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What does it actually take to lead when the stakes are life and death, and what happens when those same pressures show up in a boardroom? According to Jenn Donahue, the answer starts not with strategy or skill, but with the voices inside your own head.
In this episode of the Strategy & Leadership Podcast, Anthony C. Taylor speaks with Jenn Donahue, PhD, PE, retired U.S. Navy captain, international keynote speaker, business coach, and USA Today bestselling author of Becoming the Warrior: Harnessing Your Inner Strength to Silence Self-Doubt, about what 27 years of military command taught her about leadership, trust, and the psychology of self-doubt. Jenn commanded an 800-personnel battalion in Afghanistan, built a bridge across the Euphrates River during the Iraq War, survived enemy fire and a contract on her life, and led teams through decisions where the cost of hesitation was measured in lives, not quarterly results.
What she discovered after leaving the military surprised her. Leadership in business, she found, too often becomes a performance focused on consensus and optics rather than a practice rooted in trust, judgment, and clarity. The tools that kept her teams alive and effective in combat turned out to be exactly what most organizations are missing.
Anthony and Jenn explore the two inner voices that quietly undermine leaders at every level, why self-doubt gets louder the higher you climb, how military preparation maps directly to business leadership, and what a 360 review revealed about her own leadership that changed everything. The conversation goes deep on trust as the real currency of organizational performance and why most leaders don't find out they've been eroding it until it's already cost them.
What You Will Learn in This Episode
- The two inner voices Jenn has identified that hold leaders back, what they are, how they work, and why one is harder to catch than the other
- Why self-doubt and negative bias get proportionally louder as the stakes get higher, and what neuroscience says about rewiring that response
- How military briefing and debriefing practices translate into more effective business leadership and why most organizations skip the step that matters most
- What Jenn learned when a subordinate called her out for not trusting her team under stress, and how that feedback transformed her command
- Why trust is the currency that determines how well an organization actually performs, and what it looks like when leaders actively build it versus let it erode
- How to mentally prepare for high-pressure conversations so you stay grounded instead of falling into fight, flight, or freeze
- The Warrior Framework Jenn developed from combat training: perceive, assess, ready, act, and how leaders can use it to move from stuck to decisive
About Jenn Donahue
Jenn Donahue, PhD, PE is an international keynote speaker, retired U.S. Navy captain, business coach, and one of North America's leading voices on leadership and personal growth. Over a 27-year military career, she commanded an 800-personnel battalion in Afghanistan, built a bridge across the Euphrates River during the Iraq War, and led the construction of combat outposts in hostile terrain. She survived enemy fire and a contract on her life.
Her USA Today bestselling debut book, Becoming the Warrior: Harnessing Your Inner Strength to Silence Self-Doubt, draws on her battlefield experience to build a four-part framework that helps leaders combat their inner critics, move past self-doubt, and take decisive action. In addition to her military career, Jenn holds a PhD in engineering, consults on large-scale geotechnical earthquake engineering projects, and lectures at UC Berkeley, UCLA, Cal Poly, and Virginia Tech.
Her mission is to walk alongside leaders, quiet the voices holding them back, and show them how to become the leaders they were meant to be.
Connect with Jenn Donahue
Website: https://www.jenndonahue.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenndonahue-phd-pe/
Instagram: @iamjenndonahue
About the Strategy & Leadership Podcast
The Strategy & Leadership Podcast is hosted by Anthony C. Taylor, a strategic advisor to mid-market leadership teams ($30M to $300M) across North America.
Anthony works directly with CEOs and senior leaders to help them align their teams, clarify priorities, and execute strategy effectively in complex organizations.
On this show, he interviews founders, executives, and industry leaders about what actually works when strategy has to survive execution.
Strategy Resources for Leaders
Work with a Strategic Planning Facilitator https://www.smestrategy.net/strategic-planning-facilitator
Connect with Anthony Taylor on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyctaylor604/
Produced by Rednyne Productions https://www.rednyne.com
