February 13, 2023
Scott Mann, Founder of Rooftop Leadership
Warrior Leadership From Battlefields to Boardrooms – Scott Mann, Rooftop Leadership
Listen on:
When Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann retired as a U.S Army Green Beret, he did all the “right things”, until one day he took his 45 caliber pistol into his bedroom closet—with no intent of coming out alive.
Dark times for sure. In his nearly two decades of Special Forces experiences, Scott’s military journey took him to Colombia, Peru, Iraq, Ecuador, Panama and multiple tours to Afghanistan. Today Scott has completely rebooted himself into a top Storyteller, Actor, Playwright, Podcaster, Author, Speaker and Coach. Inspired by his tough journey, he founded Rooftop Leadership, to help leaders tackle the anomalies around low trust and how to build human connections in high stakes environments. His brutal transformation is an inspirational story for all of us—from the battlefield, to the boardroom—and even theater with his new partner Gary Sinise.
As a warrior storyteller, he shares his remarkable rapport-building skills from combat, to help leaders navigate “now-or-never” scenarios, with a focus on relationship building techniques. A replica of how he inspired local tribes in Iraq and Afghanistan, to make game-changing decisions with low resources—“Rooftop Leadership” is helping teams avoid conflicts by nurturing trust.
Scott joined me on an amazing episode of The Reboot Chronicles to reflect on how his decades of Special Forces deployments are changing civilians lives—they may even change yours.
Transition to A Civilian World
For anyone to have served in military uniform, coming back to civilian life is not just acclimatizing socially, but physically and more importantly mentally! Scott’s transition saw its rough course, albeit a loving family around, a phase he wouldn’t “wish on anybody” and one that felt “almost like being on a different planet. When I saw it at home, just the levels of distrust, the levels of division in this country, I had no idea where I was going to fit in. And that’s when the PTSD, the survivor’s guilt, all the things that I had buried for years just came flooding in and mood swings became very heavy.”
“Changing from the military, which is essentially a status based tribal type organization where your worth is literally determined by the connection that you have to the men and women in your tribe, whether that’s a marine Corps infantry platoon or Special Forces A-Team, your team is everything. All of a sudden, the next day you’re in a world where you’re dressed completely different, and it’s the polar opposite. It is a world of individuals where credit and achievement and how one navigates the world individually is really the metric by which things are measured in our society. Like it or not, that it is called a contract society. That is a hell of a thing for a war fighter to, and a military family member, to change from. It is literally like changing planets.”
When Storytelling Heals the Brain
Looking to civilian mentors, Scott found his way to come out of his mental wounds and express his agony with the help of narratives. A brilliant story teller and pro football player Bo Eason, mentored him on the power of story telling.
”He showed me how storytelling can be used to heal the brain and the soul, and also how you can use narrative to bridge those civil military gaps. So it gave me a way to not only come to terms with my purpose again, but also to take even the most the deepest trauma or the loss of a friend and put it into a narrative. I call it the generosity of stars, where you can repurpose your struggle in the service of others.” -which obviously is coming in handy to meet the needs of the business community.
Rooftop University
This trigger and finding the purpose helped shape Rooftop Leadership and build a curriculum around it called “Rooftop University”. Building credibility and relationships with tribal Afghan farmers who could be trained to fight from rooftops when the risk was high became a leadership lesson.
”Inspiring people to do what they do, not because they have to, but because they choose to in times of low trust and duress, I started calling it rooftop leadership. That was, you know, almost ten years ago. And I haven’t looked back since.”
Green Berets have long been known to move people to action through social capital and relationships. “People move and take action through and with the human connections that they have with others. That’s not restricted to a business society versus a tribal society. We’re still ancient brains in a modern world, and we operate almost exclusively off of human connection. We’ve just forgotten that.”
For present day virtual context, offering a “safe space” via his Rooftop University offering is helping leaders “gain relevance, community and leadership skills” from a subscription based online community and course library of Scott’s teaching.
“Operation Pineapple Express”, an incredible operation by retired Green Berets to save a comrade and 500 other Afghans, is now a book, and “Last Out”, is a play that’s becoming a country wide road show, “designed to help civilians understand what it was like for those who fought it, but also to validate and help veterans and family members make meaning out of their lived experience.”
As for how corporate leaders should look ahead, the “need to get back to our nature as humans and really focus on those visceral, primal ways that we navigate the world” and “be a storyteller” certainly augur well for the landscape ahead of us.
