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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm, I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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I m Jordan at theartofcharm.com, or call the office, number s right on the website.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at AOC.
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Today we re talking with Steven Mansfield.
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He s an author and a leadership coach, as much as I hate that term, and we talk about that as well.
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Why most men don t have a best friend anymore, why men need the older brother figure and what s called the free fire zone in order to develop and grow,
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and why you need a band of brothers to keep you on course and make you a great man, and of course, how to build that band of brothers.
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So enjoy this one with Steven Mansfield.
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So tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I am an author, I am a consultant, and I run a publishing firm in Nashville in Washington, D.C.
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Excellent.
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I mean, you write a lot about very diverse topics.
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First of all, the miracle of the Kurds, the faith of George W. Bush, the faith of Barack Obama.
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There s a common thread here, but this is some pretty deep stuff.
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You must love research.
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I do love research and I like applying the research and history to real diverse topics.
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I ve written a big book on Guinness, the brewing company.
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I ve written on politicians and long dead people and all kinds of things.
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So yeah, I really do enjoy the research and I enjoy diving into history a bit.
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Further, you re a leadership coach, which is, it s funny because Jason and I were just talking about, that s one of those terms that s kind of been used so much, it s, you re probably getting a little bit of blowback on it these days.
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It s like social media expert, where everybody who doesn t really know how to explain what they do has started to co-opt that for themselves.
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Yeah, you know, the way it started is we did a lot of communications training.
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We would take CEOs, politicians, whoever, MBA people who were going to go on the public stage, and we would teach them how to communicate.
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We also wrote their speeches, especially in politics.
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And in time, it just evolved to where they wanted us not only to craft their message, but to craft their leadership style.
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So we just used the word consultant, leadership consultant, and then the term leadership coach came along, and I put it on, but maybe I should take it off and go back to what I was doing before.
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Yeah, I don t know.
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I mean, that part s up to you, but I just, I thought it was funny because I m like, ah, he s probably been using this for 20 years, and now it s the latest buzzword.
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One of the things that we like to focus on the show.
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I mean the show is primarily geared towards men.
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We have a lot of female listeners and everybody s pretty open minded about the topics we do here.
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But one thing I want to focus on is what we call forming a band of brothers.
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And this was an idea that you and I had sort of discussed a couple of months ago when we talked about you coming on the show.
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There s not a whole lot of this going on these days.
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When we hear a band of brothers, we think of course TV show, which then leads to military and then from there kind of degenerates into what, like gangs and things like that.
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But normal, quote unquote normal guys, we don t seem to have a whole lot of brotherhood going on these days.
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It s not really, I don t know if it s not something we value or if it s just something we don t have an opportunity to pursue.
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Well, I think it s both.
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I think we both don t have an opportunity to value it, but then our society just moves us away from it.
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So we re not building it consciously.
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I think in today s society, a man is going to have to just consciously and intentionally go after a band of brothers.
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I mean, the stats are really startling.
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The average guy in America over 25 cannot name a best friend.
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The average guy over 25 does not know who he would call to get his son out of jail if the guy was out of town and his son got in trouble.
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Who would you call to go get your son out of jail at 3 in the morning?
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The other question that they ask in the surveys is, who would you call to go help your wife at 1 in the morning if you re out of town and somebody s got to go help her?
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She s in her 90 and she s in trouble.
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Who do you trust to do that?
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It s really chronic.
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The average American male is lonely.
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He can t name close friends.
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He could name them in high school or college.
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He could name them, you know, in his earlier life, but he s just simply outgrown them.
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And we may be heading the way of England in this sense.
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In England, the main cause of death among men over 50 years of age is suicide.
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And the main reason that they give in suicide notes and other kinds of analyses is loneliness.
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Wait a minute, so the leading cause of death among men over 50, you mean more than heart disease and car accidents is suicide?
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Are you sure?
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I probably should put the word unnatural in there.
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Okay.
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The leading cause of unnatural death, now obviously, you know, a guy dies at 80, 90, you know, just of old age, but for men above 50, the leading cause of, maybe we could use the word unexpected, unnatural.
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unusual death is suicide.
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That s really the only country in the Western world where that s true at this point.
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Wow, loneliness, that sounds like a bad way to go, first of all.
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It does.
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I love how that was a survey question, though.
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Who would you call to get your kid out of jail?
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Who would you call to help your wife?
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I feel like in the middle of that survey, I d be like, hey, hang on a second, I gotta text my wife and kid, because I feel like there s something I should know here.
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You re right, when we re kids, you have trouble deciding who s your best friend.
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And the older you get, sort of the more clear or maybe ambiguous that becomes, but then suddenly you find yourself in the working world after university, and it s like, best friend, I don t know, I talked to my buddy Gabriel like last month, or was that last month, or was that two months ago?
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I guess he s my best friend.
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And then you get the kind of cliche, but very sweet, well, my wife or my husband, they re my best friend.
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That s great, but it s not the same thing.
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That s exactly right.
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Most men are very wistful and kind of sentimental when they go down memory lane and they remember the buddies they had in high school, college, maybe their early professional days when they were single.
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But job, career, marriage, family sort of moved them away from those relationships or just natural moving around like we all do.
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And then you re right.
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What happens is that phone call to a best friend happens once a year, but you are floating around in a sea of casual relationships and you don t really have anybody in your life, any male in your life that you can count on.
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And then, of course, men make the mistake of looking for their wives to provide what really a band of friends who are invested should provide.
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And that begins to put stress on a marriage that psychologists tell us really can cause destruction.
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So it s a bad progression and it just happens naturally.
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And that s why we ve got to be a bit more intentional about building this band of brothers.
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And so what are the differences then between men s relationships and women s relationships that makes this concept important in the first place?
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Well, men, it s very interesting.
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They do studies where they put little girls and little boys in a room.
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And little girls will actually, let them manipulate the environment as they want.
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Little girls will turn the chairs facing each other.
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look at each other and then one of them will say, I like your hair, you know, or whatever.
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And then they re, they re off to the races talking about things like that.
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Little boys will turn the chairs side by side, sit there, not talk to each other, look out at the world and finally say something like, I bet we can climb that tree.
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I bet we can set that thing over there on fire.
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I bet, you know, that we can beat them at volleyball over there.
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In other words, they start thinking of something to do together.
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So men need to feel themselves part of a team.
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They need the older brother syndrome, they need the older brother input, and they also need people with whom they have what I call a free-fire zone.
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Men respond better than women, and this is certainly no commentary on women s athletic ability, but men rely on, I should say, more desperately, maybe that s the way to say it, the coaching, the input from the older brother, the guy who s holding up a mirror, the guy who s telling him the truth about himself that nobody else will.
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So male relationships are very different.
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Women are more easily combined, they more easily bond, they more easily invest in each other.
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Men need to have some kind of a common cause, some kind of a common thing.
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They re doing something, the psychologists call it indirect, to do, you know, build a house, climb a mountain, be on a team, do something together.
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And out of that comes the kind of relationships that helps them become better men as those relationships get more genuine and more hard-hitting and more fun.
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So it s important for us to focus on this and earlier.
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I just kind of want to back up a second because you said society moves us away from the concept of surrounding ourselves with these types of relationships.
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How does society do that, or how do you think society does that, or how does this seem to be happening, and why?
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Sure.
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First of all, I think relationships are not a skill that we teach, to men anyway.
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They happen so naturally in, like I say, high school, college, earlier ages, that we don t teach the skills of these things.
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We don t teach to a young man the importance of a band of brothers.
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We don t take it beyond just who s on the basketball team in high school, or who s on the cross-country team, that kind of thing.
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So a guy has a natural band of brothers, a natural group of friends,
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when he s younger, but he goes into adulthood without the skills of making that happen.
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Then, of course, what s a young man expected to do after high school, after college?
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He s expected to get a job, and that starts to take 40, 50, 60 hours a week.
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Then, of course, he pursues the lady of his dreams, and he marries her, and he has children.
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And all of that, if he s not being intentional about maintaining a band of brothers or a group of invested friends in his life, naturally, he drifts towards wife, children, home, responsibilities, job, and moves away from the kinds of relationships that are essential to him.
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And he ends up, because of our, again, our mobility and because of his work and his focus, he ends up one day, not too long down the road, mid-30s, 40s, and he s in a sea of casual relationships without anybody to do any of the things
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that I mentioned in those survey questions.
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Well, anybody who s watching him, big brothering him, giving him somebody to invest with, having rowdy fun with, et cetera, and that s causing horrible problems.
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So it s not society s fault, but it is something that happens to a man because he s kind of caught up in the currents of society and the social norms of society.
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Back to Steven Mansfield.
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So maybe I m a little dense, and I definitely did hear the statistic about suicide in the UK, but is there a danger to that?
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What if I m not lonely?
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What if I have a bunch of kids, or I volunteer a lot, and I ve got a bunch of close family?
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Do I really need friends?
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Well, you know, every man needs friends at a different level.
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You know, some guys are a little bit more introverted.
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They re a little bit more bookish.
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Maybe they are, you know, runners or marathoners.
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They spend a lot of time alone.
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That s fine.
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We re not saying there s anything wrong with that.
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But every man has got to have men around him who are helping him to be a better man.
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And along the way, I hope, having a good laugh and some fun.
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I think that any man who thinks that he can do without other men speaking into his life, challenging him,
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helping him round out.
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If all a man has is his alone time, his wife and his children, then he s not going to be rounded.
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He s not going to have people who can warn him about things.
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He s not going to have people who challenge him to be a better man.
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I don t think he s going to be what somebody called a 360 man, a fully orbed man, a fully developed man.
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You ve got to have other men challenging you at every level, keeping an eye on you, men you pull into the project of being what I call the great man.
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And so it s not just about your social needs, although of course those happen at different levels for every man, but it s also about the recognition that we need to bond together with other men for good in the world, but certainly for good in each other s lives.
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Why is the challenge aspect of things important?
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Well, a man tends to settle fairly quickly, especially when he s busy, especially when he s got a 40, 50, 60 hour a week job and he s got responsibilities at home and kids and wife and all of this stuff.
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He tends to look towards comfort and as he gets older, he tends to settle in.
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And so he can let his body go, he can become one-dimensional when it comes to being a lover and a husband of his wife, he can not be the kind of father he ought to be, he can start to develop horrible habits of every kind that are really destructive to him, and he s not pursued.
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Men respond to challenge.
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One of the things I love about men is you get a bunch of guys in a
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basketball game, just to pick up basketball game in the neighborhood, they don t ask each other permission or get some kind of a written contract.
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They start yelling at each other to make each other better.
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Hey, go along, man, don t shoot from out there.
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Pass the ball off, man, here I am, here I am.
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All that kind of coaching language that we do with each other, it makes us better.
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It makes us team up.
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It challenges us to up our game.
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And we need that in life as well as in sports.
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And most of us move away from it, which is why the average American male remembers high school and college as his best time of improvement and walking with a band of brothers.
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Well, there s no reason for that to go away.
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In fact, we need that more as we go along in life.
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And again, most guys lack the skills to build it and go deep with it.
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So this might seem a little bit self-evident, but what is the band of brothers then?
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Is it just a group of friends just like any other?
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It certainly can start that way, and I hope it always has that tier, that level, that function in every man s life.
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My band of brothers, my guys, we have more fun, we yuck it up, we laugh, we cook, we burn stuff on the grill, we go on trips, we have a great time.
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But the whole idea, the thing that distinguishes a band of friends, just a group of friends from a band of brothers, is that you ve taken the nature of the relationship and your openness to input to another level.
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It s like you ve taken a group of friends and you ve said, you know, guys, I, I think I suck at being a dad to a girl.
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Uh, guys, I have, man, I m, I m 50 pounds up on what I was a year ago or two years ago or 10 years ago.
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You guys, you guys helped me be better at this.
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And also these guys are close enough to you.
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They re walking closely enough with you that they can hear you, you know, hear that bitter, angry conversation with the wife or,
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watching the waitresses backside six times, you know, when you ve got somebody wonderful at home, or they pick up on things with your kids that you don t pick up on.
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In other words, anything that s going on in your life.
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they can be involved in or speak to.
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And so what I call, I call that because I come out of a military background, a free fire zone.
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I turned to my guys and I said, look, anything you need to say to make me a better man, say it.
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Anything you need to say to help me be more successful and be better in all the roles that I play, say it.
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And I want you to be open to the same thing.
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But that came about with a gentle turning of a group of friends into a bunch of guys who are partners with me and becoming the best men we could be.
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Excellent.
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So this is not just the regular friends These are the ones that feel close enough to you and that you feel close enough to where they can say hey, man You re being ridiculous.
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What s your problem or how come you re being such a fill-in-the-blank, you know here.
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Oh, yeah, absolutely I mean, I went to a guy s office and he had hired, you know, basically miss June as a secretary now, I m all for you know good looking women working in your office and
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But I said, now, why did you specifically go after a woman whose most prominent features are her body?
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And I asked him some questions.
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Well, it turned out he was having problems at home.
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Turned out this woman was somebody elsewhere in the company.
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He was attracted to her, and so he brought her in and hired her.
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And he was heading towards a tremendous disaster.
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Well, all I did was ask a question.
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I didn t even know what the answer was.
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Maybe somebody else had put that woman there.
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But I m going to ask.
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And why am I going to ask?
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Because you said to me you wanted to be a good man, a good husband, a good father.
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You didn t want to end up bitter, angry, out of shape, unhealthy, not having accomplished half of what you could have accomplished in life.
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You wanted to be fulfilled and you wanted me to be your buddy and have fun and yuck it up, but you also wanted me to say anything I needed to say.
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to make you better.
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So I m going to ask.
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You got Miss June working at the, you know, five feet away from you all day, every day.
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Your marriage is
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suffering a bit.
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And I know that I m going to ask that question or 500 other questions I might need to ask.
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And in that case, I m not painting myself as the hero.
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Men have done the same for me.
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But in that case, it prevented a disaster.
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So, yeah, I m taking a band of brothers and I m saying, let s have even more fun, guys.
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But let s also help each other become the best we can be and walk through life together in this thing.
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And it s transforming.
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It really is transforming.
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What I don t want is that
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You and I, Jordan, for example, watch Braveheart or watch Apollo 13 or watch all these movies that have got great bands of men in them and bands of brothers and just admire it on the screen and never have it in our lives.
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And that s really what we re talking about is having this in our lives that we admire so much in other places, books and movies and so on.
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So the challenge aspect crosses over into a lot of things from the sound of it.
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So it s not only, hey, you need to do this for yourself, you need to do that for yourself, you need to bring yourself up to the next level, but it s also challenging maybe decisions we make where it s like, hey man, what s the deal with you hiring a hot secretary?
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You re asking for trouble.
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And then just kind of shining a light on it.
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Absolutely.
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And the reason he s willing to hear it from me is because I care about it.
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I m his friend.
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We have a lot of fun.
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I don t mean him any harm.
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I m not trying to embarrass him or hurt him.
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I m committed to the things he asked me to be committed to.
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He told me he wanted to be a good husband, a good father, and live a fulfilled life and be a success in his career.
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Well, he was heading for disaster.
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He was about to blow up everything that was valuable to him, and he didn t even really realize it.
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A lot of it is that us guys are particularly, you know, you ve probably been to a party or something and somebody snaps a picture, a photograph, and you look at that photograph and you go, good heavens, who is that guy?
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You know?
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I mean, I look at a picture from a party and I go, who invited Jabba the Hutt to this picture, to this party?
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And then suddenly I realize it s me.
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And the fact is we don t even see ourselves accurately.
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So we ve got to have other eyes on us.
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We ve got to have other people watching us.
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We ve got to have other people who care about us and invest in us.
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And so when we lose our friends, this band of friends that we ve had, you know, in our earlier life, because we just we just catch up, you know, just get caught up in the currents of American society and our own distractedness.
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We re not just losing fun and routiness.
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We re also losing people who speak meaningfully in our lives and help us be the best we can be.
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And that happened naturally earlier in our lives when it maybe wasn t as important.
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As we get older, it gets even more vital because more people are dependent upon it.
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That s why we ve got to be intentional about it.
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So yeah, we ve got to be challenged, got to be probed.
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Anything can be said, anything can be asked because there s a basic commitment to each other.
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So there s trust there that s been built.
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Yes.
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And how do we build this band of brothers then?
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Because especially if we don t have anywhere that we re necessarily, we re starting from zero.
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What if we re looking at this like, man, I haven t reached out to any friends since college.
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What s the deal here?
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How do we, where do we even begin?
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Because you can t just reach out and have this, right?
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The level of trust that s required to build that and breathe that honesty is not something you can build overnight.
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No, that s absolutely right.
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And frankly, some of the friends we had earlier in life may not be the guys who end up being in this band of brothers.
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Now, it s not a club, you know, with a membership card, the secret handshake.
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It s just the guys around you who, yeah, are relationally connected and having fun and doing things together, but are also willing to take a little bit deeper.
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And you asked an important question.
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How do we acquire this?
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How do we turn things this way?
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I think we take our existing relationships
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and maybe some that don t exist but could if we would just pursue a little bit, you know, the guy that we admire at the office or the guy that we, you know, we know at the club, the workout club, and we re thinking, this guy, we have a lot in common, you know, and you just sort of move that way, but it always starts with friendship, and then the way we get there is we start to turn it just a little bit deeper, just a little bit more significant.
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I found myself in that role.
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I was traveling a lot and had a pretty successful career as an author and all that kind of thing, but man, I was really walking alone.
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It scared me a bit.
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As I began to understand these things, I just took the relationships that I had and I d just take some of the things I was thinking about, concerned about, maybe worried about my life, and I d say, man, let me ask you something.
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I m not talking about I just busted out over a hamburger one day with one guy and I said, let me ask you something.
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I m starting to be concerned that I m this, this, and this.
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No, my wife Bev might not be, you know, getting the best of me she can get.
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I mean, how do you handle that?
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And he jumped right in.
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He said, man, that, that, that scares the hell out of me too.
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I mean, I need to, I need to talk to somebody about this, you know, and I m glad you brought it up.
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And we didn t have any answers, but at least we were talking to each other.
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And then he came across a book, what was the famous book not too long – some years ago, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, that kind of thing.
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We said, well, maybe the answer is in here.
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And so we just started pursuing together, and then we d watch some videos.
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We d talk.
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hammered out we decide on a couple of steps to take each of us and then we d check with each other a few weeks later over steak make sure we d done it you know and and one of them was I you know I m six four and played played football at 270 well I can easily be 350 before I even catch myself right so I said you gotta help me get down to size man and so we start working out together I mean we re meeting tomorrow morning at 630 at the local Y and you see what I m saying you just start to turn it
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not away from the fun, the rowdiness and so on, but you start to turn it and its content towards the things that are of meaning and significance.
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And I ll tell you what, it deepened the friendship, it made the fun even more exciting and fun and rowdy.
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And then over time, we were able to bring some other guys into it.
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Just said, man, let s ask Bob what he s thinking about this.
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See if he ll grab a steak with us next week.
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I mean, it just is as natural as it can be.
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This is great because it reaches into vulnerability and a lot of people think, how am I going to be able to do this?
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What settings does it happen in?
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this hamburger, the hamburger incident at the, you know, before you met your friend for working out at the Y, you re kind of probing your relationships, because if you ask, if you say, how do you handle this, and he goes, huh, you know, I have the same problem, let s read this book, here s this resource, or I had a similar problem, or I don t know, but this other guy has this, let s talk to him, that s great, you win.
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But if you do it with another friend, and he goes, I don t know, man, you want another beer?
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Or if he says, women, huh?
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Chuckle, chuckle.
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You want some fries?
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You just know that that person s not necessarily receptive to that, at least at that point in time.
2
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Yeah, and he may be great for shooting hoop, shooting basketball with and having a beer afterwards.
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He s not gonna pull into something that s a little bit more significant, a little bit more hard hitting, a little bit more transparent.
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And that s okay.
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Not everybody wants to go there.
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Not everybody wants to go there with me.
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But what I know is I m not stopping until I ve got four, and I do now, you know, four or five guys around me who, you know, we, like I say, love each other deeply, you know, committed to each other, but also having the time of our lives.
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And I ll just go ahead and jump ahead here a little bit.
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I ll say, I can t tell you the number of times this has saved me.
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I mean, this is not some kind of a project committee.
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We re not just all watching each other with binoculars.
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But one of these guys walked in my house one day and hung out with us for a little bit.
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My family turned to me afterwards and said, you re an idiot.
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I said, what?
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He said, I know exactly what your son is doing, and you have no idea.
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I said, you re right, because I don t know what you re talking about.
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He said, I don t even want to tell you.
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I want your permission to talk to him.
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I said, go ahead.
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This guy, by the way, is black and former NFL, so he s hilarious.
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And he just said, I m going to go whoop up on him.
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So he went and got my son in his room, took him out to lunch.
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And I still, to this day, don t know exactly what they talked about, but it fixed something in my son s life that I didn t even see.
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And wasn t some big intervention moment, wasn t some big humiliation for all of us.
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We didn t have to have a family meeting or go to therapy.
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He just knew stuff I didn t know about my own family because he s walking close enough with us.
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And that s really what it s about.
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And we ve had that happen hundreds of times in the years we ve been walking together.
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All right, back to Steven Mansfield.
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Wow, well I guess close enough to see everything that s going on, but far enough away where, what is it, what s that expression, it s like the forest through the trees type thing, where you re so close to it you don t necessarily know, you see these little increments and somebody from outside takes a fresh perspective and says, look at this, what, you re not gonna do anything about that?
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Yeah, he s got perspective I don t have.
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He s got a background I don t have.
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He loves me, but he knows I can get distracted.
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I can miss things.
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He knows my life.
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I travel.
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I write.
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I m a little bit of an egghead.
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He knows what s going on with me.
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And he happens to come from a background that knew exactly what was going on with my son.
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But notice he asked permission to talk to him.
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He can talk bluntly to me, but he can t just step into my family and start talking about our money or our sex life or what my kid s doing.
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But he s close enough to care and far enough away to have perspective.
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And that s the whole issue right there.
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I don t want somebody who s just exactly like me thinking exactly like I do.
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I want people who are a little different.
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I want to be stretched.
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And I want them to see things I don t see and to challenge me.
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And then I want to have a lot of fun.
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This guy is hilarious.
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We have a ball.
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But I ve told him, I will try to whoop you anyway if you ever let anything go unsaid that needs to be said to make me better or to help my family.
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And I m telling you, it s been one of the gifts of my life.
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So how do we begin to take stock of our friendships and sort of note the trends going on in our lives?
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Is it just as simple as reaching out and sort of probing each other s relationships like you did over a burger?
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Do you have a more sort of in-depth system
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about how that might look.
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I think a man who wants to step on this path here has got to start by being brutally honest.
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We can deceive ourselves.
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We got to take stock of our relationships and our friendships.
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A man can believe he s got lots of people in his life if he s got a whole sea of casual relationships, but still he doesn t have anything, anyone significant, he doesn t have anybody particularly close, he doesn t have anybody he can really rely on and trust, and he certainly doesn t have anybody that he ll open up to and allow them to say anything that needs to be said to make it better.
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So most men, especially as they get a little older, late 30s, 40s, on up from there, they need to stop and just say, do I have anybody
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who is close enough, and I d even put it in the word serious.
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I don t mean it has to be somber, but obviously it can t just be all about watching football.
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If that s all it s going to be, then that s not going to be the kind of thing I m talking about.
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I could certainly include that, but it s got to go further.
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So you ve got to take honest talk of your life and just say, man, do I have anybody close enough
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that if I was about to have an affair or if I ve gained 400 pounds or if I m just being a fool with the job choice I ve made or anything like that, that they can say that to me while we re hiking a mountain or riding our motorcycles or whatever it is we re doing.
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Or some manly thing that we re doing.
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Anything.
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Because remember now, I think that men build relationships over doing what we call indirect things.
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The last thing I want is for a bunch of guys to circle up in a room and say, how are you feeling today, Joe?
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I mean, that s the kind of stuff we all hate.
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But let s do things.
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We do some things in the city and work in inner city and help build houses and stuff and adopt younger brothers, all kinds of things.
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But then we just go have fun, blow off and, you know,
3
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throw food at each other and have a good time.
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And all of that, all that kind of indirect activity is what gives us the space to kind of connect with each other at a deeper level.
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I mean, these guys are serious men.
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The guys in my life, they re busy.
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And we re not looking just to waste our time or to group up and talk about our feelings.
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We re trying to get things done in each other s lives.
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And we all need to have some planned routedness along the way.
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So we do.
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We talk a little bit about the concept or the project of noble manhood, and I d love for you to explain that a little bit.
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Well, yeah, for me, that s just a man being the best he can be.
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In our generation, you watch the movies, you watch what people are paying attention to, we all admire the guy of character who took care of his family or did what he was supposed to do, did his job well and so on, but he was a man you could trust, he was a man of character, he wasn t a dog,
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you know, just let any of his appetites or drives dominate him.
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He was the kind of man that we admire, the Atticus Finch kind of figure almost.
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And so most men want to be more of that in their lives, whatever their faith, whatever their background, whatever their career, whatever their personalities.
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Most men want to be more the kind of men that we admire, more the bravehearts if you want to, more the father of those best or more the Atticus Finch from, you know, Mockingbird, all that kind of thing.
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And so,
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I want these guys to help me become that, not just because I m a somewhat public figure, but because it s the man I wanna be.
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And so I want all of my guys  marriages to be a success.
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I want their kids to be great.
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I want them to be happy and fulfilled.
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Some of them are planning to run for office.
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Some of them are planning to be CEOs.
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Okay, let s talk about what that looks like.
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And by the way, that thing that you do is not gonna help you being a CEO, so let s talk about that.
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You know, that kind of approach that just really helps each other be sharper.
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involve people in that.
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I mean, it seems really admirable and sort of...
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Everybody, as you said, everybody wants to be a part of that.
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Everybody wants to be that guy.
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But it seems tough to get other people on board with that if they re not already kind of on the same page.
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How do we start to enlist those friends in the project of noble manhood?
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And how do we get them investing in that project itself?
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You can t really just decide to be someone of character.
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It takes work.
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Exactly, exactly.
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And I think you got to use your radar a little bit, you know, who s already in your life, who s already there at the office, who s already, you know, on the job, wherever you are, whatever your institution of faith or whatever your, your sports club, whatever, who s already around that you kind of admire, or you think might share some of your
3
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your vision for manhood or, you know, whatever it is.
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I mean, in the same way that, like I say, if I don t want to be 350 pounds, but want to get myself down to 240, I m going to the Y and I m looking for the guy who s in great shape and seems to be able to teach others how to do it.
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I want a guy who already knows something about what I need to be about.
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So I d suggest to guys, turn on the radar, start looking for guys who share some of what they want to be about and what they want to commit themselves to.
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And yet seem to have the kind of personality to open up to others, be fun and have a good time.
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And I need to say that in our society, I mean, my situation is a little bit on the ideal side.
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I live in a couple of cities.
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My guys are spread between the two cities.
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Some of them are excellent NFL players, things like that.
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I mean, some of them are in Congress.
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I mean, you know, we were a little bit mobile and we can make some things happen with each other.
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We ve been together for years and years.
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For a lot of us, though, the skill of developing a band of brothers may not produce something in a lifetime.
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I ve got some friends in the military and they try to produce something that s
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Band of Brothers-ish every time they get assigned to a new military post, which happens about every 18 months to two years.
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So they just know they ve got to have some guys nearby in their lives.
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And in the military, they re constantly getting transferred everywhere.
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So they do the best they can to build people around them who will invest in each other and have a great time.
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You know, they don t expect it to last forever.
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And that s for a lot of us, that s the way it s going to be.
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But that s OK.
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The main issue is that you know what you need, that you know how to turn your existing relationships in the direction of something deeper, more significant, more productive, and that you have a great time along the way.
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But you re not clinging to people desperately.
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You know, it s going to morph and change over your life.
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That s all right.
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All of the men who are near you can be of benefit to you and you can be of benefit to them while having a great time along the way.
3
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One of the concepts in your book is becoming fathers to boys, even other people s.
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Can you explain that a little bit?
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Because I think that s a, speaking of people of character, that s a common trait we see is that they take other people under their wing.
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It s not just, oh, this is my family and I stay out of everybody else s business.
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It s sort of a community-oriented figure when we think of these people, right?
3
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Some kind of leader who it takes a village to raise a child type guy.
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Yeah, exactly.
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I think that every man, like I say, he s got a vision of noble manhood in his mind.
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It might be, like I say, Bravard or Atticus Finch or whoever.
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And of course, the reason that we think highly of these people, whether they re in fiction or real people of history or real people in our lives, is because they usually have a positive impact on their community.
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And a lot of that, when it comes to manhood, has to do with boys.
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The statistics are horrible about what s going on with young boys.
3
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Boys are failing academically by almost every standard of measurement that we possibly have, and everything from porn to junk food to sedentary lifestyles to broken families, it s just traumatizing boys.
3
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So one of the things I think the Band of Brothers ought to be doing, if they possibly can, is pull some of the young men in.
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There s a great African proverb from the villages that says, if we do not initiate the boys, they will burn the village down.
3
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And that s what s going on in our society to a large extent.
3
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Angry young men, even ISIS in the Middle East is angry young men looking for a cause.
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And so what we ve done, but our gang, we ll find a, you know, maybe a woman who s got a couple of sons and maybe she s a single mom and we ll just say, hey, we ll pull these guys into what we re doing a little bit.
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You feel good about that?
3
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She said, yeah, she gives permission.
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And we just start to, you know, buddy up with these guys.
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They have more fun than they ve ever had.
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But we re also challenging them.
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But we re letting them know that we re there.
3
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I ll tell you what, one of our young guys that we kind of pulled in with a little bit started to get bullied at school.
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And I gotta tell you, when two ex-NFL players show up and have lunch with you in the cafeteria and look around, letting everybody know, you mess with him, you re messing with me, we will be with the principal, we will get this straightened out, you re not bullying our young man here, that changes something.
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And that did happen, and it instilled something amazing in the soul of that young man.
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I ve got fathers, I ve got brothers.
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I m part of something here beyond myself.
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And I think that that s one of the things that men can really do.
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But most men who just walk alone, who are just solitary, would never think of it because they can t take on more responsibility in their lives.
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But you ve got five or six men around you.
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You ve been walking together for a while.
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You ve got some time to hang.
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You ve got some time to take these guys out to a movie or go to a park or go out for a camping trip or do whatever, you know, have some rowdy fun.
3
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just beat each other up in a swimming pool, whatever, then at the same time, while we re doing all that stuff, talk about the important lessons of life.
3
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And so I think that is one of the things that a band of brothers ought to aspire to, second only to kind of keeping an eye on each other and making sure each man is living out the best life he can live.
3
SPEAKER_00
Excellent, thanks so much.
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SPEAKER_00
We ll have your book and your work linked up in the show notes as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
Thank you so much, great to be with you.
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SPEAKER_00
Thank you, take care.
3
SPEAKER_00
Bye-bye.
3
SPEAKER_00
Good stuff, I love the free fire zone and it really is just that simple.
3
SPEAKER_00
Be vulnerable, throw out a little flag, see if anybody picks up on it.
3
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If the guy just wants you to have another beer because you have issues at home or with yourself or with the growth, maybe not the greatest fit for your band of brothers.
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I think people will be surprised as to how receptive most men are to this because we are sorely lacking in this area.
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A lot of people can t wait
4
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to talk about this with people, and I know that because I get emails from guys that are open to this stuff all day every day.
4
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So I hope you enjoyed this one with Steven Mansfield.
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Show feedback and guest suggestions.
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It s a fanarchy.
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It means the show guest roster is essentially run by you.
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We rely on you to help keep our finger on the pulse.
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So if you know someone who s a good fit for the show,
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let us know, guests at theartofcharm.com.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Steven Mansfield on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes as well as all the other resources and books mentioned on the show.
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You can tap the album art in most mobile podcast players to see the show notes right on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter at theartofcharm, bootcampdetails at theartofcharm.com, and remember, we re sold out a few months in advance, so get deeds planned ahead.
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Subscribe in iTunes, write us a nice review, help counteract the ones that aren t so nice,
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and I ll love you forever.
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Special thanks to the Jasons for their help in production of the Art of Charm podcast.
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Tell your friends, the greatest compliment you can give us is a referral to someone else either in person or shared on the web.
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and everything for the extraordinary man at theartofcharmpodcast.com.