185: Scott Mann, Life After Afghanistan

Please welcome Retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. 

As a Green Beret, Scott designed and led the local village stability operations program in Afghanistan.

After leaving the military, he began to focus on using his experience with the struggle of transitioning from a fast-paced and high-risk lifestyle to build a healthy transition to the civilian world of work and family. As a result, he launched "Heroes Journey" to help servicemembers, first responders, and their families cope with post-crisis trauma through storytelling.

Scott also wrote and featured in the play and film "Last Man Out," which portrays the impacts of war on our Veterans and their families

Additionally, after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Scott and others launched Task Force Pineapple Express to help Afghan partners leave the country. 

Lastly, Scott has made three appearances on TEDx to discuss his work with veterans and first responders and is announcing his new book, "No One is Coming to Save You," which will be released in October. 

This discussion is split into two separate episodes. 

The first one is to discuss Scott's work prior to the book "No One is Coming to Save You," which airs in October. The Second episode releases in September and is a discussion and the book.

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One CA is a product of the civil affairs association 

and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on the ground with a partner nation's people and leadership.

We aim to inspire anyone interested in working in the "last three feet" of U.S. foreign relations. 

To contact the show, email us at [email protected] 

or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www civilaffairsassoc.org

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Special thanks to Ahimsaz for the sample of “Shahamat." Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wmoH-fHhwQ

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Transcript

00:00:03    Introduction
Welcome to the 1CA podcast. This is your host, Jack Gaines. 1CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military, diplomats, development officers, and field agents to discuss their experiences on ground with the partner nation's people and leadership. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working the last three feet of foreign relations. To contact the show, email us at capodcasting at gmail .com or look us up on the Civil Affairs Association website at www .civilaffairsassos .org. I'll have those in the show notes.

00:00:40    JACK GAINES
Please welcome retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann. As a Green Beret, Scott designed and led the local village stability operations program in Afghanistan. After leaving the military, he began to focus on using his experience with the struggle of transition from a fast -paced, high -risk lifestyle to the civilian world of work and family. As a result, he launched Hero's Journey to help other service members, first responders, and their families cope with post -crisis trauma through storytelling. Scott also wrote and featured in the play and film Last Man Out, which portrays the impacts of war on our veterans and their families. Additionally, after Kabul fell to the Taliban, Scott and others launched Task Force Pineapple Express to help Afghan partners leave the country. Lastly, Scott has made three appearances on TEDx to discuss his work with veterans and first responders and is now announcing his new book, No One is Coming to Save You, which will be released in October. This discussion is split into two separate episodes. The first one is to discuss Scott's work leading up to the book, and the second is a follow -up discussion and the book. So enjoy.

00:01:48    SCOTT MANN
We run really, really hard and we've got a lot going on in our family and stuff, you know, just with my parents' help. And so getting time to just recharge and recover is, it's a long game, right? You got to play the long game.

00:02:01    JACK GAINES
Well, I don't want to get too deep into your persona. Oh, no, no, it's fine. Or your family or anything, but you're finding balance in that to where it's not killing you or anything. Well, I think so.

00:02:08    SCOTT MANN
or anything. Well, I think so. Balance is something I find myself pursuing, never achieving, but I think as best we can. My dad and I are very similar in the sense that we both, believe that when we leave this world, we will get the car in sideways with a yeehaw and roll out the door. So it's hard to turn that off, but I think you have to manage that because it's just not everybody runs at that rate.

00:02:31    JACK GAINES
Right. And also sometimes you don't know if you're going 70 or 90. Yeah. And you might be actually driving harder, faster to that skidding sideways. Yeah. Great. You know where you could have a fruitful, happy life if you pace.

00:02:36    SCOTT MANN
And you

00:02:46    JACK GAINES
Or if I just built the habit of running at this pace and I can't know how to stop?

00:02:50    SCOTT MANN
That's very well said. And, you know, you have to ask yourself sometimes, why am I running this hard or going this fast? Is it something I'm running towards or something I'm running from? That's the other thing.

00:03:01    JACK GAINES
Now that you've come full circle, you've done your time in the military, you've gotten out, you've got kids coming into the military. My audience are either diplomats or military or aid or field agents. They're in the mix right now. How do we help them to come to a better transition? Should they be working the same strategies and tactics they are with Partner Nation, with their families? Do you see them needing more space? They come home and transition. Do you support counseling? What are your thoughts on that?

00:03:34    SCOTT MANN
What makes that question even more profound is how contextually relevant to the audience that you just described to me. And you actually provided some answers in that as you asked the question, which is great. I feel like I learned more after I got out of the military about what it means to be more engaging, more effective as a father, as a husband, as a leader in the military. And I think the reason was because I went through a really, really bad transition. I went from... This place where I felt like I was very high performing as a Green Beret in Afghanistan, doing village stability operations, working very, very heavily in the interagency environment. Then all of a sudden you're out and you're walking around your house in your flip -flops, showering every other day. No one's calling. Yeah. No one's emailing you. It's like changing planets. The other part of it for me was coming back to a country that was so divided and just so different than what I had remembered. So all of that conspired to create an environment for me where it just got very dark, very disconnected, very isolated. And it caused me to really reevaluate everything about myself, everything, and question everything about myself, from my manhood to my abilities as a father, as a husband, my relevance on this earth, which was very scary. And I almost didn't come back from. But I did. And in that process, through the help of some very, very skunkum civilian mentors, was a way to kind of reconnect at the most basic primal visceral level to my own nature, to those around me, and really through old school interpersonal skills like storytelling to make meaning out of things that I had assumed that I understood. And I know that's a long way around, but what I'm getting at here is that my journey to even answer that question was really ugly and clunky, and it was post -military. And then it was reacquainting myself with the real primal realities of the human operating system and how humans navigate the world, regardless of our industry. And once I kind of reconnected with that, I found a lot of answers, I think, that I wish I had had when I was. engaging partner nations when I was in the interagency environment, when I was a father and a husband in a high stress environment. And so what I would say to maybe kick things off is I believe in the definition of leadership that Professor James Clawson puts forward out at Darden University. He says that humans are mostly energy and that leadership is the management of energy, yours and those around you. And I don't distinguish between the management of that energy with my sons. My wife, an ambassador, client at Capital One that I'm trying to work with, or an employee who's had a terrible family experience and is distraught. All of that is the management of energy in real time. Both parties trying to meet their goals. And only the context changes. And I think it's our ability to have a process for managing energy with human engagement that's so important. And I don't think there's a way of negotiating with ambassadors and a way of negotiating with your children. I think leadership is leadership and it really comes with how we lead ourselves.

00:07:02    JACK GAINES
That's interesting. You say it was an ugly transition, but it's a transition that, as you know, many veterans struggle with every day and that you actually broke through the wall. Yes, those are the first to break through any wall are going to get bloodied, but you have found a vision of expanding that voice so that others can see it. And I've kind of seen your efforts in plays and the books and the talks and the podcasts. as you trying to say, hey, yeah, it was hard. It was real hard for me. Let me help you avoid some of those things so you don't have to go that dark and you don't have to get banged up like this so that we can all come out and prosper together. Yeah.

00:07:40    SCOTT MANN
I asked myself a very troubling question, but actually a question that probably saved my life in those dark times was, do I still have relevance on this earth? Do I still have something to say? Because I felt like maybe I didn't. But as I started to really explore that question, I realized that I did. I had a lot to say. I had learned a lot as a Green Beret working in low -trust, high -stakes environments, in particular with village stability operations, because I had been gifted the opportunity as a field -grade officer to really be the program manager for Green Berets back out into the rural areas of Afghanistan, working very closely with civil affairs and SIOP, but also state department, development workers. Even the academic weeks that we would run before every deployment, it was my opportunity to put those things together. And I got to meet this amazing community of practitioners from all these different realms that would never sit in the same room together, yet they were looking at the same wicked problem. And when you brought their functionality of understanding, really, the human operating system, as I call it, this ancient creature that is hundreds of thousands of years old and how it's trying to make sense of a modern world. It was the synthesis of all these wonderful points of view from these various disciplines and agencies that helped me craft a methodology that I still teach today. I call it rooftop leadership, but it really is this ability to understand our innate realities as humans, what makes us tick at a practitioner level, well, not a clinical level, and then use those as filters in how we see ourselves and how we see the world that most people don't take the time to do in this churn that we're in. but also as levers for authentic influence, storytelling, active listening, nonverbal physicality, breath. And that actually informed the answer to my question because I said to myself, man, if I could share that, that I learned at the latter part of my career on how to go into these really dynamic environments and manage the energy in the room through the science, not just the art, but the science of old school interpersonal skills. What could that do in this time of low trust and churn here in the country? So for me, that was a real profound answer because then once I learned how to use storytelling to do that, storytelling became the modality by which I could bridge this gap. And then once that emotional breach was done, then come in with the things about the human operating system that we've ignored, we've forgotten, that can really address a lot of today's ills. And that started to give me purpose again. It started to give me meaning again. And frankly, it allowed me to evolve into, I consider myself an artist. I consider myself a catalyst. I consider myself a person who was put on this earth to leave tracks for others, as my dad says. So yeah, it's been a really cool ride, but I do view the rest of my life as one where I try to pour myself into other people. and really hold space for them while they figure out how they're going to have that strategic impact through human connection. And the interesting thing is that sense of purpose is universal in a lot of ways.

00:10:49    JACK GAINES
interesting thing is that sense of purpose is universal in a lot of ways. It's not just soldiers that struggle with that. Yeah. And they struggle with, is this all I am? Is this what my goal is? And it takes working with these folks and trying to find out what their vision is and the challenge of overcoming all the obstacles to achieve. Some sense who they are and why they are a part of this earth. It's a tough one, especially if people are really ambitious. That's a hunger. That's a beast to feed.

00:11:19    SCOTT MANN
feed. And we're taught to be that way in the line of work that most of your listeners are in. We're conditioned that way at a subconscious level. We already have drivers to pursue that, or you probably wouldn't be in that line of work. But here's the thing. You just gave a perfect example that I'd like to just back up and pull the thread on a little bit when you talk about purpose and meaning. So in my book, Nobody's Coming to Save You, that I've got coming out this fall, that is one of the areas where we go deep. And so purpose and meaning, we talk about it all the time. But to me, it was always kind of nebulous. Even when Simon Sinek talks about people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. I love that statement, but I couldn't help but wonder, yeah, but why is that? And I'm like a little five -year -old. Because I need to know why that is. The Green Beret in me wants to understand the science of it. This just I'm OK, you're OK kind of thing. This just good self -talk and I should do it because you said so. There was so much skepticism coursing through my veins. I needed to understand at a visceral fundamental level why meaning and purpose is so profoun