framework.
• Setbacks will continue, it is part of learning and finding the right opportunities.

20:40 When it gets hard, Scott keeps going with these tools.

• The Plus Sign Tool: create offsets for yourself.
• Do your own experiments focusing on one of the muscles to build mental strength.
• It is a choice of how to see yourself and others.

27:10 Integrate all the information from many sources.

• Assess yourself. Then create your own workout to build your mental strength.
• It takes discipline to continuously work on these habits and skills.
• Scott shares the result of his assessment. He was surprised the first time being low in self-confidence.
• Core values define who we are and help us accept ourselves as we learn, grow, and experience.

38:40 Bring your values to build your own muscles of mental strength.

• Let your values guide the way you engage.
• There is so much to lean into and learn from habit-building science.
• Routines help us keep our priorities a priority — and it still can be hard.

51:10 It is BOLD to cultivate and harness your own mental strength to lead successfully.

Resources

• The Mentally Strong Leader
• Neuroscience and the Three Brains of Leadership

Transcript

Jess Dewell 00:00
I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for stopping by. At the Bold Business podcast, we are normalizing important conversations. Yes, there are tips. Yes, there are ways to solve problems. More importantly, are going to be what do you need for yourself to be able to solve those problems and make the most of the education, the training and the programs that you are already using. This is a supplement to that it can sit on top of it, fuel your soul, fuel your mind, and most importantly, regardless of where you’re at on your journey, maybe you’re starting out, maybe you’re ready to scale, maybe you’re going through reinvention, the conversations we are having will help you at each of those stages. So hang around, see what’s going on, and I look forward to seeing you engaging with our videos. Okay, one of the funner conversations I’ve had lately, because we talk about all things life, related to business, related to work and building habits, is Scott Mauntz. Scott is the author of the mentally strong leader. He spent years collecting information, processing all of the data, formulating what that would look like, and then has put it together into a book that helps us understand the six leadership muscles necessary to succeed. And I’m not going to say today. It applies today. It’s going to apply in the future, the six muscles to succeed in life and in business. And here’s what’s the basis behind that. Change is happening faster than ever before, our pull and of information overload of family commitment of community commitment of our desires, for our own goals and the contribution that we want to have, it starts to feel like it’s competing against each other, and it doesn’t have to so with the six muscles of mental strength, We can do so much. So I enjoyed this conversation, and here are three pieces that you can take away right now, knowing that as you’re listening, they stood out to me as we were recording. The first is that doubt is constant. We may see it or not see it sometimes, maybe hardly ever. Doubt is there, and it’s not that we’re getting rid of doubt, it’s that we’re managing our relationship to the doubt that will always exist. The second thing is to productively self-regulate. This is important because that internal work is necessary to be able to lead externally, to be able to show up with encouragement and compassion, knowing that we can’t solve everybody else’s problem, and this will help us in our life and in our work. And the third thing that I want to seed the beginning of our conversation with as you’re just settling in with your tea or your coffee, is that, just like a habit, it takes practice, it takes skill, it takes dedication. Unlike a habit, more like a workout, a lifestyle, we have to continue to commit to the development and the use of the skills of the muscles that we make and choose to have and those just like in our body, just like out in the world, for the skills that we’re bringing different places, the more we use them, the more readily available they are to us. And remember, this is the discipline your own discipline and workout to build the six mentally strong muscles necessary to be successful. Scott’s an interesting guy to talk to. I know you are going to enjoy this conversation. I could tell you he’s a former senior executive of Procter and Gamble. I could tell you he’s a popular course instructor on LinkedIn. I could tell you he’s a CEO thought leader by CEO executive guild. I could tell you that he writes for CNBC and inc.com and is a top 50 leadership innovator. I could tell you all of that. In the end, you’re just going to enjoy this conversation, and his credentials speak for themselves, and you’ll take something away. Have fun listening and watching.

Scott Mautz 04:23
Confidence is not the absence of doubt. It isn’t confidence is your ability to manage your relationship with doubt. Wow.

ANNOUNCER 04:36
You are listening to the Bold Business podcast, where you will hear firsthand experiences about what it really takes to ensure market relevance and your company’s future.

Jess Dewell 04:47
I recognize, in preparation for a conversation today, that you have such vast experience that you’re bringing to the. Table, can you name a tipping point for you when you were like, Okay, I got all these skills. I’ve moved up the ladder. I’m running and consulting and doing this great work at this high corporate level, and I still need more mental strength. Was there a pivot point for you,

Scott Mautz 05:22
Yeah, for me, I think it was Jess. It was probably when I decided that to increase the level of mental strength in my own life, I actually wanted to change course, and actually wanted to leave the corporate world to do this, to launch my platform for making a difference with the written and the spoken word. So the kind of, the big point for me was I actually decided, Okay, I’m going to write, you know, what, at the time, turned out to be my first book. And so I did it as like a side hustle while was still doing my thing in the corporate world. And I found I really want to, you know, and we’ll get into mental strength and the importance of boldness in it, which I know is very important for your show boldness. But I knew that I wanted to demonstrate boldness in my own life and demonstrate mental strength in that way. So after I wrote my first book, and it did pretty well, I had been speaking to a lot large groups for a while, that was an inflection point for me, Jess, where I realized, Okay, wait a minute, I think I can go do this full time, and make that bold leap from corporate life to do what I’m doing now full time. So the inflection point for me was really when I wrote that first book, I had the courage to write it, it did even better than I expected. And I realized, you know what, I think I could do this for a living. So that’s what I decided to do that and and my mental strength took off even more. So not to suggest that the only way to build mental strength is to make the bold move and leave the job you’re in. But for me, that was the right move at the time.

Jess Dewell 06:48
I’m wondering how much courage did it take for you to write a book?

Scott Mautz 06:53
Tell me if this is surprising to you or not, it all changed when I simply looked in the mirror one day and said, I am an author. No one has to tell me that I’m an author. My sales don’t have to prove I’m an author. I’m an author when I say I am. And once I started believing that, okay, I’m an author, I knew I had the courage to go ahead and try to write that book and stop worrying about Does anybody want to read what I have to say is what I have to say, wise enough for the world, will it bring any new, net new value in something incredible that no one’s ever heard about before? And once I got past all of that, was the moment, really for me, that just by calling myself an author, I knew in that moment I was ready to do it. And that’s what I tell anyone now, is says, Hey, I’m thinking about writing, but I’m nervous about it. And I tell them, start by saying I am an author, and say it out loud, and then you’ll be surprised how emboldened you are after that point. No one has to define it and tell you that you are, say that you are, and then make it

Jess Dewell 07:51
I was asking because there is a book that’s like in the back of my mind, and it’s been there for a while, and it’s knocking pretty loudly at the door, saying it’s time, and I’m prioritizing other things in front of it. And so I recognize it’s my action and my prioritization of other things that is making that not happen. I’m very interested now to sit with I am and then the fill-in-the-blank. And in this case, it’s I am an author, and the fill-in-the-blank piece is what’s coming up for me next, Scott, so you’re gonna have to I can’t wait to hear what you have to add to this. Once upon a time in my beginning stages of my career, I came across this mentor, and this mentor had this tool, and she said to me, write down five I am statements, and you keep them with you in your pocket, in your wallet, on your mirror. Back then, there was no phone. It was not digital. It was actually, I actually had it written out in different colors. And I actually just did this for my son, because he’s 13, and I’m like, I wish I had this when I was a teenager. So I’m trying this out. So I had five. I am statements of which I can only remember too. I am curious and I am elegant because I always fall down, so might as well look good getting back up. That was literally where that came from. But those I am statements are incredibly powerful to just going, Oh yeah, anchor in, oh yeah. And I think that, how does that fit into mental strength? I guess maybe we could go that direction a little.

Scott Mautz 09:21
Think a lot of it has to do with self-belief and self-acceptance and self-confidence. And what’s interesting about what you’re saying, Jess, is a lot of folks have a hard time filling in the blank part of I am right, and I think it’s because a lot of us have the wrong definition of what confidence really is. Confidence is not the absence of doubt. It isn’t confidence is your ability to manage your relationship with doubt, which we all have. And I interviewed 1000s of people for the book The mentally strong leader, and I could tell you with great confidence. Jess, they’re not even the most. Confident, super confident. People that I talk to would look me in the eye and say, Yeah, doubt is never present. It’s always there. To some extent, for some of us, and we have a hard time filling in the blank of I am, because guess what’s sitting in the place in that blank in the meantime, that doubt, and we have to be able to shove that doubt aside and put what fill the blank the way we want to by understanding that doubts always going to be there. You just have to manage a relationship with it, right? Do you agree with that? Jess,

Jess Dewell 10:26
I really do, and I like the way that you’re saying it. And it’s interesting because I think then it’s almost like the I am statements and come up with these five is actually really hard. To your point, I struggled with it. Then I’m like, I only chose to remember too. The exercise when we did it at home is was very hard. But I will tell you, even when, even when that comes up in the work that I’m doing with clients, it is incredibly hard to honor, to actually honor who we are. So that self-work seems to make a difference. And I really appreciate how you said, manage your relationship with doubt. Because I would go so far to say is you’re saying most people, most people have some doubt, but some might. I’m like, we all have doubt in some part of our life and some facet. And if we have so much other stuff going on that we’re not looking at doubt in a certain part of our life, that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t, as long as it’s continued to be managed so it doesn’t creep up into what we are working on and what we are confident about.

Scott Mautz 11:24
There’s a continuum of doubt almost. Jess, if you think about it, and I have a picture of this in the mentally strong leader, and I talk about it as a tool, but if you think on one side the OP, the hope is that you can be self-confident on one side of the scale and self-accepting, and there’s self belief. But on the other side of the scale, there’s this thing called fear, and we’re paralyzed by fear, and so many of us are paralyzed by fear, and we forget sometimes that we have the ability to reframe the way we look at fear. We can remind ourselves that there’s only three ways to fail, when you quit, when you don’t improve, or when you never try. We can remind ourselves that failure is never, ever a person. It’s only an event, a point in time. We can remind ourselves that pit that we feel in our stomach before we try something that makes us nervous, that pit is not there to scare us. Things there to remind us that something must be worth it, or we would be feeling nothing. And what happens is, in that continuum, you try to be in the middle of that. You don’t want to be paralyzed by fear, and frankly, you don’t want to be overconfident. On the other side of the scale, either you want to fall perfectly in the middle, where you’re embracing a sense of healthy doubt, believing in your ability to figure things out along the way. But a lot of us get trapped on the other side of that continuum where we get paralyzed by fear. And I’m sure you have seen that in clients that you’ve worked with over and over again.

Jess Dewell 12:49
It’s true,and I’m guessing you have too, and it shows up in interesting ways because we know how it shows up before paralyzed by fear. You know how else I’ve seen it show up is all that optimism and happiness when there is nothing but that we’re up here and there’s only this way of being. It’s just as paralyzing as actually owning the fear. We’re just disguising it as something different because we think that’s how we’re supposed to show up to it. And so one of the things that I really have to overcome sometimes myself, I am actually a very optimistic person, and I appreciate that. And in fact, it is in my personality to always look at I’m very much a pragmatist with the heavy focus on optimistic. There’s something around the corner that will be good, because it honors exactly what’s showing up right here that is sometimes misunderstood. Of so you’re always looking at the positive. That’s okay, until it’s not, because then we end up on a pedestal that we’re afraid to fall down from, just like being overconfident, even though they’re seemingly different things.

Scott Mautz 14:02
Yeah, I would really agree with that. And sometimes optimism works really well for us, and sometimes it can work against us. It’s about having some realism mixed in with that optimism, and understanding that in the book, I even talk about, there’s a couple of different kinds of optimism, and one kind is allowing yourself even in the moment. And I’m wondering if you’ve ever done this Jess, where you allow yourself for a second to be pessimistic about what you’re facing because the reality of it is right in front of you, but you also know that you’re going to get past that and you’re going to draw on your reserves later on to rally and become back to optimism. So optimism doesn’t always mean you see the sunny side of everything with rose-colored glasses, right? Sometimes you can allow yourself to come down a bit, but overall that you’re going to return with a point of view that’s going to be helpful moving you forward. Right? I’m sure even the most optimistic people realize that. I do.

Jess Dewell 14:54
I have met people that are so rigid in their optimism, so rigid in their positive. Activity. Yeah, it’s actually just like a habit, right? I’ve decided this is the way it’s going to be. So it’s going to be at all costs. And by the way, I’m a for all costs kind of person. At all costs, I’m going to go after my goal and or here is the cost with which I will give to my goal. There’s different levels of that as well. Do you how does that fit into mental strength?

Scott Mautz 15:24
Mental strength for sure, and it’s probably helpful for me to define it at this point, so I can better answer your question. Jess, mental strength, first of all, it’s more than just emotional intelligence, the term we’ve been hearing about more than any other for the past decade. Emotional Intelligence, of course, is getting your emotions to work for you versus against you. It’s just a slice of the broader umbrella of mental strength. And mental strength is the ability to regulate Jess not only your emotions but also your thoughts and your behaviors productively, even in adversity. And I would argue, especially in adversity, as I like to shorthand it, it’s how we manage internally, so that we can lead better externally, at work and in life. And it’s really hard to do that. I think most of your listeners understand intuitively that if you want to succeed at work and life, you have to be able to self-regulate. We know that. But Jess it’s really hard to do that, and one of the facets in which it’s hard to do it is what you’re talking about, where you can just show up, and if you lose plot of what your goal is, and you lose plot of look, there’s going to be some difficulty in getting there. It’s not about just assuming that you won’t go through any setbacks and everything will work out. That’s not really mental strength either. It’s understanding and embracing how hard it can be, but knowing that you can push forward to succeed anyways. And I would believe, I’d be curious for your reaction to this. Jess, I believe, and I think that data is starting to support this, that mental strength is the leadership superpower of our times. I believe, and I think you’re starting to see it now. You are going to see mental strength in the forefront for the next decade, like we’ve seen EQ in the forefront for the past decade. It is the next EQ, especially because it’s a level above it. That’s a bold statement. I’m curious for your point of view on it.

Jess Dewell 17:15
It is bold and maybe even a little audacious, which makes me like it even more, because here’s the thing, I’m going to tie it back to our I am an author at the beginning our I am statements at the beginning. First and foremost, that belief is in place. I think that is powerful and necessary. Secondarily, there are bodies of research that actually support something else coming up, and we don’t have a name yet. So why not? This is my next piece, whether we’re talking about the research of head brain, heart brain, gut brain. And I wish I could all link to them in the show notes, so everybody has it because I mentioned them once in a while. They’ve been doing this research for 25 years now about head, brain, heart, brain, gut, brain, and they’ve always been talking about when we only have one brain, that’s you being used, we’re missing out on a whole. And that’s what mental strength is we talk about. You were talking about emotional intelligence, which has all of these elements and skills built in with which have been broken down over the last five to 10 years, of flexibility and adaptability and response and communication, and communication has all those things too. So now you’ve got all these other layers, and I would say even more to support where you’re going with mental strength is that we recognize there is a the framework is more important than the process these days, and it’s going to continue to be that way, because that framework is how we relate. That framework is how we do our work here. It’s one of my favorite things in the work I do. How do we do our work here, and what makes us special? What can we let go of and expand on? And then also, though another piece of that is and what are our goals in our world? What are the things that are holding us back in other parts of our life, because it actually shows up here. So then you have the whole mindfulness movement too. So there you go. I was, I hope that was helpful and a good addition, because I’m like, Yes, I see all these bodies of work. I even see it in my chiropractic care. You want to hear about that?

Scott Mautz 19:28
What’s interesting about framework? If I could interject on something, yeah, please. I want to go back to the Chiro chiropractic point before I forget. What you’re saying is so true. Jess, it’s so right. It’s frameworks are so important. And in fact, if you think about mental strength, mental strength consists of a very specific framework. It’s not just everything you could think about that a leader should be. Mental strength boils down to six core mental muscles. There’s the kind of they all require self-regulation, which is why that’s the common denominator that make. System equate to mental strength. Those mental muscles, those six core mental muscles, the framework of mental strength are confidence, boldness, decision making, fortitude, goal, focus and messaging, the ability to stay positive-minded, even in negativity. And what’s really cool is not only are these related because they all require self-regulation to be really good at, there’s a really cool other kind of common denominator that has to do with the goal orientation and goal achievement that you were just talking about. And I’ll give you a piece of data that we conducted to demonstrate what I’m talking about. So we have conducted this study multiple times. Now we ask 3000 executives at a time one question, thinking of the highest achieving organizations that you’ve ever been a part of that overcame the most obstacles thinking of that organization, what were the attributes of the key leader at those times and every time we run this study, Jess between 90 to 91% of respondents all describe the same type of leader. They describe the leader using these six core mental muscles, the decision. They’re very decisive, they’re bold, they’re confident. They have incredible resilience. They stay positive, even in negativity. They make great decisions. And the really incredible part is when we follow up and we ask these people, okay, thank you for describing them. Now we want you to be able to describe them in one or two words, and to help them, we give them a pick list of usually, like, 100 different options on the pick list, and just say circle the one or two words that best describes the person you just described to us. But you got to do it in one or two words 95% of the time, Jess, and we’re talking 3000 respondents at a time when we run this 95% of them circle two words, mentally strong. And what that tells us is we believe we’re on to the term that we’ve been looking for so many years to describe that leader who just helps us towards to your original point, towards our goals, that helps us achieve even in the face of adversity. It’s what helps me build the case for mental strength is becoming the leadership superpower of our time, especially when you consider the work world we work in today. Jess, it’s the setbacks are not going to get less we’re not going to right now, we’re pretty divided as a nation state, though we even have a hard time agreeing on what the facts are. There’s only going to be more distraction, more opportunities for self-doubt to spark up in our life. It’s going to make mental strength even more important over the long haul.

Jess Dewell 22:36
You’re listening to the bold business podcast. I’m your host, Jess Dewell. This is your program for strategizing long term success while diving deep into what the right work is for your business right now.

ANNOUNCER 22:50
Focused on growth? Listen to more programs like this which support the challenges and opportunities you are working with right now. Search bold business podcast for the key terms at Reddirection.com, or your preferred podcast listening app.

Jess Dewell 23:07
When you start feeling the weight of everything we’ve been talking about so far, what do you do? What do you do? Personally,

Scott Mautz 23:14
I have a tool in the melon, strong leader. There’s over 50 plus tools to help you with a mental strength, and one that people often ask me about is how to just stay positive-minded, even in the face of negativity. And I have a tool in there. It’s called the plus sign, and it’s built on five different strategies we can engage in to stay super positive-minded. And I’ll just talk about just one or two of those. I believe a couple of things. I believe it’s really important, first and foremost, Jess, to create offsets in your life. If you pick up the morning paper and you read about the wars going on, or if it’s politics that gets you down, or if it’s just how nasty people can be, sometimes in this world that it’s going to be hard to do anything directly about those instances, but you can create offsets in your life. You can create and psychology supports this quite well. It’s about creating a sphere of influence, things that you can control. You can do things. I ran an experiment where I decided for one month straight, I was going to compliment every single coffee barista that I ran into, or server or waiter or anyone providing a service to me, just to tell them that they’re making a difference and that they’re doing a good job, if indeed they were. And just the difference I felt in myself and my own ability to bring some positivity and rays of light back to the world really helped put into perspective of, yeah, I can’t always control all the rest of that stuff, but I can control this small corner of the world, I find that really helps. And then in the center of the plus sign model, in the Melanie strong leader, I also have a little thing that says E squared, which is a reminder to be an epicenter. Imagine Jeff Jess if you decided, well, the epicenter of an earthquake is not a good thing. Epicenter of encouragement. Different where you can be the center of encouragement that radiates out simply by offering informed encouragement, which is not only praising people, but being very specific about why you’re praising them, putting detail in it, putting your heart behind it, so that you make the praise meaningful and that you can help the person understand the improvement in the outcome they made in the environment around them based on what they did, be that epicenter so that compel them want to do that to other people. And you could, there’s many other ways I talk about in the book, but those are two things that I try and maybe they’ll be of service to you next time you’re feeling down. Jess, with all that goes well,

Jess Dewell 25:39
I appreciate that, and that’s interesting. One of my favorite people of all time is Mr. Rogers, yeah, and I’m listening to what you’re saying, and his face keeps popping into my mind, because I had to learn the hard way through repeated struggle in relationship with people I knew and people I didn’t know that it’s not my responsibility to take away somebody else’s struggle. I don’t know where I learned that. I don’t know if that’s my personality. I don’t know if that I learned that somewhere. I don’t know if that was an expectation of whatever, because of this time and place in the world. And then so to be able to and actually that where, this is where I’m going because of Mr. Rogers face is just to and what you were saying, I’m going to compliment for a period of time everybody in service that I noticed doing a good job. That is the power of being seen by somebody you might know in passing or not at all, makes all the difference in the world, and we don’t know the impact that it’s going to have. We just know in that moment, there is something that allows the next to be impacted in a good way.

Scott Mautz 26:50
Yeah, and it’s a choice. Jess, it is an element of mentally stress. It’s the core muscle, one of the six that I’m talking about, I talk about which is messaging. You have a choice to stay positive in the face of negativity, you have a choice to contribute to the negativity or not. And here’s the key thing, Jess look, the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline of mental strength to build from. But mental strength also doesn’t require you to be sunny and happy all the time. You can also feel the pain of the world we live in. You can feel the pain of others, but you’re making a very important distinction. Jess no mental strength is not solving everybody’s problems for them, sometimes you have to preserve your own your own energy, just so that you can be in a position to better help others in times when they need but no one said mentally being mentally strong is all about solving everything in the world around you. For sure, you’ll burn out before you even know it. That’s where nurses and compassion burnout happens.

Jess Dewell 27:52
Yeah, so some of the brightest stars and, and we don’t know what to do and we don’t learn. I appreciate the the tool that you shared from your book about that, because I think that’s huge, and it’s powerful and, and I also think mentally strong is recognizing that boundary between self and other. And I actually tell me what you think about this. I’m noticing. So if I work with HR professionals for something, if I’m working with executive teams for something, if I’m working with corporate trainers for something, if I am at a business event, doing an MC work, or whatever it is, whatever it is that I’m doing, and whatever group of people I’m around, they’re focusing on one piece of this. And so that’s actually, as it bubbles up, that’s actually what we get. We get all these disparate pieces that are truly connected in the way that you are sharing, and what you’ve put together in this framework for the six muscles for mental strength. And what I want to know is, okay, I’m a business leader. I have a team of 10 or 100 or 1000 or 10,000 and I’m getting all of this independent information. I’m working on building myself, and I’m trying to help other people be empowered and be this kind of a leader that is mentally strong so that people can solve their own problems. How do I reconcile those and how does your book help us move from all the individual pieces to actually something that we can help ourselves so we can create? I call it winfinity, the support of others, and have that positive ripple out.

Scott Mautz 29:25
Two key pieces, I think Jess Excellent question. First, remember before, when I was saying that the opposite of mentally strong is not mentally weak. We all have a baseline of mental strength to build from it starts with to your question, understanding what your baseline is. Where do you stand right now in your own level of mental strength, especially as it’s measured across the six core mental muscles of mental strength in the book The mentally strong leader, chapter two is all about taking a mental strength self-assessment. It’s 50 questions. It takes you about 15 minutes. All I you know, ask of the reader is to. Be honest and vulnerable and answering, answering those questions. And when you’re done after that 15 minutes, it took me three years working with a data scientist to develop it, but when you’re done with that, it gives you a very accurate overall mental strength score. You’ll find out that you fall in one of four tiers of mental strength. No one tears any better than any other. It’s all about our own journey. Yeah, it’s about where we are in our journey. You can score all the way at the top, which is, you’re a beacon of mental strength, and other people are drawn to you because of it, all the way down to the quote, unquote, bottom tier, where you’re a novice, you’re just learning. You’re new in the field of mental strength, and you’re trying to become better at it. And it also produces a score by mental muscle, so you determine, Okay, so what’s my boldness score, my fortitude score, my confidence score, my decision-making score, and so on. And then what that allows you to do is to create your own mental strength training regimen. And this is a worthwhile sidebar, just for a second. Jess, if you think about your mental muscles, equate them to physical muscles for a second. If you want to get stronger, you have to go to the gym and work out those muscles, even if you’re already a weight lifter and you’re already built. If you don’t return to the gym, what happens to those muscles? They weaken over time. They atrophy. Same thing with your mental muscles. You have to go back into that gym. You have to have a tailored, customized regimen to do it. That’s right for you. When you go to the gym, you don’t work on 19 muscles in your body in one day. It’s Wednesday’s back day, Thursday’s leg day. Friday is arm day, or whatever. Same thing with mental strength, you have a regimen. You know which muscles that you want to maintain, which ones you’re behind on, which muscles you want to build on your strength. And then you pull those levers over time. Then you can also take that assessment multiple times over time. And I encourage people that read the mentally strong leader to do that, take the assessment, get a baseline, see where you are, engage in the 50 plus tools in the book, and then take that assessment again in three months, and you will be amazed at how much mentally stronger you have become. And the other second part to your question, just to answer, also know that within the book The mentally strong leader, there’s over 50 plus habits that you can incorporate into your own life, and habits at the end of the day are really they’re repetitions, right? Jess, they’re systems and frameworks that you have in place so you can repeat something until it becomes a habit. And you’re going to find that each tool of the 50 plus tools in the in mentally strong leader are all systems or frameworks designed to specifically help you get the reps in to become mentally stronger over time. So a long answer to your question, but that’s how the book can enable you to become as mentally strong as you want to be in the areas that you uniquely want to become mentally stronger at.

Jess Dewell 32:44
So when you took this assessment, what will you share with us? One of one of your like, where, which muscle was the one that ranked out on top? I’m like, I don’t know how much you want to share. So I was just Oh, yeah, but yeah, yeah.

Scott Mautz 32:58
No, no problem. First of all, I’ll tell you, the first time I took it, I did not score in the top tier. I scored in a tier below that. And since I’ve really been working on this, I could say that I’ve done better on that over time, and I found that. And you could tell me whether or not this surprises you or not, but like many other people, I was surprised that I still had work to do on the confidence muscle. And I often get asked that question, okay, so there’s six core mental muscles of mental strength. I got it, confidence, boldness, decision-making, so and so on. Which muscle is the one that people most often have to work on? Maybe it’s not surprising that it tends to be the confidence muscle that there’s a lot of people out there that still feel like, even if they have days where they’re self-assured, there are days where maybe they’re not so self-assured, and I scored lower on the confidence muscle than I thought I would, especially because I talk in the book The mentally strong leader about a specific tool that I call the self-acceptance scale. On one side of the scale, there’s self-acceptance on the other side of the scale, all the way there’s this thing called imposter syndrome. And then there’s degradations and confidence that happened to us along the way. One of those degradations that happens along the way all the way up to the worst form of lack of confidence, which is imposter syndrome. One of those ones along the way is comparing to others. There’s approval seeking and comparing to others, negative inner chatter, believing you’re not enough, I fall into the bucket the degradation of comparing to others, and I still do it Jess, and I still have to work on that. Where I compare to irrelevant others. Comparisons to others can be helpful, right? They give us, Oh, hey. Oh, I see Jess is doing great, too, as a speaker, that’s good. I want to be like her, and I want to do this, and I want to do that. It’s where I make it relevant comparisons to other people that are posting the best version. They’re posting all their their highlight reels on social media, and I’m thinking of my blooper reels, right? And I’m making that irrelevant comparison, and I still have to work on that. So I’m just being honest with you that I teach this stuff. I know that’s. Difficult mental strength can be? I get it?

Jess Dewell 35:02
Oh, totally. And that’s the thing, if we’re not willing to walk the walk, I don’t think anybody would be interested in what we had to say. And that’s I’m so glad you were willing to go there with me, because I talk about my blooper reel all the time, and sometimes it’s just happening in the stream of things, and it’s bold in front of everybody. Okay? And remember, I am graceful. I carry that with me to this day, so that whenever any of that happens, that and that lasted, and you want to know something else, though, what turned out my I am curious, statement is actually one of my core values, not only as myself, but also one that was incredibly important to to advocacy, with which is something that my company is all about, advocacy of self, advocacy of group, advocacy of community. Because if you want to stay in business, let’s do it,

Scott Mautz 35:53
And you walk the talk. You wouldn’t have such a great show if you were like, like this, if you weren’t curious, right? And here you are welcome to talk.

Jess Dewell 36:02
So even in spite of the irrelevant comparison on the spectrum of self-acceptance that you were sharing with us, what’s one of your core values?

Scott Mautz 36:12
Oh, definitely, kindness, hard work, for sure that you get things that you earn when you put that work in, but also kindness. And it’s what are the core values that isn’t it fun. The funny thing about values, Jess is that there are those little things we do each and every day that the little permanent, the little temporary impressions we leave, that add up to a permanent impression over time, the little things that define who we are. And you can use them as a guide post. And the truth is, you can live in support of your values or in spite of your values. And I really try hard to keep my values in front of me and drive who I am as a person. I suspect it’s the same with you. Is that a true statement? Yeah.

Jess Dewell 36:54
And in fact, I actually, I actually went about it a little different. And one of the things when people come to me and they’re like, oh, we have to create all these values, right? What are the and I’m just like, can you just write down what was important every single day for for two weeks, 14 days, what was important every single day? And then you’ll see the commonalities in that, and you will know what your values are, because that’s what you’re prioritizing and you’re choosing to remember now you may not like them, and that’s okay, because then to your point of bringing it back to Everything we’re talking about in the mentally strong leader realm, when we’re talking about all these tools and what kind of frameworks we need to improve, and the discipline it takes to build those is, let’s just look at where we’re at, and if we don’t like it cool, because we can change, but if we do like it cool, because it’s easy to keep going.

Scott Mautz 37:44
Yeah, that’s right. It’s easy to keep going, right? It’s been, I try to think of values as you pick the analogy you want, whether it’s either a lighthouse on the sea or it’s the North Star, whichever one it’s meant to be a guide and keep you off of the rocks. And if you don’t like where those values are taking you, if you don’t like that direction, you change it. And oh, by the way, once you know your values, Jess, and you could tell me if you agree with this or not, but I believe that once you have your values firmly and set like the values that you want to stand for, here’s the thing. Just like when you’re on C if you’re one degree off on your compass, when you get to that destination you were gunning for, you may find out that one degree has you way off track in the end of where you want it to be. So once you have your values set, it’s really important that you stay beholden to them if you want to live that kind of love.

Jess Dewell 38:32
And they don’t really change a lot. They don’t really change. They’re changing a lot.

Scott Mautz 38:35
We don’t know them yet. Yeah, that’s probably true. I think that’s I think that’s true.

Jess Dewell 38:39
And that’s interesting because you’re right, some people use North Star. Some people use what was the other one? You said, lighthouse?

Scott Mautz 38:47
Oh, yes, the lighthouse.

Jess Dewell 38:48
I use magnetic north magnet.

Scott Mautz 38:50
Yeah, there you go.

Jess Dewell 38:52
That red direction. The little point on a compass always goes to magnetic north, so you always know where you’re at. But you know what? I think that’s an interesting I think it’s important to to go, okay, cool. And okay, so how can we use so let’s tie this back to the discipline. Once we’ve taken this assessment and we know what we are, by the way, I’m going to just interject here, take any assessment you’ve ever had as a start and apply this process so you know how it works now. So when you go take Scott. Of course, I already know this, and that is, hang on, I gotta figure out where I was going. Because I was like, Ooh, we need this caveat. They can do this before they ever take your assessment, because I’m not sure about you, but I’ve taken other assessments before, whether it’s in the workplace or because I have a colleague that’s doing something, or because I have a client that wants me to participate in something, or we’re doing it at Red direction. It doesn’t matter, right? So when we’re talking about values, and we’re Oh, discipline, here we go. How can we bring our values to that workout, to the discipline of continuing to build those six muscles to make it easier?

Scott Mautz 39:58
You, there’s help. I. I can offer help, if you think about it this way, if you want to be mentally strong, you remember before Jess I was saying that we all intuitively understand that if mental strength is the ability to regulate your emotions, thoughts and behaviors, we understand already that you have to self regulate to be successful in life, right? You can’t just say whatever you think. You can’t just act whatever comes to mind. You can’t just let every emotion flow through directly to action, right? You can’t. We know that. We know that, but it’s hard. It’s really hard. So here’s the two arms around you. Think about it this way, visually, you know two arms to help you through that storm. One is your values, of course, to just think, look, let your values guide the way you answer. Let your even if you score terribly on a muscle and you’re ashamed that I’m making this up. Oh, I thought I was way more decisive, and I thought I was a much better decision-maker. Turns out I’m not, and I feel bad about that. Let your values guide you and say, Look, remember what that is, and let those guide you and get you along the way. The other arm around you is habit-building science. And here’s what I mean by that, by definition, becoming mentally stronger can be hard. We know that habits, though, are the systems and the frameworks like I was talking about to help you. And I have been studying habit-building science for a long time. And there’s a reason why the subtitle of the mentally strong leader the book, The subtitle is, build the habits to productively regulate your emotions, your thoughts and your behaviors, because habit-building science is built into each tool. And I’ll give you an example any tool of the 50 in there, every tool has two sections in it based on habit-building science. One section is called your first small step. What’s that first small step that we can take together towards building that habit. Second section that’s in each one of the tools. What do you do in moments of weakness, and most often, Jess habit building. Science will tell you this, if you don’t establish a habit, most often, it’s because there was a moment of weakness and it broke down. So maybe you’re trying to build a confidence habit, and you’re generally pretty confident. You’re trying to build that muscle, but then you have the bad meeting at work. The boss says something that embarrasses you in front of everybody. You spiral down. You start beating yourself up. It adds on itself. It’s a moment of weakness. What do you do in that moment of weakness so that the confidence habit can hold rather than evaporate on you. And so when you think of values and habit-building science around you and all the habits built into the book The mentally strong leader, that’s the way forward.

Jess Dewell 42:29
I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and we’re getting down to business on the Bold Business podcast. This is where we’re tackling the challenges that matter most to you with actionable and achievable advice to get real results that lead to your success.

ANNOUNCER 42:48
Maybe you are or know a company that is looking for support to double their revenues to $3 million 10 million or $25 million Jess Dewell will roll up her sleeves to quickly understand your growth strategy and assess how you work with uncertainty, how much stamina is being used to make decisions and how your current priorities align to your long term growth goals. You can schedule a complimentary consultation to find out more at Reddirection.com and now back to the program.

Jess Dewell 43:26
Do you have a morning routine?

Scott Mautz 43:27
Yeah, I think I do. I think I do. Would you share it with us? I use the morning as my most product, you know, my most productive block of the day. And to me, productivity is all about time, using your time and with intention, wisely managing your time so that you can get more of the things that truly matter done at work and in life. So I start my day off by reminding myself what really matters to me for the day, what must get done, what’s the one big thing that has to get done. And then I always remind myself of what my core values are, and how am I going to show up in that day. So it’s usually some quiet reflection in the morning to remind myself of those things, what most matters to get done. How do I want to be today? How do I want to show up today? And then I every other day, I usually do a little bit of reflection and talk about, how’s the past week gone for me? What’s gone? Good. What’s gone not good. How did I show up? Did I do some things about myself that I want to change? So it’s some kind of quiet reflection in the morning. And then I usually I have my breakfast, and the my breakfast is where I just get my brain engaged. I’ll do something dumb of The New York Times, Wordle or anything to get the brain going. And then I dive right into the hardest work that I have to do of the day. First, the one that involves the most Brain Juice, and then I work in 25-minute increments. I use the Pomodoro Technique, turn on the timer. 25 minutes work, take a five-minute break. 25 minutes work, take a break, and I continue that way until the late afternoon, where I exercise every day, and then go back to work for a little bit and then call it a day. So I. That’s my thing.

Jess Dewell 45:01
Here it is, you exercise in the afternoon. If I don’t exercise in the morning, it doesn’t happen. So I have all the things that don’t happen unless they do in the morning, and it turns out to be too much for a morning routine. How do I take something and I’m going to use exercise in the afternoon, because you did it, it could be anything. How do I change that to a different part of a day and build a habit around it, since the rest of the day gets in the way?

Scott Mautz 45:23
Yeah, I think it has to be, what’s the first small step that you wanted to do that? And I’ll give you an example. I’ll give you an example of how Jess, have you ever had a day so you like to exercise in the morning?

Jess Dewell 45:34
You said, right, I don’t like to exercise, but if I’m going to exercise, it needs to be in the morning. Otherwise it won’t happen.

Scott Mautz 45:40
Thanks. Makes incredible sense, right? Yeah, here to answer your question, yeah, try this trick. It really worked for me when I started thinking, okay, my best productive work is in the morning. I have to use that time for brain time, so I’m going to do that, and I need to build a habit of exercising in the afternoon. So using habit, building science, sometimes we don’t build that habit because we don’t know the first small step to take. So what I do now in the afternoon is, quite often I don’t feel like exercising. It’s late afternoon. I’ve been working hard all day. What I will do is, and I’m lucky enough, I have a home gym, but right when I realized, Okay, it’s time to exercise without even thinking about it, I don’t even change into my gym clothes. I literally go into the gym in that moment, and I start my first repetition, my first weight set repetition, and then I step out of the gym, and I’ll gather my water for the workout. Then I’ll go back in, and I’ll do my next repetition. I step out, then I’ll actually put my sneaks on to get ready for the workout. Then I’ll go back in. And what happens is I haven’t even thought about how much I don’t want to work out. The first small step is I just start working out, and then 15 minutes in, I’m finally ready for my workout. I have all my workout clothes on, and I have the fan turned on. I have the TV on if I’m going to watch it or whatever, and I’m already halfway through the weight portion of my workout, just like that. So I’ve already designed a kind of a first small step that allows me to just get going on it.

Jess Dewell 47:08
I really appreciate the example of the first small step that we were talking about earlier. And the reason is because you want to know something. I already, as soon as you started talking, I was like, I know he’s gonna say, I do. I actually do something similar when it comes to business change. And so here you are talking about life habits that help you build these mental strength muscles. And I’m like, of course. So can I just say Thanks, Scott, and so glad. I can just be yes, I’m just avoiding it in the afternoon. Okay, fine. So what action it provided. I’m willing to do what it takes to make the change. I now have that first next step. Just go. Just go.

Scott Mautz 47:48
It sounds so obvious and so dumb. It really works, because you the reason we don’t start exercise because we don’t want to, and our brain doesn’t want to think about that, if you’re just doing it without thinking about starting it. Next thing you know, you’re 15 minutes down the road, and it becomes a lot easier. A lot easier.

Jess Dewell 48:04
Yeah, and here’s what goes through my mind. I’m a mom. We have a single car in our house. We, of course, we live downtown, so we don’t need two cars, except for on the days that we do, except for on the days that you do. So that’s just that part of it. And the afternoon is so when does school get out today? And when does all this other stuff happen, and then it’s, oh, okay, this is the day I actually talked to my parents. Oh, here’s when I talk to my friends and the rest of my siblings and my nieces and nephews, and, oh, I forgot to buy dinner stuff this week for this day. What are we going to do? Right? All of that comes in, and that’s actually what’s getting in my way. So it’s not so tell me this. Tell me if I’m right. So it’s not that I couldn’t do it or that life actually gets in the way. It’s that I actually by trying to prepare and the rest of the stuff that an active brain has that presents itself is just making it insurmountable, when in fact, walking through the door is is the quickest way to cut through everything.

Scott Mautz 49:05
There is even a scientific term for it. I talk about in the mentally strong leader. It’s known as the zeigernik effect. It’s named after researcher Blume Zeigarnik, who showed in her research the power of what happens when you just get something started, how much more likely you are to complete the task, if you just get going on that task. It’s, in fact, the Zeigarnik Effect is what started an interesting trend that shows up. Let me ask you this, do you like to watch streaming shows? Any Do you have, like, Disney, spectrum, whatever, right? Sure. Sometimes, sure. Sometimes you have the time. You’ll notice on just about any series that you watch, they usually end the series in the season in a cliff hanger episode, right? What’s going to happen next? That’s based on the zeigerneck effect, which tells us, if the brain gets a task started and then the it’s not completed, it drives you. Nuts. You want to be able to finish that task. That’s why cliffhangers are so effective. Because you want to tune in the next season because your brain wants a conclusion to that story. The same thing happens with simple mental tasks. So you just get if I just stopped working out after 15 minutes, I would go nuts. I would be like, now I’ve started, I’ve got to finish it. That’s designed to make a fact, and it could work for you, too, in an everyday life.

Jess Dewell 50:22
Okay, so what I do, just as a I love this, and I’m so glad we’re talking about exercise because we forget how all of this is interconnected. Once a week, I suggest 20% of a work week for an executive goes to deep work thinking time, and I call that a present retreat. That’s eight hours of a work week. How do you get to eight hours of a work week? I always say, start with two. But the thing is, the start you got to just go in and my very first series of these, when I was developing this and figuring this out, I actually sometimes left the office and cleaned out the closets at my house. I had the most organized bookshelf in my office, my inbox was the cleanest and the lowest number of unread messages ever for weeks. Because I’m like, I don’t know what to do with this time, but I got to do something with this time, because I put it on my calendar and I protected it. And so I think that there’s an element of, if it’s on your calendar and you’re willing to commit to that time for exercise, for executive time, in your case, your deep work time in the morning, right that morning block, I think that there is, there’s something I’m going to go so far and be audacious and say sacred about that, and that all of these things that are now defined that we can actually rely on to go, oh, that’s why, of course, it is, because we do it for the things that are important to us, so we can change what’s important to us.

Scott Mautz 51:44
Yes, that’s exactly right, which is why it’s so important to get clear on what’s important to you to begin with.

Jess Dewell 51:49
I appreciate this. I have no idea if this is what you were expecting in our conversation today. That’s great, but this is a great turn of conversation for me, and I really want to know one, I know one of your muscles is bold. I want to get out of that particular muscle and go a step higher. What makes it bold? What makes it bold to actually take the time to cultivate your own mental strength today?

Scott Mautz 52:15
What makes it bold is you go back to that fundamental truth that building becoming mentally strong is it’s not easy, right? It’s we. We know we have to do it, and yet so many of us struggle with regulating our emotions, our thoughts and our behaviors. So it can be really, really difficult to do it. But I always ask listeners, you know, and I always ask readers, to remember that you don’t have to be intimidated by it. It is a bold thought to think it, to save it to proclaim, I’m going to bravely take this self-assessment. I’m going to see where I am and accept where I am in my mental strength, whether it’s confidence or messaging or decision making or fortitude or whatever it is I my ability to stay focused on my goals. I’m going to get an assessment of where I am. I’m boldly going to say, I accept where I am. I know I can get better, and I know this won’t be easy, but I’ve got the tools to do it and then engage in the journey to do it. The whole pursuit, really, Jess of mental strength, almost by definition, is a bold endeavor, because no one said that it’s easy. But when you do do it, and you engage in it, and you start to see progress, it does become progressively more easy because you become more driven to see even more and more improvement in your own mental strength.

Jess Dewell 53:35
Every single time I have a conversation, I take away something that I want to share with 25 people. I know when you’re listening to this podcast, you’re also listening for that and will have something that you want to share in the comments. I would like for you to engage with us. What is that thing that you want to tell 25 people from this program? Here’s why it’s important. It’s important because, yeah, there are gonna be how-tos. Yes, there are gonna be steps. Yes, you’re gonna be like, Oh, I wish I wrote that down. I wish I wasn’t doing this and I could actually take action on that right now. But guess what? You’re not so engage right now, because that one thing you wanna share with others will be the thing that you can figure out how to incorporate in your business, in your workflow, in your style tomorrow.

ANNOUNCER 54:26
Jess hosts the Bold Business podcast to provide insights for building a resilient, profitable business by deeply understanding your growth strategy, ensuring market relevance and your company’s future. It is bold to deeply understand your growth strategy with your host, Jess Dewell. Get more information about how to drive solutions and reset your growth mindset at reddirection.com Thank you for joining us, and special thanks to our post-production team at The Scott Treatment.