The Rooftop Podcast

Our theme this week, as we go into our second month of narrative competence, is “Birthing your Story”. It is a hard process. It is a challenging task and it comes from within us, and that's why you'll often hear authors and creatives call it “birthing a story” because it's difficult. It's painful. It doesn't feel good often times when we're doing this. It's hard work. It's deep work. Birthing a st...

The Hero's Journey is a timeless story, it is one of the oldest forms of story in the world, it is a structure that can really serve you well when you are leading with story. The Hero's Journey framework, was really codified by a guy named Joseph Campbell and his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. What Campbell essentially said is, every hero, or every protagonist, or main character, if you will...

So, what is it about story that makes it so powerful? In this month of July, we're focusing on Narrative Competence, Part One. And before I get you on your feet, and start having you develop your story, I want to talk about, "What is it that must be in a story?" Let’s talk about five critical components you would want to include in a story. They're not the only five, but they are five, “...

I learned storytelling in one of the hardest environments in the world which is tribal society, at-risk, and under-governed, and really on the edges of tribal warfare. That's where I learned storytelling as a Green Beret, to go in and make human connections across vast trust gaps that if we got them wrong, could mean life, death, mission failure at a strategic level. The understanding of high stak...

Kendall Haven calls us “Homo-Narratus”. Storytelling has become an evolutionary tool in our survival and why we sit at the top of the food chain. This is why story is so powerful. It's 100,000 years of hard wiring in every human's body. Now, what Kendall says, is that humans have this thing called a make sense mandate. We must make sense of things in order to do them. In order to take a risk, to b...

Narrative competence is one of the best ways to make a human connection. Inside narrative competence, lies the integration of storytelling, high-stakes listening, and then nonverbal skills for deep human connections to help you achieve your goals. If you want to move people to take action, if you want to inspire people to follow you, storytelling, the command of story and narrative in your daily d...

"Freedom isn’t free.” We hear this all the time don’t we. It’s become cliche and over-used. But as we party down this July 4th and continue down the path of a divided America…what do Rooftop Leaders really need to know about this elusive thing and what can we do about it? I'll see you on the Rooftop... Scott Scott Mann breaks it down in this special holiday Rooftop Podcast Episode. There is s...

Narrative competence. Whether you are a senior leader in a Fortune 100 company, whether you are a speaker, whether you are a small business owner, a nonprofit owner, a warrior, or a transitioning warrior, pretty much anything where you have to deal with people and achieve big things in a high stakes environment, narrative competence is absolutely essential. We've got a major disconnect between top...

Anytime there's somebody that's losing me, that can't stay focused for more than three seconds, I say, "Squirrel!" That's kind of the thing that we use these days to illustrate somebody who can't stay focused, and I believe that is permeating our culture. Humans are severely distracted, and again, if you can't make a human connection as a leader today, then you're pretty irrelevant. You...

As you think about leadership today in your organization, in your household, in your community, do you see lots of motivation? Do you see lots of engagement? Do you see a lot of collective energy, or do you see evidence of apathy, disengagement, disconnection? Our theme this month is the challenge of human connection, understanding your arena and that no one wins alone, and if you want to accompli...

Community trust, the ability to trust your neighbor, is going down. This is not a doom and gloom thing. I mean, we've actually been here before. Trust can be restored. I saw trust restored in some of the most trust-depleted villages on the planet in southern and eastern Afghanistan by brave Special Ops leaders and others who went in there to help people believe in themselves at a community level....

So when’s the last time you thought about revenge? In modern society, in daily life, things like thoughts of ‘revenge’ show up that have been around for a hundred thousand years. Things like when you think that your resources might be in scarcity, you kind of change. You get kind of squirrely. When you think your job might be in jeopardy, you get kind of squirrely. If you see that one company acqu...

Two core questions that every human asks themselves at night when everyone else is asleep, who am I? And why am I here? These are questions that we are seeking answers to our entire life. And I don't know that we ever truly find the answer but we can get more clear each time we try. Why would you do that? Why would you go through all of this? Because frankly we're busy, it's hard, it's not necessa...

This month our theme is, Know Thyself, so now we’re going to start getting clear on what are the countermoves that you can use to overcome resistance. This is what professionals do. Amateurs don’t do this. Amateurs just succumb to resistance over and over again. Pros recognize that they have to fight the battle anew every day, that they’re going to have to face resistance every day, and that they...

How do I define a 'Personal Superpower'? It's those traits and characteristics that you can bring to bear externally that add value to the lives of others. How about that? Did you write that down? Those traits and characteristics that you can apply externally to others that add value to the life of others. That's what I classify as a personal superpower. Join me by the campfire and let’s talk abou...

My dad, Rex Mann has always said, "Leave your tracks in this world." He described tracks as those indelible impressions that we leave in the Earth that serve, not those around us necessarily, as much as they serve those who follow you. “Torches” is simply the word I use to describe our passions for operationalizing those deep tracks. Tracks are forever. They're your inner compass. They a...

"Whatever, man." How many times have you heard that word, "whatever?" I hear it all the time in just day to day life when I'm interacting with people on the road or on calls. I hear this word, "whatever." I hate the word because it embodies, really, the theme for this week which is indifference. Steven Pressfield says that the opposite of love is not hate, it's indiff...

Now, we've talked about other enemies, we've talked about the erosion of trust, we've talked about distraction through the Guppy Effect. Enemies in this sense, are the enemies that stand between you and the tracks you want to leave in this world and the goals as a Rooftop Leader that you want to fulfill on that will help people and inspire people to take action to do bigger things because they wan...

Distraction is a huge problem for leaders like us isn’t it. The average human only pays attention for a few seconds. How do you deal with that when everyone has their head in their devices? In this episode, Scott will give you five unmatched best practices to overcome the "Guppy Effect.” Join us…and share this podcast with your Tribe! See you on the Rooftop!

Microsoft has done a study that has shown that the goldfish has an average attention span of nine seconds, and the average human today has an attention span of eight seconds. Our attention span is one second less than a friggin’ goldfish, but check this out. The guppy has an attention span of 15 seconds. What I’m telling you as you’re watching this right now, the guppy has almost two times the att...

Know thy enemy. I'm talking about one enemy in particular today, an enemy I call 'the churn'. So, what's happened to trust today? Look at your own world, your own life. Turn on the news for 15 seconds. What do you see? You see churn. Go to work and look at how people treat each other. Look at the little groups that form. That’s churn. Look at any kind of political conversation today, whether it's...

"No One Wins Alone." That’s our theme this month in Rooftop Leadership and the topic of this podcast. I believe this in my very core. That’s why I hang out with four guys who call ourselves “Raw Mastermind.” This little group is a team that has helped me grow my business and enrich my life. You can build the same kind of team right now and play a bigger game. Give this podcast a listen a...

Well all fear it. We all fear rejection from our peers, from our family members, from the people closest to us. There's a saying, 'crabs in a bucket', whenever one crab starts to crawl out of a bucket, the other crabs will reach up and pull that crab back down into the bucket. "Get your ass back down here," right? That's what happens just as he's right on the edge of making it out. Why i...

So what I want to talk about this week is this notion of building a team, what really goes into it. I’d like you thinking about your team. I’d like you thinking about what it means to you and even evaluating where you are in your journey right now and if you’ve got the right people on the bus to build this team. When I was in Special Forces, I will tell you, we put an inordinate amount of time int...

No one wins alone. I’d like you to remember that metaphor for your life. No matter how talented you are, no matter how dedicated you are, how great your plan is, how wonderful your skills are, no one wins alone. Eventually someone’s going to roll a grenade in the room with you and if you don’t have a strong team, you’re going to go down. You may go down with self-sabotage or you may go down just s...