Command with Courage: J. Scot Heathman

We share the ups and the downs , the highs and the lows and all the lessons learned along the way . It doesn't matter what chapter you are on in your story Maybe you're just getting started or , heck , maybe you're halfway through . What I know is , where intention goes , energy flows .

It's my most sincere hope that you will hear something in one or maybe many of these episodes that resonates with you and reminds you that you are not in this alone . As we venture into year two , I hope that you find a sense of connection and community when you're here , because we all deserve a place where we belong .

My name is Sunny and I am so glad you're here . If you're new , there's a few things you want to know about me . I am a huge book nerd and a wee bit of a control enthusiast , with an obsession for motivational coffee cups . I believe that a rising tide raises all ships and I invite you along in this journey to evoke greatness .

Welcome back to another episode of Evoke Greatness . Today we are deep diving into the mind of an extraordinary leader . My special guest today is Scott Heathman . He spent 25 years soaring through the skies as an Air Force leader , a combat instructor , pilot and base commander , serving over 14,000 personnel .

With a passion for cultivating culture , communication and innovation , he leads CEOs through command-level coaching programs , igniting transformation from the top down . His journey is one of resilience and mastery , reflected in his trio of master's degrees in organizational leadership , operational planning and national security and strategic studies .

He's certified in emotional intelligence and empowers leaders at every level to embrace vulnerability and elevate others , driving performance to the highest altitudes . Get ready to be inspired as we delve into his upcoming book Command with Courage , elevating Beyond Adversity , where he shares valuable insights on navigating challenges with unwavering courage .

Join us as we explore the mindset of a true commander , shaping the future of leadership with every word and action . Scott , welcome to the show , my friend .

And so , when you reflect back on all that you've done in your career in the Air Force , all that you've done in your life , what fostered that belief early on , as you were developing that desire to want to fly planes ?

And and certainly being exposed to wonderful movies like star wars right , I'm a huge star wars nerd .

Kind of back in the heyday of star wars , you know , the late 70s , when the , the first one , came out , and I was always fascinated with with sci-fi and in fiction , I certainly was satisfied walking around this planet , but there was a part of me that wanted to be up there , like to see things differently and understand , kind of what did it look like from

that perspective ? I also would say you know the space shuttle was a big deal in the 80s . Right , you know this thing came out and you know I wasn't old enough or even around to watch a lot of the Mercury and Apollo missions . Right , I just obviously watched it on TV .

But for me it was all about the space shuttle and learning about all these astronauts and this vehicle going up and coming back . And yes , there's some tragic moments and then NASA's history with this . But you know there's tragic moments in all these things . When people chase dreams , there can be some setbacks and adversity .

But it inspired me and I was like , wow , these are everyday people that go get to do this , this is their job . And I thought , well , how do I get to do some of that ? And other than just kind of my own inspiration and kind of wonder , I didn't really grow up in an aviation family . Like nobody in my family flew , we didn't go flying .

There was once or twice that I've gone up in like a little airplane , like a Cessna 152 , or up with one of my father's clients , but that's about the closest I got .

We didn't have a lot of money for flying lessons and so everything I could do was , you know well , try to create and maintain that motivation internally , whether I was building model airplanes or watching films or whatever , and then at some point try to figure out how do I get from point A to point B . You know what is that first step ?

And for me that first step was , you know , through high school , thinking about well , where's the best place for me to go that I can potentially afford to go ? That was the military for me , and service was always a big part of me and my family as well .

So I think those two things very much went hand in hand and I was like , yeah , I think this is it . I got to get into the Air Force if I'm going to fly airplanes .

And what I learned , though , through that is once I got the paperwork back and started looking at you know how , how , how is this possible ? I didn't think I was too short from a sitting height perspective .

You know I'm five foot six , but I have a short torso and I looked and they actually took some measurements that I had as a freshman when I first got into ROTC , and they did not update them and my little growth spurt happened in college . So I went from about 5.1 , 5.2 up to 5.6 .

And so it took me getting remeasured , hoping and praying that the flight doctors and the system would allow me the opportunity to submit this new data , because competing for a pilot slot is tough .

At least it was at that time , and you know there have been periods of time throughout the last several decades where we've needed more pilots or we haven't needed as many , and they actually reduced the number of people that can have this opportunity .

But gosh , you know , probably through divine influence , about a week before I graduated I was told that I got a piled slot and I passed my physical now and everything's good to go right . The only thing I had to wait for was I had to wait an extra year , because there is a pipeline of students that goes through and graduates every couple of weeks .

So I was now kind of back with the next year class rolling through . So all I did was they put me at an Air Force base Whiteman Air Force base for the year and then when that year was up , I was able to go down to Texas , in Del Rio , texas , to go through my year of flight training .

But yeah , that was about as close as this dream isn't going to happen as it could get . And for some other people there are things during the flight physical process that they find out , like maybe there's a potential they could have a condition with their eyes , like glaucoma or something that the doctors see and you know they're done . You can't go now .

You can't go to pilot training . That's probably . The other scary part was going through that process , because you know not everybody's getting MRIs or you know EKGs and you don't know internally how things are going if you've never . I never broke a bone , I never had to .

I had some stitches in my head from a baseball accident , but other than that I was a pretty healthy kid and I didn't know a lot about , maybe , internally , what might be there that I don't know about . But you know , luckily I got through all that . But we lost quite a few people just due to the physical process alone .

make sure that all those boxes are checked . I'm sure that was scary for a moment in just thinking that that may not be a realized dream .

You know , yeah , maybe somebody got disqualified because they're colorblind or they've got a murmur in their heart and , like you said , yeah , they're very protective because we don't want to put anyone in harm's way or , you know , we might create an unsafe condition for them at altitude , and then you have all kinds of other problems to worry about .

So you know they're very protective of aviators and in all the services and you know when something is off with your health , you get a lot of support there . So it's a good thing . We don't always like our flight docs , but it's a good thing , right ?

I think there are some parallels between us and there's some things that I really appreciate about you , and that is that mentality of being unwilling to accept a no right and that like having to get creative and courageous enough to figure out a way around certain circumstances , and then also being unwilling to just like be mediocre or be status quo .

What do you think has driven some of those ways of thinking , ways of being , in you ?

I grew up though the city kid , so for me my parents instilling a lot of that in me was kind of how I develop this kind of self-drive , self-motivation . Don't give up .

I was , like I said , very involved , not only athletically in my community and school , but also other activities in school , like 4-H .

I spent about 10 years in 4-H up in Minnesota , you know , not just taking projects to the fair or things like that , but also doing other things within 4-H as a state ambassador and getting involved in higher levels of the organization and finding other ways to help your community .

That's kind of a thread that is very much in the background of my family and extended family . Put myself through college . You know that was important to me because I wanted to see If I could do that . Could I come out the other end without a bill ?

What would I need to do , and I applied to the Air Force Academy , rotcs and Navy and Air Force , and I got a lot of no's . I got no's from the academies . I got a no's from the Air Force , saying we're going to offer you a scholarship , and it was amazing to get that , but there was a lot of no's .

Up to that point , like I said , I was a little kid , kind of a little guy , growing up in middle school , high school , but I played varsity football and baseball baseball . My senior year , though , I did get cut from the baseball squad , and that was . I didn't think I would get cut . Like that was the furthest thing from my mind .

And I remember coming home so upset about this , like thinking the wrong thing , almost like they owed me this opportunity and that's not how this goes right . So obviously a little bit immature about how I handled that and talking out loud . But my parents were like well , what are you going to do now ?

Because you're not going to sit at home and mope about this . So everything was always about moving forward , not looking back and trying to control things you can't control , it's okay . Well , what are you going to do now with what you got ? And then I ended up working at a car wash .

I'm like I didn't have dreams and aspirations of working at a car wash and it was right down the road from where we lived and the owner of this car wash this had been a car wash that was losing money over the years and you know there was some theft and concerns with that .

But then this new leader came in , completely turned this place around and now the lines were down the roads so far that the police actually had to guide traffic to get into the car wash , actually had to guide traffic to get into the car wash . Hundreds of cars a day .

We put through this full service car wash and I had some moments to spend with this leader and this was a servant leader . I didn't really know what the terms were . I probably had .

I know I've had a few other leaders like this their teachers growing up but this is the first time I really got to spend time with someone who's running a business and he turned this losing endeavor into a multimillion dollar car wash . It's just incredible . And the workforce it wasn't just kids like me .

He took in folks that had been in jail and gave them a second chance . He took in folks that didn't need a handout but a hand up , and you wouldn't have known that because you know we're all in uniform . But when you looked around , even the manager I remember specifically the manager had spent time in prison and this was the first job he had .

I thought this was like a highly experienced person . He was genuine , he was kind . He was kind , he was authentic , he demanded the best out of us . If there were issues , he put his arm around us . You would have never thought this person had spent time .

I don't know what he did , but it was incredible to now see , like how this leader pulled this kind of a diverse team together and got us all marching in one direction and boy that it set the conditions for me to really start looking at my future and potentially , how would I lead in the Air Force , because that was going to be .

My next step was get commissioned as an officer and you're expected to lead . You don't know how big of a team you're going to have right away Might be two , might be three , but it might be a couple hundred . That servant leader .

I still remember these moments in my head that I've spent with him and even when I screwed up , he delivered feedback , but doing in a kind way . He was direct , but there would be no disrespectful communication in the feedback delivery of correcting behavior or something like you know if it was more disciplinary ?

Or you know something where you wanted to change somebody's feedback and I thought , yeah , you don't need to be a yeller screamer to get people to do what you need them to do , right . So I learned a lot at that car Mermaid car wash is what it was called .

Right , it wasn't what they did or said , but it was how they made you feel , the example in which they led themselves . They led difficult conversations , man . That can really set the tone for someone in their formative years when they're going to be stepping into a leadership role .

When you think about a leader who's trying to refine or maybe even develop some of those skill sets , oftentimes we refer to it today like as EQ , right , but it's like the self-awareness , the ability of how someone shows up , the emotional piece of how they lead people .

How can someone who is maybe either new to it , maybe trying to turn things around or really just like developing and refining that skill set ? You know , what advice would you give ?

I think some folks feel like , oh , it's going to be these tough things , just like going to the gym , like ah , and . And when I start showing them some of the basics of how someone with high self-awareness , what they're really good at doing , they're kind of shocked at like that's's it ?

Like yeah , but they've been working on this and practicing and practicing for months and years , not 30 days , and you're good . So some of these strategies for me , in particular journaling I've taken that on over the years and become a little bit more deliberate about , let's say , I'm in a staff meeting and I didn't like how something was said .

And you know , maybe I'm a little bit annoyed when I'm walking out of the office now and I will literally go back to the office and in my notebook write annoyed and then think about for just a couple of minutes what was the trigger to that , what were the clues my body was telling me that I was getting to that state ?

And for me there have been times when I've not only had those emotions and feelings but then did the wrong thing and acted out in a way I probably shouldn't . So the self-management piece can really hurt you too . You can be highly aware of your emotions but still make bad decisions . It's like again someone cutting you off on the road .

You can be upset and then you could drive up next to them and I've seen it Drivers put their hands and fingers out the window . Right ? What value does that serve ? Right ? People that want to get better at both those areas have to first get to a level of awareness of the feeling itself . What does it do to your body ?

Like , how do you feel in that state right now ? You know , are you really grabbing on that steering wheel ? Are you talking underneath your breath ? Are you getting worked up ? And you can almost feel the body just get tense . No-transcript . So we're already at a biological disadvantage . So what you're trying to do is give yourself an advantage .

So , again , for self-awareness , it's having a curiosity of who I am in those states , and not always just in negative states , you know . Also think about what's happening in positive states , because you might be able to replicate that . And again , through journaling .

I would keep track of my emotions a couple times throughout the day and just write down what the emotion was and what got me there . What did I feel when I was having that emotion ? The other thing is , what's the self-talk in my head ? Because the ego's talking .

You know , ego's not a bad thing , it's just the voice in your head , but it's not always your amigo . As Cy Wakeman and I love all of her books , she writes about that a lot it's not always your amigo , but you can't turn it off . But what is it ? How is that guiding your self-talk right now ? That's a piece to be aware of and for me I don't have .

I can still hear maybe some negative self-talk in my head , but becoming aware of that , I'm now not letting that take me over . I'm like and sometimes I have a conversation with it . You know like , look , I hear you talking in my head right now and I know what you're telling me .

I don't think this is going to be productive if I go down that path , right , if I lash out , me and this other person's relationship is going to start to erode and there's going to be friction and we're going to lose trust in one another . So I give myself a fighting chance by thinking about and listening to some of that self-talk .

Some of it's just counting to 10 , taking some time to get outside and maybe take a walk . I had a command chief . Anytime he would see me kind of worked up , you know , he was like my wingman at the at the base . He would come into the office and say , hey boss , let's go for a walk , and he'd do it .

He was so calm and he had the best radio voice and we just go for a walk and sometimes we wouldn't even say a word to each other , we would just walk and it didn't feel weird , it didn't look weird , we just walked , took in a little bit of the weather outside , even when it was not the best weather . We would go for a walk .

Sometimes we would talk , but having maybe 10 , 15 minutes to be able to do that , that got me in a little bit better state from time to time and really hear what was going on in my head or calmed it down , you know , to a level that it wasn't taking me over .

So these are some things about self-awareness that we can do , some strategies that we can do to kind of bring some more awareness , almost as if you're spotlight on it . The last thing I would say is start becoming curious . Curious about what's going on inside of you , curious about the external world a little bit .

Not that you're questioning everything , but maybe lean into things that don't seem comfortable . That's a little bit against where you would normally go . Maybe try something else , experiment with this . I mean , who knows , you might find something that really works for you .

So those are some of the things I think about in self-awareness and also , I would say , self-management , which tends to go hand in hand with these two .

Which may lead a lot into my next question , which is you have had a number of surgery . You've had brain surgery , you just had a big neck surgery . These are not like little outpatient procedures , they were large surgery , big recovery time , exploration of a lot .

You know as you're , as they're in there as well , and so I'm curious in going through that process , I think mental resilience can help navigate that pathway to healing , right . But I'm curious like in that , what did you learn most about yourself through that process ?

It actually helped me a little bit because I wasn't online Googling stuff and trying to be my own MD , right . So , as a former nurse , I think you probably appreciate that . Don't play doctor right , and my doctors did say that Please don't go on Google and start looking this stuff up . I know what I'm doing and I'm like you got it neurosurgeon .

With the brain surgery that I had , I had a tumor removed in 2020 . So I knew I was going to have a lot of time . I still had a lot of therapy to go to , so that was certainly taking up a lot of time , because I couldn't walk hardly at all without a walker or with someone's help . I would fall down . I couldn't see .

I had an eye patch because I had such bad double vision . I lost my hearing permanently on this side . My vestibular was really messed up and I couldn't talk hardly at all . I could communicate , but it just wasn't not like this .

So speech , physical , occupational therapy that was like three times a week , and I really based on what the doctors doctors are saying . This was going to be several months to go through this . The one thing , though , I could do , I started thinking about well , what can I do right now ?

So I'd reached a level of acceptance and acknowledgement of what was going on quite early , and I knew that that was a key to getting to this next step , because if I didn't acknowledge and just accept that all this was happening , I wasn't going to be able to move forward .

So I had to kind of adjust my own aim a little bit on this and I said , okay , you just had brain surgery , you can't do all this stuff . I got it , you're right here right now . Okay , great , but what can I do ? So now I started looking into illuminating a path forward , like what are the steps I could do ?

And , funny enough , I read this book , meditations , marcus Aurelius' Meditations . Right , I'm a little bit of a stoic , that's a little bit of my philosophy style , and I've read this book before and I've read , you know , some of Marcus Aurelius's thoughts and this is essentially his journal .

But here's a gentleman 2000 years ago who was the emperor of Rome at the time . He's dealing with a pandemic . He's dealt with the loss of his own children , many of his children . And here I am . I was the base commander , but I had just had this brain surgery . I'm in a pandemic , I've lost some things that I thought I would never lose .

Maybe he's got something to say and he talks a lot about perspective . And that's where I got this whole adjusting aim came from . He talked about , aim a lot in there and I'm like it just started illuminating and I think it served as a validation of really how I actually dealt with adversity in my past .

I just didn't really put a lot of thought and pen to paper to it before , but I was literally , you know , trying to read the book like this because I could look straight up and my vision was perfect . But if I looked down it was double vision .

So I spent about a month , you know , reading books like this with an eye patch and highlighting and tabbing and trying to just fill myself with positive things to look forward to and deal with what I've got Walking . I wasn't going to sit in a chair and just kind of just sit there and you know space out .

So I said , okay , I've got a walker , my wife can help me get down the stairs and get outside . It's not about the distance , it's just about maybe trying some steps . You know , go to the end of the block if I can , and it's , you know , living on base .

We have all these beautiful , you know a hundred year old trees , so the sidewalks are all every which way and I'm looking at this and I'm like , oh , this is the worst environment to learn how to walk . So I'm on the street now , you know , in our neighborhood , and everybody's like waving .

They can see this , this Colonel with a walker and an eye patch , like what is he doing ? I was learning how to walk . I'm like I just got to get over all that and I would go down to the walk and I'd come back and then I'd rest for a while and and then the next day I go back out and do it again , or sometimes a couple times a day .

Other people started spending time with me , which is another key component to adjusting aim . The M to me was I got to mobilize a good team around me . Like I got to bring in positivity and not bring in the wrong stuff which is going to upset the recipe here . Bring in things . Thank goodness Ted Lasso came out about that time .

What a wealth of positivity in my life . You know , watch that kind of stuff and made me laugh and I certainly shed a lot of tears . Like this is hard . You know Anybody dealing with adversity it's hard , and this is not about comparing scars with anybody . I think if you have any adversity you got to acknowledge what you're going through and accept it .

You've got to illuminate a path forward , and then you got to mobilize a good team around you , but ultimately you got to take that first step , you know , and that first step was scary , but I'm like I don't care that I'm outside in a walker anymore , and you know what Nobody else does either .

They're actually probably going to cheer you on , you know , and they certainly did for me , and that made all the difference . And now I approach everything with that same construct of those three maneuvers , and it's so impactful to me and it's impactful to the people that I've shared it with method which you have in there .

But in the end , you know , I sat with that for a while and I said , you know , so many people have poured into me and I think , coming back to work and seeing people's reaction to like what I just went through and like how positive and optimistic I was coming out the other side , they were very inspired by that .

And you and I have been inspired by things in our lives . But when it's you doing it , it it's different . It wasn't for selfish reasons , but I , I actually very much love the aha moments that I was seeing in other people's eyes .

You know , and and you know , some people would say like I didn't think I could , you know , start my college degree until I heard your story . I'm like they're , they're making these connections . So I'm like , okay , why wouldn't I want to give something to help someone ? I mean , that's what I feel like my entire career has been about serving others .

My purpose has been elevating others , and that's why I named my company Elevating Others . I'm like that is me . So this in the end it was Scott , don't be silly . This is the obvious move is to put this out there . If it does certainly help me in therapeutic ways , great . But that was never the overarching reason . It was somebody out there is stuck .

Somebody out there has tried and failed and they won't get back on the horse right . And so let's talk about ways that you can maneuver through this and take it one step at a time . But maybe there's some things that they're not quite getting right , that they necessary steps that they have to go through to get to the positive movement standpoint .

And that's what I want the book to serve , as is just another story hopefully a good story and some things that can be applied today in your life and maybe pull you out of a little bit of that darkness so that you don't fall into victimhood . That's a scary place for me .

That's probably another reason why I wanted to write this is I don't ever want to be in that . That scares the heck out of me , and I don't want anybody else to be there either . So you know we have worth . We have something else to give . As long as you got the breath of life in you , let's do something with it . Right , right , and what a gift .

Is taking our lessons , taking our failures , taking those things that we've come up against and had to really push forward and sometimes fight like hell to get through , to get on the other side of it . And that's a gift that you're sharing .

That because it is , it's inspiring and it is allowing others to draw inside of themselves something that they may not have even known existed previously .

You know , let's just shine a spotlight on that and let's learn something through that . It's not about feeling embarrassed about it . We got to get past that .

Absolutely Well , scott , as we wrap up .

light on folks who are doing that . So thank you for how you show up every single day and thank you for the adversity that you've overcome , in everything that you've battled , and that you're sharing that , and thank you for your service . I really appreciate you , just as a human and as a friend .

this episode . It would mean the world for me if you would rate and review the podcast or share it with someone you know . Many need to hear this message . I love to hear from you all and want you to know that you can leave me a voicemail directly .

If you go to my website , evokegreatnesscom , and go to the contact me tab , you'll just hit the big old orange button and record your message . I love the feedback and comments that I've been getting , so please keep them coming . I'll leave you with the wise words of author Robin Sharma Greatness comes by doing a few small and smart things each and every day .

It comes from taking little steps consistently . It comes from making a few small chips against everything in your professional and personal life that is ordinary , so that a day eventually arrives when all that's left is the extraordinary .