Scott Mautz

Leadership: Moving Forward

Not since the Industrial Revolution has there been such a disruption in how we work, and how we relate to our work, as these pandemic-altered years. Leaders must understand that “what got you here won’t get you there” – in other words, it’s clearly not leadership as usual. Based on extensive research with C-suite and mid-level executives at over 300 organizations (of all sizes), this talk illuminates the mindset and skills now required for leaders to lead effectively in a pandemic-morphed workplace. The 5 most critical mindset elements/skills to build moving forward (dubbed “The High-Five”) are:

• Fostering a caring culture
• Enabling psychological safety (and empathy)
• Creating comfort with the unknown
• Fostering resilience/the will to persevere
• Creating commitment to change

The 60-75 minute keynote delves into each of the “High-Five” and provides pragmatic tools the audience can use to create new habits based on what they learned. The riveting session combines storytelling, data, powerful oratory, adult learning principles, and more to create a riveting experience the audience will find memorable and new-habit molding. It draws from the award-winning book: Leading from the Middle.

Target audience: Any organization seeking to keep its leaders learning and skilled at the most relevant skills required for leadership moving forward (given the profound change in work dynamics today).

The audience walks away with:

• an understanding of the most important leadership skills to build moving forward in a
  pandemic-changed workplace
• a deep sense of inspiration and energy
• a set of practical tools and a strong desire to use them immediately

Leading from the Middle

No group has a bigger impact on transforming an organization than those who must lead from the middle of that organization – those who have a boss and are a boss, who must lead up, down, and across as part of their job. This keynote draws from research with thousands of successful “middle managers” across a wide variety of organizations to give the audience the inspiration, insights, and pragmatic tools they need to truly excel in their vital role.

• The audience learns the SCOPE framework which outlines the unique challenges of those who lead from the messy middle. They learn the key skillset and mindset elements required to succeed in their job, and are moved to take pride in being the backbone of their organization.
• To lead up the organization brilliantly, the audience learns how to build better relationships with their boss, how to get crystal clear on expectations, and more.
• To lead down the organization with excellence, they learn how to pinpoint what an employee needs to improve upon, how to give transformative feedback, and more.
• To lead across the organization with savvy they learn things such as how to deal with difficult co-workers, the key to influencing peers, and more.

This powerful keynote draws from the book Leading from the Middle: A Playbook for Managers to Influence Up, Down, and Across the Organization. It’s wrapped in passionate oratory with fascinating research and compelling stories that will keep the audience riveted the entire time. A robust toolkit is also provided for the audience so that they can immediately put into practice what they just heard.

Being in the middle doesn’t mean being stuck in the middle. It means a chance to lead– in every direction. It’s a badge of pride. And now your audience will have the tools and inspiration to do it brilliantly.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Anyone who has a boss and is a boss (or aspires to be a boss/manager of others someday); anyone who wants to improve their skills at leading from the middle of their organization.

The audience walks away with:

• a sense that they are understood and appreciated
• a sense of community in that they’re not alone in dealing with the unique challenges they face
• inspiration, insight, and specific tools to help them lead brilliantly up, down, and across their organization (and a strong desire to apply what they’ve learned)
• a deep sense of personal inspiration/motivation/energy

The Secret to High-Performing Organizations (A Leadership Toolkit)

The secret to the highest-performing organizations might surprise you – and it’s something truer than ever in these pandemic altered times.  This riveting keynote reveals that it’s a workforce deeply motivated by leaders adept at fostering meaning both in and at work. Cutting-edge research shows that today’s evolving workforce (increasingly influenced by the Millennial/Gen Z population and shaped by these tumultuous times) isn’t as motivated by perks, promotions, or pay, which many leaders still mistakenly believe is the case.

It’s the presence of meaning in one’s work that truly engages, motivates, and retains employees, and it does so on a sustaining basis (unlike other temporary fixes). And groundbreaking research shows that meaning-rich organizations get business results like no other.

The audience is then introduced to “The Markers of Meaning”–specific conditions the leader can foster that create meaning in and at work (shaping work that matters, feeding learning and personal growth, fostering a sense of competency and self-esteem, granting autonomy, and crafting an environment of caring/teamwork/authenticity). Practical, pragmatic tools are provided in the talk (and at the end of the talk) so the audience can immediately put into practice what they just heard.

This powerful keynote draws from the multi-award-winning, bestselling book, Make It Matter. Compelling stories, insightful examples, fascinating research, humor, and compelling oratory are all woven together into a highly memorable talk.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Leaders of any kind seeking to unlock employee engagement, meaning, and meaningful achievement (while improving recruitment and retention efforts).

The audience walks away with:

• an understanding of what truly motivates and engages today’s workforce
• knowledge of how to foster the conditions that create meaning, sustained motivation, and peak performance
• a strong sense of enhanced leadership skills
• a set of practical tools and a desire to immediately use them
• a strong desire to apply what they’ve just learned
• a deep sense of personal inspiration/motivation/energy

Flourishing in the Face of Change

Unprecedented times have forced huge change on many businesses, and individuals. And the truth is, change can galvanize or paralyze a company and its employees. How leaders spearhead change matters, but how employees live it matters just as much. This keynote focuses on how employees can thrive, not just survive, through change (while the “Flourishing in the Face of Change Workshop” focuses on helping leaders lead change).

This keynote first establishes the fundamental Choice of Change: Change can happen to you or for you. You choose how you’ll view it. The audience then learns of the Change Curve (something every human being goes through with each change they encounter) and then why we tend to struggle so much with change and end up giving away our power in the face of it. That leads to the Core Challenges of Change–what research shows are the most common and caustic ways we struggle with change. The Core Challenges include:

• Discomfort with the unknown and fear of failure
• We get stuck in our story
• Will to persevere/resilience falters
• Losing sight of the fundamentals

Awareness elevates and answers are provided for how to prevail with each of these challenges.

This riveting keynote is inspired by the multi-award-winning, bestselling book, Find the Fire and uses story-telling, fascinating research, powerful examples, humor, video, passionate oratory and more to captivate the audience the entire time.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Employees and leaders in any organization experiencing significant change.

Employees walk away with:

• a strong sense of energy and inspiration, ready to adopt the kind of winning, science-backed mindset/behaviors that will have them flourishing in a crucial time of change for their company
• a new appreciation that to flourish versus flounder in change, it’s up to each individual employee
• a set of practical tools and a desire to use them immediately

Fuel the Fire (Maximize Your Momentum)

After an extended challenging period for your business and employees, you’re gaining momentum again–and you’d like to keep it that way (and fuel it further). But unbeknownst to you, a specific set of insidious forces can quietly kick in, slowly draining a sense of inspiration from the workforce and causing precious momentum to sneak out the side door. In fact, a stunning 70% of employees have lost that lovin’ feeling and can be coded as disengaged. This epidemic doesn’t have to strike at your workplace.

Dips in feeling inspired are natural, but employee’s passively waiting around for the organization to reignite their sense of inspiration at such times isn’t the answer. Most people try to relight their spark by asking “What inspires me?” (followed by attempts to do more of that), but research shows that doesn’t work. The question to ask is “How did I lose my inspiration in the first place?” And the answer is “The Anti-Muses”: what psychology teaches us are the forces working to quietly sap inspiration from you over time.

The audience then learns of the most common, caustic ways these Anti-Muses combine forces to set traps for us, thus leeching our inspiration away and bringing momentum to a screeching halt. The audience learns to free themselves from:

• Fear of failure and criticism
• Change fatigue
• Perseverance faltering
• Dis-empowering inner-dialogue
• Undervaluing values
• Fostering a callous vs. caring environment

This inspiring keynote draws from the multi-award-winning, bestselling book, Find the Fire. Powerful stories, insightful examples, fascinating research, humor, and compelling oratory are all woven together into a highly memorable talk.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Anyone wanting to keep the positive momentum going in their organization (and build on it) and not fall prey to the research-proven most common and caustic inspiration drains that can enter the picture.

The audience walks away with:

• an understanding of the most common and caustic ways our inspiration gets drained, and how to prevent those from taking hold
• a deep sense of inspiration from what they’ve just heard
• more energy and motivation
• a set of practical tools and a desire to use them immediately

How to Leave a Legacy at Work (and in Life)

Is your organization in a pivotal moment where it faces big goals and needs everyone fired up to deliver? A period of time when everyone has a chance to forge their legacy, their lasting, unique imprint on the business? If you’re nodding ‘yes’ to this, then this spellbinding keynote is just what’s needed.

When all is said and done, we all want to feel that our time at work, and on this planet, really made a difference–to the organization, others, and ourselves. We all want to know we’ve left a meaningful legacy behind. And it’s during pivotal moments that we can stop to identify, articulate, and begin pursuing exactly what we want our legacy to be, at work and in life.

The audience is first drawn into the power of leaving a legacy behind and the importance of being intentional in doing so. They’re made to see that they’re currently in a pivotal moment on their business (or in life), they simply must choose to see it that way.

They then learn about The Footprints of Legacy–the manners in which we tend to leave a lasting impact behind, especially the ways we can leave a positive impact on others. If we’re made aware of the “buckets” of ways in which we can leave footprints, then we can work to fill each bucket, even if just a little, every day.

The keynote will then do a double-click on the specific steps one can take to identify, articulate, and begin fulfilling a legacy left behind via meaningful results at work.

This powerful, inspiring keynote draws from the multi-award-winning, bestselling book, Make It Matter and uses video, music, story-telling, fascinating research, provocative questions, passionate oratory and more to captivate the audience the entire time.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Anyone in a pivotal moment where the opportunity is ripe to make their mark and leave a legacy of enduring results (and more) behind.

The audience walks away with:

• an understanding of how to leave a legacy of results and resonance at work (and in life), triggered by the perception they’re in a pivotal moment
• a deep sense of inspiration, motivation, and energy
• a set of practical tools and a strong desire to use them immediately

The Feel of World-Class Teams

The key driver of the most collaborative, tightest-knit, top-achieving teams might surprise you. Cutting-edge research (informed by increasingly greater proportions of millennials and Gen Z’ers) shows that it’s not about who is on the team, what the team has accomplished in the past, or what its processes and procedures are, but how the team makes you feel. It’s all about the team norms, the psychological and behavioral vibe present; i.e. how membership on that team makes each team member feel.

The audience discovers this insight, then learns how they can foster their own super-harmonious team, one both rewarding to be on and that gets bigtime results. It requires understanding and acting on the 6 most common and powerful sentiments that world-class teams feel – the 6 sentiments that statistically correlate most with a tight-knit, top-achieving team. Specifically, world-class teams feel:

• No fear of failure
• Psychological safety/no fear of criticism
• Comfort with the unknown
• The will to persevere
• Caring and camaraderie
• Interdependence

The audience becomes aware of these sentiments and well-equipped to foster each one on their own team.

This energizing keynote draws from the multi-award-winning, bestselling books, Find the Fire and Make It Matter. Powerful stories, insightful examples, fascinating research, humor, and compelling oratory are all woven together into a highly memorable talk.

Length: 60-75 minutes

Target audience: Anyone wanting to forge a highly collaborative, tight-knit team that consistently overdelivers.

The audience walks away with:

• awareness of the 6 sentiments that world-class teams foster and
• understanding of how to replicate those feelings on their own team
• a deep sense of inspiration and energy from what they’ve just heard
• a set of practical tools and a desire to use them immediately