#274： Building Your Band of Brothers
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, host Brett McKay sits down with the author of Building Your Band of Brothers, Steven M. Mansfield, to discuss his new book, "Manly Book for Men," and why he believes that men need to form a band of brothers in order to become the men they want to be.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so surveys show
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that adult men are suffering a friendship crisis most adult men don't have a single friend they
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could turn to in a time of need and many sociologists suggest this dearth of male
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friendship is one of the contributing factors in increased mental disorders and suicide rates
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among men but close male friends don't just keep you from suffering a mental and emotional breakdown
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they're also vital in shaping you into a better man that's the argument my guest today steven
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mansfield makes in his latest book building your band of brothers and today on the show steven and
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i discussed the bleak statistics on male friendship the myth of the lone alpha male and why making
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friends in adulthood is so hard for men today we then discuss what he means by a band of brothers
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why men's accountability groups usually fail and how a close-knit group of friends can help make
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you a better man we end our discussion by delving into exactly what you need to do to develop a band
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of brothers and what to do when you get together if you feel like you've been lacking in the friendship
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department this episode is for you you're going to walk away with some tactics you can put into
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action right away to begin developing your posse of pals out of the show's over make sure to check
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out the show notes at aom.is slash band of brothers for links to resources we can delve deeper into this
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topic steven mansfield welcome back to the show hey it's great to be with you again uh so last time
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we had you on is a little over a year ago we talked about your book mansfield's uh book manly book for
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men or manly book of manliness it was a lot of man and manliness in there um great conversation but
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you got a new book out um building your band of brothers which i think picks up where you left off
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with your first book so why did you feel it was necessary to write a book on how to develop i mean
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what it is it's how to develop friends as an adult male uh why do you think that was necessary
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well you know what i'd written this book mansfield's book of manly men i was speaking about it all over
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the world grateful for the opportunity and i realized uh months after the book came out and great
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things were happening with it that i had made a mistake and that was that i had done what many
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people do i had described manhood i had urged men towards it i had probed them asked questions
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held up historical figures but i had not actually given them the final step that i knew uh which is
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that they're going to have to get some men around them to help them execute this they're going to have
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to have uh as i say a band of brothers to help them perfect achieve uh righteous noble manhood
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so that that was missing from my first book it was my fault so i decided to write a little
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companion paperback uh to help bring that to the fore and to emphasize it and so uh it's it's my
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omission uh and i think it's also an omission we often have in uh in in men's literature that we
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don't get practical like this so that's why i went after this book but why do you think it's necessary
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for men to be a part of a band of brothers in order to become the men they want to be right i mean like
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there's this sort of um trope uh in i guess cinema american cinema the you know the idea of the lone
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alpha wolf like clint eastwood's man with no name who just on his own he becomes the man he does what
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he wants he's he's pretty cool because he has that sort of self-resolve to develop himself he doesn't
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need anyone else why do you think men need to surround themselves with men to become the men they
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want to be well first of all that that myth that image is a very american image and it's a very
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selective image i mean there was the occasional lone figure who would ride off into the wilderness
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but for the most part it was communities that settled the nation and uh so we have this more
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emphasized in movies than it ever would have been you know in american history but the reason it has
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to be emphasized is that we we men uh naturally have friendships when we're you know boys when we're
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in high school when we're in college it's easy the guys are there uh you know we're open to it
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uh friendships that we don't have to work at it just kind of happens automatically but when we get
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into our adulthood that's when crisis hits i mean it can happen for high school and college kid too
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but but it tends to happen when a guy gets into his business life when he marries when he has children
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it starts to isolate him all those things are wonderful but he tends to not have meaningful
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connections to other men he knows guys you know maybe from the health club or from the work or
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you know whatever religious organization he might be part of but for the most part men find themselves
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the surveys show this they find themselves in a sea of casual relationships i mean you know the
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surveys very well the average man can't name a best friend he doesn't know who he'd call if he was out
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of town and his wife needed help at three in the morning um you know suicide rates are skyrocketing
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when we do the post-mortem on men who commit suicide normally it's loneliness normally it's i don't
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have a friend normally there's no man close enough to me to know what's going on in my life and so we
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clearly have a crisis of adult males who do not have significant relationships uh with other men and i
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don't just mean friendships and golfing buddies now i'm talking about guys who really know their lives
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and are helping them achieve something better right i think it's interesting too that there is this idea
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right that's permeated american culture that yeah men men don't like relationships we're sort of
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loners and things like that but i had psychologists on the show that said no actually men are wired for
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relationships like as boys men boys are more likely to form these what they call like little you know
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playground gangs right and while women are more about you know one-on-one didactic relations boys
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love making friends and but then as you get as you said as you get into adulthood that just
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gets harder and harder to do well and part of the reason is it happens naturally when we're young
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we get older it can tend to become a bit artificial you know they put they do studies where they put
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little boys and little girls into a room and little girls will move chairs opposite each other
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look in each other's eyes face each other and one of them will say you know i like your hair
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i like your dress and they'll start engaging a relationship that way face to face little boys
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pull the chair side by side look around the room and go i can beat you to that tree hey i bet we can
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whoop tommy you suppose we can you know go over there and get involved in that and so they look for
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something to do so men need what we call indirect connections they they aren't going to sit in a
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circle and you know dredge up their emotions like some organizations try to get them to do they need
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something indirect they need to connect while doing something else and that's an art that a man has to
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learn if he's in a situation like most of us where that's not automatic so you begin your book talking
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about uh the history of male friendship kind of giving you a cursory summary of it and like as you said
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earlier this idea of the lone male is a very recent phenomenon so if it is a recent phenomenon
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what what were male friendships like before the decline of male friendship well male friendships
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tended to come out of doing other things you were in the military you were plowing the ground you were
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having the barn raising you were on the ship you know what whatever there was enough work to do
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uh there was enough happening and we were enough in community that friendships came naturally out of
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those kinds of pre-existing connections in other words you were going to connect with men you might
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as well make friendships among some of them because you were again the village the tribe it simply
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required it and as we got into our modern society we got a bit more atomized as some people say you know
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the house in the suburbs the car where you drive alone the cubicle where you work alone at work
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uh we got into an industrial age and then a digital age uh isolation set in and it's it's not it's not
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a permanent disease it's not as though we're doomed it's just that we have to reclaim some skills that
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were sort of automatically used and automatically developed in previous ages and now we have to be
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a bit more intentional about them and most guys just never are told that they never are confronted
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with that so they float around like i say in a sea of casual relationships and live out pretty lonely
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existences yeah you also talk about rust friendships or friendship yeah rust rusty friends
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yeah a rust friendship is simply an older friendship you're trying to drag into the future that
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that is not really active like i have dear friends from college um and and i love them dearly and i love
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talking to them but if i'm relying on that friendship a phone call two or three times a year maybe a
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vacation together once every five years these guys aren't guys who really know me they they only know
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what i tell them real friendships know you in 3d they're close enough to see what's going on with
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you they they know if things aren't going right in your marriage because they're they're close enough
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to detect it um so so your man's making a mistake if he's taking rust friendships these are older
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friendships that they're dragging into the future and trying to make those adequate it just it just
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won't work and sometimes when i ask a guy man do you have any close friends he'll mention army
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buddies or college buddies or what have you from years ago and that's the best he's got well
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that guy's in trouble yeah so stephen what's your experience with male friends has this been a
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problem for you and something you had to be intentional about developing yeah it really is
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i was a little bit challenged of it either by it even in my boyhood because i was a military brat
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my father was special forces and intelligence so he moved quite a bit so every year uh for 13 years of
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my life my childhood life uh i had to make new friends and then we'd we'd up and move so on the one
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hand i was challenged about friendships and had to make new friends all the time on the other hand i
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developed some skills maybe other guys didn't have to develop and then i went through high school
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college and had great friendships there but i fell into the same pattern as as most guys i got i got
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married uh i had a couple of kids i had a busy career um you know i played racquetball with some guys i
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went hunting occasionally with some guys but i certainly didn't have men around me who knew me
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where we were discussing and helping each other with the issues of righteous manhood noble manhood
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and um and i i went through some crises in my life i mean nothing nothing life destroying but
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but some crises where i realized you know steven you're alone i mean you know just because you play
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racquetball with a guy and get a steak or something like that does not mean you've got anybody who's
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there in a crisis or helping you be a better man uh they're not invested in you you're not invested
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in them there's something better that should happen here and that's when i really started pursuing what's
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led me to this book yeah what point in your life did you start being intentional about your your male
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friends well it really came about when i went through a bit of a crisis years ago the actual
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nature of the crisis we don't need to take time with although i'm happy to talk about it uh but what
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happened was some men pulled in around me and began to just because i was in a bit in a bit of trouble
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um and i don't mean legally or in any major moral way just just relational crisis uh they began to
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speak to me they began to say well you know that's happening because you're a knucklehead in this
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certain area or because you know yeah you got this this quirk in your personality and that's that's
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obviously what's causing this situation and as they began to kind of hold up mirrors for me as they
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begin to speak bluntly to me as they began to tell me about their own you know how they got through
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this on their own i realized that i was living pretty much uh out of what i knew of myself and
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quick little story that illustrates this the best i know how not too long ago a guy gave me a picture
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of a part of a scene from a party that i had attended and i looked at the picture saw the person
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in the picture i said who is that he said it's you fool well it's one of those pictures that we all
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hate you know i was scrunched down on a couch i had about five oreos in my mouth my t-shirt was
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stretched over my belly you know my neck was scrunched down on my shoulder so i looked like i
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had 50 chins i mean i looked like java the hut but i had never seen myself from that perspective
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and it really dawned on me at that time if i can look away that that i can't even recognize
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it's probably possible that that i've got some you know internal things that i'm not seeing about
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myself either i really want to be a good man uh i really want to be the best man i can be i need to
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have guys around me and so that crisis and that way of thinking caused me to realize uh that i'm you
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know i was being an idiot that i i really didn't know myself well enough to to help myself just do
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my own insights about myself become the best i could be i needed other men who could see me in 3d
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and i gotta tell you it made all the difference in the world so i became more intentional about it and at
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that time we began getting a lot of these stats about how mid and downward spiral of the suicide
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rate particularly in england for example and i was raised in largely in europe so i'm aware of
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european trends and all of that made me realize we had a crisis we had to address so as you've been
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saying like uh throughout this conversation this is this is more than just a racquetball buddy or a
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drinking buddy um or sports league buddy this is you're advocating for a band of brothers and
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you know that phrase is popular now thanks to the hbo miniseries about world war ii and the 101st
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airborne division but you go into the history of that phrase uh band of brothers uh can you talk
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about that because i thought it was really interesting sure sure um shakespeare really gave
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us that phrase and he gave us that phrase in the play henry v uh in that play it's all about a battle
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between france and england uh in that play uh he has he puts words into the mouth of henry v the henry
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v the real historical henry v actually made this amazing speech but we don't have much of it written
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down from that time these were men heading into battle they weren't taking notes so shakespeare
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imagined that that speech that's called the agincourt speech because it was a battle of agincourt
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in the early 1400s and um it includes the line we few we happy few we band of brothers well that phrase
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band of brothers has come down through history uh as just the perfect con the these terse words
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that really describe what men are looking for they were used at d-day to motivate the guys you know going
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ashore they were they were used in um you know trafalgar and great naval battles within england
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english history uh they've certainly been used even in iraq recently either were commanders motivating
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their troops by quoting uh the agincourt speech and henry v so this this phrase band of brothers of
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course that's that's where stephen ambrose got it which is why we have it in the hbo special the hbo
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miniseries but it it really has become the tightest way to describe that we don't just want a group of
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rowdy guys around us we want a band of brothers men who are committed to us to some degree we're
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committed to them there's something more happening than just friendship and uh and that's that i think
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captures it beautifully and and challenges us with it so how how is a band of brothers your idea of a
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band of brothers so you're saying it's more than just something you a guy you drink with uh do stuff
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with but you mentioned earlier like it's not really an accountability group or a prayer group or in
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sort of a men's group that are sort of that are popular in some circles um how how is a band of
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brothers different from like those type of things well a great question a prayer group or an
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accountability group i'm all for both but it does it's not going to answer what a man needs because
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an accountability group for example as it's usually uh styled requires me to figure out what's wrong
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with me drive across town and tell you about it over you know bacon and eggs well we're assuming
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i'm going to figure out what's wrong with me we're assuming i'm going to be honest about it we're
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assuming i'm going to be right um and we're assuming i'm going to you know show up for bacon and eggs
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well a band of brothers is a group of men who with whom you do life and the thing you're really going
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for at the heart of a band of brothers is what i call a free fire zone and that means anything can
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be said that needs to be said to make me a better man and also to make the other guys a better man
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so you're working towards a situation where you all are pretty much agreed uh what noble manhood is
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what you're shooting for you know each other well and i don't have to drive across town and next you
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know two tuesdays from now tell you that i'm having trouble in my marriage or porn is killing me or you
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know i've gone beyond the one glass of wine a night i'm having five or whatever uh you're walking
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closely enough with me to know those things and we have a free fire zone which means that we're not
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we're not going to you know stay away from any issue in each other's lives out of manners or some
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kind of cultural you know hey we don't go deep with people kind of thing we're committed to saying
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what needs to be said to make each other better and uh it's not just gathering up in a room and
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circling the chairs you know we're shooting hoops we're going to climb climbing mountains i mean
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these are guys you're you're having fun with and you're doing life with but the difference between
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that and just a group of friends is that you've committed to each other first of all that you are
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committed to noble manhood and second of all that you're going to address whatever needs to be
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addressed in each other's lives uh to make this happen and then and then help each other work it
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through so my band of brothers for example we've had guys who uh you know have weight problems we
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got guys with marital crisis we've had you know you've got all kinds of situations you're dealing
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with anger what are you so ticked off about every time you you know talk to your son it sounds like
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you're about to beat him to death what's wrong with you you know that kind of thing just straight up in
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each other's face and uh it's made us all better and that's that's what i think men are looking for
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they want to have fun they want to have rowdiness we're not trying to turn it into a sewing circle
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but we we do want that uh free fire zone that uh they get said what needs to be said and most men never
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hear the real business about their lives they never have anybody speaking bluntly to them so
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that's the difference in this particular group and besides that free fire zone are there any
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any other essentials to uh forming a band of brothers yeah absolutely you're you're looking
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for a contagious culture uh you're you're looking for a situation where you guys are uh conducting
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yourselves with each other in a way that more is caught than is taught this is not a this is not a
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bible study this is not a it can be a book study but it's usually not um it's usually what i call a
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contagious culture where you're uh you're you're living out noble manhood in such a way that that
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that a guy can find people around him who are better at the things he's not good at and get help
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uh so it's it i i call it contagious culture i think it's important you've got to have a commitment
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to just unrestrained honesty uh i took guys all the time my guys and i say guys if you hold back on me
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uh for any reason you know i'm just an idiot you're afraid of me whatever uh i look i feel
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sensitive to you whatever and you don't tell me what's going on with me that i need to know i'm
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gonna i'm gonna beat you with a stick you know i just we we laugh about it but uh it's a it's a
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commitment to absolutely firm honesty and uh those those kinds of building blocks and i describe some
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practical things in the book but uh those those sorts of commitments and that kind of culture that you
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create is really what you're going for you're going for an ennobling honest hard-hitting but
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deeply loving culture among a group of men and how many men does it take to form a band of brothers
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it just you need one other guy or do you need more than that you know it almost always starts with one
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other guy um i don't want i don't want any of our listeners to assume that this is the magic number
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we tend to find that five to seven is is the best number um five to me is almost the ideal but but
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you know i know fantastic bands of brothers that are three four you know it's just that five is an
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odd number and it it means you haven't got you know two guys looking two sets of guys looking at
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each other you know it's enough to mix it up uh it's a basketball team but uh i i find that five is
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about right but but listen one of the things i want to emphasize is that there's there's no one
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pattern for this as i describe in the book you know i know guys who meet uh weekly basically by
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skype because they're spread all over the country and they get together once a quarter for a for a
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hunt or you know some kind of a fun thing that they're not even living in the same area but they
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develop relationships earlier in their lives i know airline pilots who meet at airports once in a
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while and really deal with each other and then they try to get away for a trip or mountain climb or
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something i mean it can be done a thousand different ways i live in nashville half my year
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a lot of the tour buses have got men on them who are you know working through my stuff working
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through your material brett you know uh really uh developing a band of brothers there on those tours
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so it can be done a thousand different ways but usually it's about five guys uh who are really
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working it with each other and by the way it's not a meeting it's just a series of relationships
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where we're constantly confronting and encouraging each other so i mean here's the challenge i mean so it
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sounds like you can do this you don't have to be located nearby geographically
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for a band of brothers but it seems like that's the ideal it seems like that's how you can really
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do life as you say right it's absolutely the ideal because one of the things i say in the book is
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and i believe very strongly is once you start developing these relationships you you want to
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do two other things you want to get in each other's homes uh you know that could be as simple as just a
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shooting hoop some saturday afternoon and ordering up a pizza sitting on the back porch but
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you know you get around the wife get around the kids you know what's happening in the home
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um my guys need to see my wife my guys need to see my son my daughter uh they need to be in my home
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to really know my life and i've i've turned to my wife and said man i think something goes wrong with
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me or i'm out of town these are the guys you call i mean you want those relationships and then the
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other thing is we bring the sons in um and it's very important to sort of initiate the sons into
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uh this band of brothers at appropriate time in their life so that really can't be done long
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distance i just don't want guys to you know airline pilots that they've got to have five guys sitting
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in a room they'll probably never uh actually have a band of brothers so i'm i'm cool with encouraging
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them to you know talk long distance and then get together once a quarter or once every four or five
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months for a hunt or something but uh yeah the ideal is that you're local so you're in each other's
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grills so to speak you're in each other's lives and you can actually see what's going on
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but so there's the challenge i think people are listening to this now like that's it there's
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thinking this sounds great i want this in my life but the challenge is how do you find men who
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are one nearby geographically for that ideal of doing life together and two this is the hard part
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just as interested as you in forming a band of brothers well i think you start with the guys you're
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already in relationship with the problem with most men is not that they don't have any relationships
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it's that they don't have any relationships of depth so the guy you're playing golf with the guy
00:22:51.660
you play racquetball with the guy you run with whatever the guys that work you know you just
00:22:56.200
start to turn them we we have a little slang we use internally we call it three being a relationship
00:23:01.420
you got to three be that guy it means you got to start turning the themes you talk about and
00:23:06.760
discussion a bit towards band of brother kinds of themes so it can be as simple as dude i've come
00:23:12.100
across this awesome website called art of manliness jump on there man and let's talk about it next time
00:23:17.300
we get a burger i mean it can be that simple and what you've done is you've taken a uh a golfing
00:23:22.700
friendship or a work friendship or whatever and you've just turned it a little bit towards the
00:23:27.500
theme of manliness and when that guy comes back and goes man you know what i was unfathered i nobody
00:23:33.200
taught me this stuff you know whether it's whether it's manhood and plato or it's manhood and and how to
00:23:40.060
be a cool uncle or what all the things on your awesome site uh you know the guy comes back and says i
00:23:46.020
don't know any of that stuff man how did i miss that well now you got a chance to start talking more
00:23:50.780
about those themes and you say well you know i did i missed a lot of it too but i'll tell you what
00:23:54.400
this book meant a lot to me or this website meant a lot to me or you know i went i heard this guy
00:23:58.800
speak and that meant a lot to me and you just start talking about it you start moving in that direction
00:24:03.320
and if if the other guy is a good candidate he's gonna he's gonna bite you know he's gonna jump in
00:24:08.380
he's gonna say oh man i i don't have that together in fact that's that's one of the problems in my life
00:24:13.640
and then one of the things i urge is that that somebody in this conversation eventually say look
00:24:19.260
you're an awesome shape or you really handle your money well or you've got such a sweet marriage i
00:24:24.620
don't can you help me with that and somebody kind of humbles themselves a little bit honors something
00:24:29.540
in the other guy's life and begins to ask for help and once you do that and you're getting the guy to
00:24:34.960
kind of coach you it's not long before you're going to be able to have that free fire zone with
00:24:39.260
that's mutual and uh really be able to to you know speak into each other's lives the way you need to
00:24:44.960
but but yeah being local uh and then finding the friendships you already have at a shallow level
00:24:50.860
and turning them band of brothers ish so to speak um with a casual conversation that's how it usually
00:24:56.800
starts and how do you respond to like the objection or the excuse like i just don't have time for this i
00:25:02.420
got work i've got family i've got i'm involved in my kids boy scout troop i'm coaching um a lot of
00:25:08.180
older men are busy um how do you what's your response to that well i'm going to say honestly
00:25:13.980
you know i'm an older guy i'm in my 50s and i'm very busy and i got to tell you this has been one
00:25:19.380
of the most important things to me it's improved me professionally it's improved me with my children
00:25:24.840
um i i understand being busy but i also understand that you can be spending a lot of time with your son
00:25:30.640
and not have insight into your son that actually is going to help them because you don't have other
00:25:34.240
guys eyes on who your son is for example i spent a lot of time with my my son now is 30 but i spent
00:25:40.000
a lot of time with him when he was growing up but one of my band of brothers was in my house one time
00:25:44.560
big big african-american guy former nfl and he turned to me and said you're an idiot i said what
00:25:50.440
he said you don't even know what your son's doing do you i said no i i don't know what you're talking
00:25:54.780
about he said i want your permission to take him lunch tomorrow i said you got it he went upstairs
00:25:59.520
told jonathan he was going to go to lunch with him went to lunch with him there was something that
00:26:03.860
he fixed in jonathan's life and they never even i gave them permission not to have to tell me it
00:26:08.560
wasn't a massive moral thing or legal thing something going wrong in my son's life that i couldn't see
00:26:13.960
well that's why you need other eyes on what's going on you see i could have spent a lot of time with
00:26:20.120
my son and and made that part of my busyness but it was about what i really needed was to be more
00:26:25.880
effective more insightful have help i'm convinced when we uh send guys to men's conferences or have
00:26:32.480
them read books about men sometimes we give them the impression they've got to do all this alone
00:26:36.860
well what's been great for me is having other men of different personalities and different gifts
00:26:42.340
looking at my life looking at my family looking at relationships with my children i mean telling you
00:26:48.420
it's made me better in every way everything that they've confronted me about or hammered me about
00:26:53.080
has made me a better just better professionally i mean i mean i can probably track that it's made me
00:26:58.520
more money in my profession because i'm better at what i do because of them uh so i don't think
00:27:03.300
anybody should consider themselves too busy to open themselves up to the input of a band of brothers
00:27:08.200
the reality is they might be able to work smarter and not harder at the things they're already doing
00:27:12.180
could make a massive difference in their lives just in a practical way right so you argue in the book
00:27:17.680
that the heart of noble manhood is found in the phrase manly men tend their fields what do you mean
00:27:23.640
by that phrase yeah well let's let's turn it around brett who what's the guy we consider to be an idiot
00:27:28.540
you go over if we know a guy you know who's his house has fallen down his wife's bitter and hurting his
00:27:34.840
kids are in trouble he doesn't know it he's sitting in the barco lounger with stained sweat clothes on on
00:27:41.520
the saturday screaming for somebody to bring him another beer and a sandwich in other words he's not
00:27:44.840
attending anything around him i believe that every man has a field i don't mean his professional field
00:27:52.160
only a field it's the total body of commitments obligations responsibilities that he's got by the
00:27:57.680
way it includes taking care of himself and you know 16 year old might just have a you know half of a
00:28:04.360
bedroom and a part-time job at pizza hut and and you know obligations to maybe family and church and
00:28:10.920
then you know his school work that's all he's got but that's still his field we teach him to do it
00:28:15.300
well we teach him to own it we teach him to own its dimensions know know what what know what's required
00:28:19.540
of him and and do it well you add a dating life eventually you add college you add more work to it
00:28:24.940
well a guy my age you know i've i've got i've got a field i've got a company i got obligations i've got
00:28:30.340
things to do uh but when we when i get guys away for for for some time at retreats or out this out
00:28:37.100
in the woods we we we talk about look uh one of the arts of being a man one of the arts of living
00:28:42.580
is knowing the dimensions of your field what is it that you've been given to do at this stage in your
00:28:48.320
life and if you've if you've taken responsibility for more you know as i say humorously more than you
00:28:53.980
can say grace over uh then burnout stress and moral failure is heading your way uh you you've got to
00:29:00.200
to know what your field is know what the total body of obligations responsibilities uh are and then
00:29:08.720
uh tend that well uh and not not not hand it off you know my children are my responsibility my home my
00:29:15.980
house my wife my obligations civically my work uh my spiritual commitments and taking care of myself
00:29:22.620
getting the controlled routiness that i need and and taking care of who i am uh all of that's the total
00:29:29.020
field that a man has to tend and i i think the if i if you ask me what what's the fast track to
00:29:35.140
righteous manliness it's when a man recognizes he has a field of responsibilities and begins to step
00:29:41.040
up and take ownership of them uh not in a dominating way uh but in a way that that causes everything
00:29:46.320
within his field to begin to flourish and and fulfill its purpose and that's that i think is the
00:29:50.840
essence of great manhood and so the the band of brothers is there to tell you hey look you got some
00:29:56.420
weeds over in this part of your field take care of that absolutely and you know even a man who's
00:30:03.100
trying to be uh really noble can do some silly things i mean i had i had a i said here's a silly
00:30:09.060
little illustration but when my daughter was very very young i just started calling her stinker uh it
00:30:14.260
was just a it was just a pet name well when she was 17 and gorgeous i was still doing it and one of my
00:30:19.740
guys said you know what that that's not appropriate that's embarrassing to her she just doesn't have the
00:30:24.260
courage to tell you you got to stop doing that so i sat down with my daughter and i asked her it
00:30:28.120
turned out it was humiliating to her every time i did it i had no idea now this is a tiny thing
00:30:34.220
but here are my guys able to hear and see something um that i'm not able to see and i i don't want them
00:30:41.600
just guarding me from great big moral issues although that's important you know i want them
00:30:45.480
to know when my language is dropping i want them to hear the conversation with my wife that
00:30:49.620
you know maybe it's indicating there's a crisis going on if i check out the back side of the
00:30:53.640
waitress four or five times in lunch hey buddy what's going on at home that's not who you want
00:30:57.840
to be um so i yeah there's a guardian role but there's also a helping me to be better role all of
00:31:04.480
my guys are better at stuff in the in the in the lore of manhood than i am and so they coach me and
00:31:10.720
i coach them and we get better and i i just couldn't do without them just couldn't do without them and
00:31:16.200
and you know if i'm a successful husband or father it's in large part due to the fact
00:31:19.800
that they are absolutely fierce about making sure that that you know i hear what i need to hear to
00:31:24.820
be a better man it's made all the difference in my life so let's say you found your crew you got
00:31:29.720
things going um everything's really exciting in the beginning but how do you sustain that initial
00:31:34.540
excitement when you formed your band of brothers i mean how can you keep it going months years um after
00:31:41.300
you started well first of all you you've got to be very careful not to make it you know a bunch of
00:31:48.360
guys circling up chairs and staring into each other's eyes and saying how are you feeling today
00:31:52.640
joe men will run from that so we're always doing new things we're always doing those we call it the
00:31:58.120
indirect event the indirect approach you know guys have got to have guys will talk while they're
00:32:02.720
shooting hoops or grilling steaks or about to watch the super bowl or whatever you got to have
00:32:06.360
something else going and so we just have a lot of fun uh if we weren't guys who were serious about
00:32:11.540
manhood we'd probably still have a lot of fun but we have moved it to this you know core of the free
00:32:16.560
fire zone and the coaching each other and so it stays alive also there's going to be natural change
00:32:22.200
just because i help chaplain the redskins and and go to a church in dc with a lot of the redskins in
00:32:27.720
them i have a lot of nfl buddies and so i've had some in my band of brothers have been some
00:32:32.220
current former nfl guys well they rotate they get transferred we got we eventually say well let's
00:32:37.960
let's bring old joe in over here or you suppose there's so and so might be a candidate to come be
00:32:43.960
part of us or whatever we don't treat it like an exclusive club so it's going to breathe it's going
00:32:48.540
to rotate it's going to switch out there's going to be change it'll have a natural life and by the
00:32:53.680
way every man in the group's going through different phases of his life um and it's a different
00:32:58.040
personality so it keeps it fresh as we kind of you know hammer each other into shape
00:33:02.100
well steven this has been a great conversation um there's a lot more we can get to get into but
00:33:05.680
where can people find out more about the book and your work i appreciate you asking stevenmansfield.tv
00:33:11.260
is where everything that i'm involved in uh happens and on there we have a page called the great man
00:33:16.520
page you'll see it on the home page just click on that and every everything that i'm about with men
00:33:20.840
is right there so i appreciate what you do brett very much makes a big difference in a lot of lives
00:33:25.760
thanks so much well steven mansfield thank you so much for your time it's been a pleasure
00:33:29.180
thank you buddy my guest today was steven mansfield his book is building your band of brothers it's
00:33:33.800
available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find out more information about steven's
00:33:38.120
work at stevenmansfield.tv also check out our show notes at aom.is band of brothers where you'll
00:33:44.260
find links to delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the art of
00:33:59.640
manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website
00:34:03.220
at artofmanliness.com this episode is recorded on clearcast.io if you're a podcaster who does remote
00:34:07.780
interviews it's a service i developed to help podcasts sound better and avoid some of the skips
00:34:12.360
and audio lag that often happens with skype clearcast.io check it out as always appreciate
00:34:18.200
your team's support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to stay manly