ReAudio: ReAssess Your Workers Comp Toolbox
Freedom and Responsibility with Scott Mann
What does freedom mean in a world where personal liberties and collective identities often clash? Join us as we welcome retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a former Green Beret with extensive experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, who brings a unique perspective on the evolving understanding of freedom. Drawing on his military background and current leadership roles, Scott challenges us to view freedom as a privilege and a profound responsibility to do what is right. We explore key insights from his upcoming book, "Nobody's Coming to Save You: A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Sh*t Done," and discuss how the concept of self-reliance fosters resilience and empowerment.
Visit https://scottmann.com/ to learn more about Scott's story and Pre-Order his new book!
What does freedom mean in a world where personal liberties and collective identities often clash? Join us as we welcome retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann, a former Green Beret with extensive experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, who brings a unique perspective on the evolving understanding of freedom. Drawing on his military background and current leadership roles, Scott challenges us to view freedom as a privilege and a profound responsibility to do what is right. We explore key insights from his upcoming book, "Nobody's Coming to Save You: A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Sh*t Done," and discuss how the concept of self-reliance fosters resilience and empowerment.
Visit https://scottmann.com/ to learn more about Scott's story and Pre-Order his new book!
Perspective. Perspective is spelled P-E-R-S-P-E-C-T-I-V-E. Perspective the 30,000 foot view. Perspective put on someone else's shoes. Perspective can also refer to the state of existing in space or one's view of the world. Perspective R-E-A audio.
Speaker 2:Reemployability. What does freedom mean? Or what does freedom mean to you? I've heard that question dozens, if not hundreds, of times, but rarely have I really internalized it and considered how it impacts my life. I think that most of us who were born in the United States don't truly understand what it means to not be free. As I get older, I'm able to look in the rearview mirror and see how that concept of freedom has really changed in my own mind and in the environment where we all live today. Peter Marshall yeah, the Peter Marshall of the old Hollywood squares once said may we think of freedom not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right. So freedom is a responsibility, and no one knows that better than retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. Scott's a Green Beret who's served all over the world, including tours in Iraq and multiple tours in Afghanistan. He's a true friend of re-employability and a leader in the business of human connection, trust and how we can proactively unite together and exercise our freedom as Americans.
Speaker 1:Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior or political views.
Speaker 2:Scott, thank you so much for taking time out of your super, super busy schedule to be with us and talk to us about this very, very important topic, especially around 4th of July. When we were talking about putting together a podcast around 4th of July and we talked about freedom, there was definitely nobody that I wanted to talk to more than you about this. So thanks for your time and appreciate you being on RE Audio again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, of course, man. It's my honor to be here. Thanks, Todd.
Speaker 2:You just finished a new book. Now it's middle of July. Now has the new book come out, or is it coming out shortly?
Speaker 3:No, it hasn't. Thanks for bringing it up. It's called Nobody's Coming to Save you A Green Beret's Guide to Getting Big Stuff Done. It's actually something else. But the book comes out on October 1, but it's available for presale right now at scottmancom, so we're already in presale mode.
Speaker 2:Well, I think there's so many parallels. I was fortunate enough to get a copy to look through prior to our conversation and there's so many parallels between what you have in that book and what we want to talk about. So I don't. You know this sounds so cliche, but I got to start with it. With all your experience as a Green Beret and what you do in business leadership now and all the places you've been around the world, I would imagine you have a pretty unique perspective on freedom.
Speaker 3:What does freedom mean to you? You know that is one of those questions that there's so many different ways you can go, and I don't think there's a wrong way, because it's one of those situations where what's personal has universal value. So one of the first things I would say about freedom when I think about it now, at this point I am in my life where I've lived my journey as a Green Beret, gone to combat, come home, gone through the pains of transition, built a new business, worked with your team at reemployability and Deb and other businesses and, frankly, been involved in what this country is trying to go through right now with all of its division. And what I would say freedom first and foremost means to me is contained in the title of this book, which is nobody's coming. You know, one of the things that I learned very early on, todd, as a Green Beret is we would get dropped into these rough places. And you know, one of the things that I learned very early on, todd, as a Green Beret is we would get dropped into these rough places.
Speaker 3:And you know, you start hearing the chatter on the scanners and you see reporting that attacks are imminent and that you're probably going to be outnumbered and senior non-commissioned officers would say to me hey, sir, you know nobody's coming and that's OK, we've got a good team, we're going to be all right.
Speaker 3:And I started to basically recognize that, once you acknowledge that nobody's coming, that's actually good news. I mean, most of us in our life well, all of us have this agency that we've been gifted from, I believe, a higher power, a purpose in life, an embedded sense of meaning that is uniquely our own. And if we're always waiting for permission, if we're always waiting to be told what to do next, or swipe here or click here, you know pretty soon we start to surrender our agency, we start to become almost in a trance state. And you can see it all around you. You see people who are so consumed with their mobile devices, with the 24-7 news cycle, with political outcomes, and they've lost their agency, they've surrendered their autonomy. And so freedom, first and foremost, to me means personal freedom, the ability to live your life and pursue your path with your own agency and your own autonomy, and not asking permission to do it.
Speaker 2:Personal liberty is so, I think, connected to what this country was built on right, giving people the ability to actually live their life the way they so choose or pursue those things, and I think a lot of people may feel like currently it's not what it was 100 years ago or 200 years ago. What are your thoughts on that?
Speaker 3:no-transcript. And if you're going to talk about freedom, I think, and you're going to advocate for personal freedom, so, in other words, if the definition I gave for personal freedom sounds pretty good to you, then I think you can't have that conversation without saying, okay, what does it take to actually have an environment where you can do that, where your children can literally pursue their dreams? Because newsflash, most places on earth you can't. Most places on earth, it is very difficult for an individual to exercise their own agency in life and do what they want to do when they want to do it. We have a very unique experiment in this country and a few other countries where that's possible. It's not a state of nature that's normal for humans.
Speaker 3:In all my work as a Green Beret, I've studied civil societies in rough places and what I've come to learn is that we all come from this traditional society, todd of a scarcity environment, just like other mammals, where there's not enough. There's not enough food, there's not enough water, there's not enough land, and you have to form groups to get what you need and keep what you need. Watch Game of Thrones, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. Back in the day, that's how civil society operated, and even today it's around group dynamics. You do what you do for the good of the group. What you want is irrelevant, because the only way you can survive is if the group survives, and that means your honor and your status is determined by what the group says you're going to do.
Speaker 3:Now, here in America, a couple hundred years ago, our forefathers came from those civil societies where that's not a very good place to live If you're at the bottom of the food chain and they formed this experiment of a constitutional republic where the individual was above the group. Now that's heresy in most parts of the world. The individual Alexander de Tocqueville called it individualism rightly understood so it was this emphasis on the individual as part of a state but rightly understood, every citizen understood the inherent responsibilities they had to ensure that those freedoms were protected.
Speaker 2:And that's where I think we've come off the rails it's almost like now it's a, it's a given, because it's been so long since we earned that freedom that it is that we're complacent right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's well. Look, here's the thing. And this is this is not new. There have been several societies throughout our history that you know. A few generations in, you start to see this cycle where folks who are far removed from the struggle to again freedom requires stewardship. It requires the willing leadership of individuals to preserve what it takes to be free and to actually keep the group dynamics at bay. They look around what's happening in the country right now. How many groups do you see? How many groups do you see emerging advocating for what's right for their group? Well, who's right, who's wrong? Right? Emerging advocating for what's right for their group? Well, who's right? And who's wrong, right.
Speaker 3:That's the problem with group dynamics, or what we call bonding. Trust is the only people you trust are the people in your group, and everybody else is the enemy. And you pursue that enemy with contempt normally reserved for true enemies. And so when you forget what it took to actually come out of that realm, you start to go back to it. I call it shadow tribalism, but we're going back to that tribal behavior, asleep at the switch. It's like we don't even know we're doing it. We have our heads down in our phones thinking that we're ultra sophisticated and modern, but in reality we're even more tribal than our ancestors, because we don't even know who we are.
Speaker 2:I think one of you had mentioned this. I believe in one of the retreats I was fortunate enough to be on with you was about just being aware of that. Tribalism is a great step forward and you know, you have to understand that it's happening and be aware of it around you, and I saw it on social media. Maybe a month or so ago I started to see all this stuff about Gen X, Gen X arise, Gen X come together and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's exactly what Scott was talking about. That's trying to group a bunch of late 40 to late 50 year olds together to accomplish something. That's tribalism, right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's really important to in the book Nobody's Coming to Save you. I really break this down because it's imperative that all of us it doesn't matter whether you're a senior leader, a mom or a dad, a coach on a travel ball team you know what I teach is it's important to understand the human operating system. All of us are pretty much wired the same way. We are wired to be meaning, seeking, emotional, social storytellers who struggle. That's who we are at a very primal level.
Speaker 3:I use tribalism and sometimes it kind of gets hijacked as a word. It gives this intonation that tribalism is violent and it can be. What tribalism is is primal. What tribalism, in this context that I use it and that we're using it, todd, is that it represents a regression back to a type of behavior that was indicative of our ancestors and there's good elements of it and there's not so good elements of it. For example, in tribal societies where we hailed from, and once upon a time in America, we told stories, we had community meetings, we had barn raisings, we had long form communications. We put much more emphasis on relationships and front porches right, because relationship was the capital by which you navigated the world. Social capital was king, and that's a good thing, right.
Speaker 3:But at the same time, groups, in order for groups to prevail over another group, they use honor and shame. So that means vendettas and revenge and feud are very prevalent, and that's a very ugly thing, because the problem with one group feuding with another group, a how long does it last? Well, if you look at the Hatfields and McCoys, it lasted all the way into the 1900s. If you look at the Crips and the Bloods, look at what's going on in politics, they last a very long time and there's no real way to end it except one party flaming out in the dirt and salt in the earth again game of thrones, red wedding, kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 3:And so the problem with that tribalism is that we, because we've forgotten our connection to where we come from, we've just we think that we're beyond it and we're not. That's very much in our body. And so when we put our heads in our phones and we start getting into that digital world, we've learned that in social media, that the engineers who built that they know that you'll share more content if it's negative content about an out group. And so what we're doing basically is making ourselves completely susceptible to a trance state and mass mobilization for attention, marketing and other political agendas. And then we just get played. We literally get played right into this trance and the in-group, out-group behavior starts to act on us without us exercising any agency. That's why I taught people unfriend friends they've had for 30 years on Instagram and Facebook over a political candidate, because we have demonstrated this shadow tribalism, this form of primal behavior, the negative side of it, that we've never done before and that, to me, is a bigger threat to our freedom than any enemy outside the United States.
Speaker 2:So there were. Obviously you were working with those tribal, that tribal environment when you were in Afghanistan, working with tribal leaders and trying to really win for lack of a better term hearts and minds, right yeah. So are there any strategies that you utilized there that you feel like anybody listening now who's kind of seeing that tribalism among their family or groups that they can at least start to make some proactive moves forward?
Speaker 3:Yeah, a whole bunch. I mean there's a whole bunch of strategies that are in that book, because I believe the more we understand our human operating system, first and foremost that book, because I believe the more we understand our human operating system, first and foremost. You know, think about an iceberg, right, and the iceberg, the tip of the iceberg, is the modern world where you and I are right now, and the bottom of the iceberg that you can't see. 80% of the iceberg is our ancient selves, the human operating system, and if we, that's going to act on us whether we are conscious of it or not. So it's better that we're conscious of what's below the waterline. And so some things that people can do as tactics, for example, you know on in the realm of we're meaning seeking, like. So every person around you, your kids, your employees, they're meaning seeking. You all specialize in getting people back to work, but even before they get back to their original job, after they're being injured, one of the things that you all do that is so important is that you provide a way in which that individual can get back in the game and they can make meaning out of their existence. There's nothing worse than being relevant and then not being relevant. I experienced that as a Green Beret who transitioned. So, as an example, employers who really focus on meaning if someone is injured, if someone experiences a life-changing event, how can you, as a leader, create an environment where they can find meaning again? It's super important because without meaning we perish. Without purpose we perish.
Speaker 3:Emotion is another one. This is another really big one is that, in times that we live in right now, how bad is the emotional temperature? I mean, have you noticed that people are driving more recklessly than ever after COVID? Have you noticed that? You know, when people talk politics, they literally go to you know they look like they're tribal, they're biting their lips and they purse their lips and their eyes narrow, and I mean we speak with contempt to one another that we would normally reserve for an enemy. That's emotional temperature, and one of the things that we're going to have to do when, when people are in a bad place, is we're going to have to bring emotional temperature down before and get them ready to listen to what we have to say.
Speaker 3:And the book talks a lot about how to do this, starting with yourself. I mean, I bet people listening to this right now, with the stuff going on with the election and other things they catch themselves with their heartbeat racing. They catch themselves getting angry. Well, that means your emotional temperature is in a sympathetic state and if you try to lead someone your children, your spouse, your family or at work you're going to look like you don't trust yourself. You're going to look like you're in survival mode and no one else is going to trust you either, because you're in a trance state of anger. Anger makes us stupid, right? So we've got to be able to metabolize and drop into a state of calm and connect. Parasympathetic that means breath, that means stepping away from the incident. Put your damn phone up, you know. But we're going to have to manage our own emotional temperature and the emotional temperature of others more than ever before.
Speaker 3:The last technique I would add here, if you want to go deeper but is I'm telling people today in these high stakes, low trust environments, is ask a lot of questions. It's not really the stories you tell these days, as much as it is the stories you ask to hear Thoughtful, open-ended questions that allow the other party to respond to you in narrative and I talk a lot about this in Nobody's Coming to Save you. It's how to craft questions ahead of time, before you walk into a hard conversation with someone in your company, with someone that you're going to have to do placement with that it's going to be very difficult, or a client that maybe is upset, or a child that's been bullied how you. It's the questions we ask, not the statements that we make, that get them ready to listen, that bring their emotional temperature down to a parasympathetic state and actually give you the context you need to be relevant to their goals, and so questionology is a really important skill going into the election and beyond.
Speaker 2:All these things that you put into your book and into rooftop leadership and business leadership. Are these things that you were trained as a Green Beret and then and took the lessons, the practical lessons? How did you compile all the thoughts and the processes that you have in Nobody's Coming to Save you?
Speaker 3:Oh, I appreciate it. It's been a 30-year body of work. I mean, a large chunk of it is what I learned as a Green Beret, because, if you think about it, by definition, I was dropped into high stakes, low trust places where people are skeptical and reluctant. Well, that's the world today we live in, and what I've learned is that, especially around the human operating system, is what works in life and death works even better in life and business, and the reason is because we're universally wired the same.
Speaker 3:The difference is the world that you live in right now has changed under your feet. The tectonic plates have shifted under your feet and you probably notice it. You look around at how people are behaving and you're like, oh boy, that doesn't feel right. That's not what I knew five years ago. That's because it's not, it's novel, it's new. The social dynamics have changed and what got you here is not going to get you there. What we learned as leaders, as parents, to navigate these situations is not going to work, because people are in a different place. Their trust is so depleted right now, in this churn that we live in, that we need a deeper set of skills. And so, yes, I learned a lot of those in the crucible of combat and high conflict.
Speaker 3:But then, when I got out of the Army in 2013, I continued to pursue that body of work. I became a negotiating instructor, I became a breath coach, I studied acting. I started to become a news analyst. I did three TED Talks and hundreds and hundreds of keynotes. I've started a nonprofit and worked with veterans. So everything that I bring into this book, man, it's a 30-year body of work, ranging from owning mobile home communities and dealing with tenants that are upset to speaking from a TED stage and counseling. You know senior members of government and the Pineapple Express. You know where we got people out of Afghanistan and we had no money, we had no time, we had no authority. But yet we use the same techniques that are in this book Nobody's coming to save you the same techniques to move people 7,000 miles away to safety using a cell phone and an open sewage canal.
Speaker 2:I was going to ask you about Operation Pineapple Express. That was the last book you wrote and you wrote it really really quick, right, like crazy quick, based on the experience that you and your counterparts utilized to actually get people that were committed to our country out of Afghanistan after we left. That's true freedom, right? That is that's going from not knowing what the next day is going to bring to actually being free in this country. Correct, that's, that's what you were able to accomplish for that.
Speaker 3:If you want to know what freedom means to some people. You and I were talking about this before we got on air, about how you've been around folks that have just come to this country and they demonstrate a different appreciation for freedom than we do. Remember those Afghans falling off of airplanes. There were Afghans that were willing to sacrifice 30 seconds of freedom before they fell to their death hanging from the wheels of a C-17 aircraft, leaving Afghanistan then to spend the next 30 years in that country. That's how much freedom meant to them. They were willing to fall from an airplane. They were willing to crawl into the wheel spoke of a C-17 aircraft to have a chance to get out of that country.
Speaker 3:So if you wonder what freedom looks like to some people and what it takes to get it, damn you know and this is what I worry about in our country because we are so far removed. I mean, even in the 20 year war, less than 1% of the population fought. You know, the big thing is thank you for your service and I don't begrudge that. But most people they don't know in their solar plexus what it means to actually serve in combat and to defend the country and fight for something that you could lose your life over and again. I don't fault or judge for that, but when you get to where less than one percent of the population is fighting a 20 year war and then after the war ends the way it ended, people go. What's the big deal? I don't get it. Why are you guys so upset about leaving your allies? You know that's when I start to get seriously worried about our freedom as a nation.
Speaker 2:So, if you don't mind, I'd love some advice on something like that. So, so it's too late for someone like me who was not in the military, right? Yeah, um, what can someone like me do in a real sense to help someone like you or your counterparts? Um, understand the gratitude that many of us truly have, without just buying your breakfast at Denny's?
Speaker 3:Well, it's like my buddy, Romy Camargo, says and I appreciate the question he's a quadriplegic, shot through the neck, lives in Tampa and opened a rehab center for other quadriplegics. And when that question gets asked to him the first thing he'll say is look, the American people are worth it, they're worth my injury. And this guy will never walk again, he'll never hold his child again. But I believe personally it's what we say on Memorial Day and we should really say every day is to live a life worthy of that sacrifice. You know is to bring it back to what we've talked about Live a life of individualism, rightly understood. Learn the Constitution, learn what it means to be a citizen. Teach your children about that.
Speaker 3:Veterans Day and Memorial Day is not just a sale at the car lot and a barbecue. Have the barbecue, enjoy the hell out of it because it was paid for. But there are inherent responsibilities that we have as citizens, to just be good citizens to. If civics isn't taught in schools, teach civics in schools. And, frankly, the book culminates with this. It talks about how do we get our upswing back as a nation. What can we do from the bottom up? And the reality is Todd, this country has been in a dark place before in the early 1900s. Reality is, todd, this country has been in a dark place before. In the early 1900s, america was at a very dark place. We faced a lot of the same challenges we face today. The pundits were saying she was on her last days and there was division. But then a couple of drunks in Akron, ohio, decided to get sober because nobody was coming and they started Alcoholics Anonymous, and then down the road, the Junior League, and then over here, the Rotary Club and the Lions Club and the NAACP, and on and on and on. It went from 1900 to 1920, the longest running period of bottom-up leadership, of individualism rightly understood. All those groups that you and our listeners knew as kids were formed in that period and it ran all the way until 1972. And then we started a downslide again. So how do we get that upslide back? I think we're on the cusp of it right now.
Speaker 3:I think it's podcasts, like what you're doing. I think it's what reemployability and others in y'all's industry do to solve a problem the government can't. I think it's bottom-up leadership and I think it's just recognizing, recognizing. And it starts with nobody's coming. If we're, if.
Speaker 3:Did anybody wake up this morning and just go. Oh my God, thank God for Washington DC. Oh man, I'm so glad they're there. I don't, I mean regardless of party. I don't think anybody did that, I didn't and I haven't ever. But I'm real glad for you in depth, and what you all do, and I celebrate it. And I celebrate like all around me, these people that are engaging and getting after it and just there's nobody's coming. So they're going to pick it up and they're going to do it.
Speaker 3:To me, that's the most exciting thing in the world as we go into Independence Day. It's what makes us so unique. It's what makes us so unique. It's what makes us individuals rightly understood, and I hope that people will recognize that. To me, that's what freedom is really about. Yes, your individualism, but is it rightly understood? And have you brought to bear the inherent responsibilities that you have as a citizen to ensure that that's available for the next generation? And if we all do that, yeah, we got some work to do, but I think our better days are in front of us.
Speaker 2:Scott, it's always such a pleasure. Our time goes so fast when we talk. Nobody's Coming to Save you is the name of the book. It comes out in October. Obviously, it can be purchased on Amazon and all the places where you get books. Please, I was fortunate enough to read it. Please pick it up. Check it out. It's really awesome, scott. Is there anything else you want to add as we wrap up?
Speaker 3:I would just ask that people really think about what their role is in their family and their community as we go into Independence Day. There's a big impact you can make. You can get big stuff done and yeah, man, I would love folks to pre-order that book. We really do want to hit the bestseller list because we want to create a movement when all this negative stuff surround us. I mean, and the pay to play to hit the bestseller list. We're not doing that, we're doing an organic approach and I think it would really send a message, like we did with Pineapple. Nobody thought Pineapple would do anything. It hit New York Times bestseller in four hours and I think it's because people were energized by the message and this notion of bottom up leadership and I would love to see us do it again. So if people could pre-order that, it makes a big impact in the list and I think we can celebrate that as a movement together, because I know the stuff in it will help folks, thank you.
Speaker 2:Thank you, scott, so appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Absolutely Take care everybody. Happy Independence Day.
Speaker 1:Freedom means the condition by which an individual can decide to think, express himself and act without constraint, using the will to conceive and implement an action through a free choice of the ends and tools he deems useful to carry it out.
Speaker 2:What Scott explains in his book will help you be better at whatever it is you focus. These strategies on Mastering the techniques of human understanding and connection will make you more successful as a risk manager, an adjuster, a mom, a grandparent and a husband. I hope you'll take advantage of the lessons he's gathered over the past 30 years and try some of them out. You can seize the opportunity to do what is right and celebrate your freedom. Thanks for listening to REA Audio. Please make sure to follow us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or Stitcher or wherever you get your podcasts. We appreciate you. Have a great rest of your week.