The Cost of Not Telling Your Story

I’m sitting in the audience in Tampa, Florida as a play has just ended. 

As a civilian not being part of the military, I am speechless reflecting on what I’ve just seen.

Although my Grandpa Joe and Uncle Jack were in the U.S. military many years ago, they never talked about their experiences being enlisted during war time. They have never shared their stories with me.

And this play has revealed the collateral costs of war... costs I never knew existed. 

From the emotional damage to the physical damage to the permanent pain, this play has evoked every emotion possible in me.

In that moment, still sitting in my seat, I know both civilians and military members, the country over, need to see what I’ve just seen on stage - but how?

Find out what happened next and what the true costs of not telling your story are, on this week’s Storytelling School Podcast.

My special guest this week and dear friend Retired Lieutenant Colonel Scott Mann is the creator of and lead actor in the play I witnessed, Last Out.

We talk about how he went from being a Green Beret to writing a play (it’s not what you think) and so many other areas, exploring questions such as:

How do you teach hard-learned lessons from a never-ending war to American civilians oblivious to it all? How did Operation Pineapple (a remote mission during the recent collapse in Afghanistan) produce high-stakes storytelling that changed an outcome in real-time? And how can you influence others who are reluctant to take action? 

Tune into this interview as we discuss these topics plus we reveal that Scott's play, Last Out, has been turned into a film debuting on Veterans Day!!

• How war stories can help us heal
• What people get wrong about storytelling
• Why storytelling is a much-needed “soft skill”

Retired Lt. Col Scott Mann is a keynote speaker, storyteller, and leadership coach. During his military service, 18 years of which he spent as a U.S. Green Beret, he specialized in unconventional, high-impact missions. He restored trust, created human connections, and solved problems that helped people worldwide stand up for themselves, even in places like Afghanistan and Iraq where it seemed impossible.

Thanks to his military experience, Scott’s taken his mastery of relationship-building to high-stakes, competitive environments like corporate boardrooms and conference rooms where trusted leadership is more valuable (and vulnerable) than ever. There, he helps organizations gain a better understanding of their internal culture and exposes areas of potential conflict where trust has deteriorated.

Nowadays, you can often find the retired Lt. Col making appearances on various news and syndicated radio channels such as CNN, Fox Business News, National Public Radio, and Wall Street Journal Radio. He’s also written op-eds that have appeared in the Tampa Tribune, Washington Post, and Small Wars Journal.

• Last Out: A Voice Never Heard
• Rooftop Leadership
• The Heroes Journey
• @lastoutplay on Instagram
• @rooftop_leadership on Instagram
• @RooftopLeader on Twitter
• @RooftopLeadership on Facebook
• Rooftop Leadership on LinkedIn
• @storytellingschool on Instagram
• @storytellingSchool on Facebook