Imposter Syndrome in Leadership: Why Even Experienced Leaders Struggle (With Retired Navy Captain, Jenn Donahue)

Jenn Donahue:
The first problem during that whole thing is that my brain got completely hijacked by imposter syndrome. In the first couple of seconds, all of a sudden I started to think, instead of actually like working through the problem like I had been trained to do, my brain all of a sudden went to what am I doing here? Who am I to be in charge? What is going on? 

And I started to compare myself to all of my other colleagues, about what they would do in this situation, how they would know the exact right answer. And I started to doubt myself as a leader instead of trying to work through the process that I had been going through like for almost 20 years in the military, you know all of these high stress situations. 

Blake Schofield (00:49.376)
Real leadership. Real life. Real impact. No more choosing between your career and your life. Here you’ll find honest conversations, science-backed strategies, and inspiring stories to help you thrive at work and truly enjoy your life outside of it. I’m your host, Blake, and I’m honored to help you create more impact with ease.

Blake Schofield (01:22.542): Every once in a while, you have a guest on the podcast that leaves a lasting impression. Jen Donahue did just that. On today’s episode, I interviewed Jen. She is an international keynote speaker, retired U.S. Navy captain, business coach, and one of America’s leading experts on leadership and personal growth.

Over her 27-year military career, Jen built a bridge across the Euphrates River during the Iraqi War. She commanded an 800-person personnel battalion in Afghanistan and led the construction of combat outposts and hostile desert terrain. In her inspiring book, Becoming the Warrior, Harnessing Your Inner Strength to Silent Self-Doubt, she draws from her experience on the battlefield to build a framework that helps people combat their inner critics, achieve their goals, and uncover the warrior within them.

Jen and I had such amazing discussions around the challenges of being a woman in a male-dominated industry, how she had to learn to tap into her natural strengths, authenticity, and leadership, even when it looked different than the leaders around her. And we talked about some of the greatest challenges that she went through in her life and in her career, and how she learned to walk through that with a level of grace, clarity, and the ability to rise even in the toughest or most toxic circumstances. I think there’s so much value in the conversation that we had, and I’m really honored to be able to share this episode and this conversation with you.

Blake Schofield:
Jenn, thank you so much for joining me today on Impact with Ease. I’m really excited to dive into this conversation.

Jenn Donahue (03:11.074)
Me too and thank you so much for having me.

Blake Schofield:
Jenn, before we dive in, I would love it if you could just share a little bit about your background and how did you end up doing the work that you do today?

Jenn Donahue
Good. Okay.

Jenn Donahue
I’ll start as like way back as I can and I am an engineer. I am like an engineer’s engineer. I was that little girl who was building things instead of really playing with dolls. And I didn’t understand exactly what that was until I got into high school and especially in college and realized that I love to build. And that’s been part of my life ever since. So went to Texas A&M became an engineer and decided to join the United States Navy. Now the part that I was in is we build. So we go out into the middle of deserts, drive out there, got our trucks, we circle them up, point the big guns out, and then we build bases in the middle. And it could be bases, we could do roads, we could drill water wells, all of these different things. So after 27 years in the United States Navy, from Iraq to Afghanistan, I decided to finally retire a couple years ago. And now I’m a speaker and an author.

And it just feels so good to be able to try to give back some of those lessons that I learned the hard way and help others just really become the best that they can.

Blake Schofield (04:26.478)
It sounds like very early on you were likely in the minority, right? We still today are pushing for more female engineers. And I’m interested to hear, was that obvious to you when you were young? Is that something that you struggled to embrace or was it something that you always sort of embraced and found that as an opportunity?

Jenn Donahue (04:53.132)
I’ve always embraced it and I’ve always known that I was the oddball. There was no other girls on my block either. And so I just wound up kind of like running with the guys and hopping fences, climbing trees, all those types of things. So it was pretty natural whenever I started to go into the different classes for math and science. Yeah, there weren’t that many other girls, but I kind of grew up with it and I just thought that was natural.

By the way, nobody in my family does math. I might be from the milkman, I don’t know, but they’re all artists. And so I never really understood them. I’m the one that’s doing math. I’m the one that’s the only one also that knows how to read a map. And so I just knew that I was always kind of like the odd man out. And it was like that whenever I was an ocean engineer, there was only two of us that were women in the United States Navy. In the engineering portion that I was in, we were only 9 % women.

And it’s just kind of been that way all along. It’s just, it’s just, you just kind of get used to it you just kind of flow with it. You figure it out. You still have to try to be yourself and not try to take on the other personalities of the people around you, you know, so that you can be the happiest that you can.

Blake Schofield
I find that the roots of the work that we end up doing when we really are in alignment with our passion and our purpose always go back to our childhood. I find it very interesting that you were the outlier in your home, that you had a very different way of working and looking at the world. And I’m interested to understand because as somebody who also found themselves in that in so many ways and have worked with so many talented leaders who are the ones who are the trailblazers or see things differently. How did that impact you as a young child? What was your perception about you versus the rest of your family? And how did that sort of impact the way that you viewed and moved things?

Jenn Donahue (06:56.142)
My mom said that whenever I was like three years old, she said that I always told her that I knew more than she did. So I know this is embarrassing to say, but it just was one of those things where I felt like I’m different. I’m going to embrace it. I don’t understand why I like these things, but the great part was is that my family really let me embrace it. And they didn’t know really what to do with me, but they just, you know, gave me Tinker toys. They gave me Legos. They gave me different math books, things like that. And so they were very encouraging through the whole thing. And especially whenever I got into high school, again, they didn’t really know what to do with me, but they’re like, hey, we’re gonna support you no matter what. Same thing in college, they were a little worried about me going into the military, but I just had this support the entire time. And it was a little…

Blake Schofield
That’s beautiful and what a gift they gave you in seeing you for who you were and not expecting you to show up the way that they did.

Jenn Donahue
And what’s interesting is I look back also, I didn’t really have any role models. I didn’t have anybody to look up to. There weren’t a lot of women scientists. I had no women science teachers or math teachers. You know, I got into college, there were no female professors. And so I really looked at it as like, kind of like, why am I here? And why aren’t there more people like me? And so I thought, hey, I’m going to just go do this. I’m going to go do the best that I can.

And you know, so what if there aren’t any other women? Maybe I’m the first. And I kind of had that attitude also. was like, hey, I might be the first person to do this. And it was fun. And it was a challenge.

Blake (08:30.038)
I love that so much and it’s probably that natural curiosity and desire to figure it out your own way that you’ve had so much success and you’ve been able to navigate environments where maybe you had a different perspective or different needs than the people that were around you. I’m interested to hear what caused you decide to go into service. So you went into Texas A&M. I love that by the way, grew up in Texas. So we have that in common.

What caused you to really feel like that was the path you wanted to take?

Jenn Donahue
I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And I was looking at all my classmates and they were all looking to just go down to Houston, work for these big companies. And I had so much angst. Like I want to get out and see the world. I grew up in West Texas. There is nothing out there. It’s just brown. It’s flat. There’s tumbleweed. That’s all there is. And I wanted to see something. And as an ocean engineer, I got into what is it like on the ocean? What is all that all about?

So a friend of mine went to the Army Corps of Engineers and did an internship. And he said he really liked it. And I went and I investigated it and I thought, maybe that’s not it. Then I went to the Navy because it seemed natural. And that’s when they told me about the program for the Civil Engineer Corps, the ones that go out and build.

Jenn Donahue
Excuse me. And one of the great things about it was that they only hired 50 people per year. That’s all that they allowed in. And so was very competitive. And so being competitive, I decided this is what I’m going to go for. But it also gave me that ability to say like, hey, I can go see the world. I can go experience all of these different cultures. And I’m so glad I did because my very first duty station was in Guam. I mean, you can’t get farther from West Texas than Guam. I mean, it is amazing. I’m surrounded by water. I’m scuba diving every day after work. I mean, it was just fantastic. And so I’m so glad that I went in that direction, but I just didn’t want what everybody else was doing. I was like, I had to go out. I had to go see things.

Blake (09:09.358)
And what a beautiful thing that you listened to what your inner compass was really telling you was right for you. I imagine you experienced quite a lot of very exciting and also very challenging things. Can you share a little bit about maybe one of the largest challenges you went through in your career and how that taught you a level of ability to survive and thrive even in crisis or chaos.

Jenn Donahue (09:41.474)
Well, there was an assassination attempt on my life whenever I was in Afghanistan. That was probably one of the ones that was the biggest wake up call and one of the biggest challenges that I had. I was in charge of 800 people and we had found out that the base where we were going out to train the Afghan engineers, that there were insurgents that had infiltrated the unit, were planning to kidnap me, do horrible things to me and then behead me and a couple other people. And I had to make a decision on the spot whether we were going to go out and continue training. And at that time in Afghanistan, there had been a lot, I think there were something like over five or 600 other US soldiers that had been killed by insurgents like in the last couple months. So it was very, very scary. And just the idea of that I’m in charge of all these people, this is something that’s very real and having to make a split decision.

That was probably one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.

Blake Schofield (11:57.454)
I can’t even imagine, I think probably anyone listening, the vast majority of us, can’t even imagine what it would feel like to sit through that level of immediate fear, right? Our mind loves to make up a lot of stories about the horrible things that are going to happen to us, but very few of us will actually be in that true life and death circumstance where there’s so much evidence that it is real and that that could happen to you.

Jenn Donahue
Yeah.

Blake Schofield
Jenn, how did you navigate that? Had you already built skills, I assume some, to help in that circumstance, but what are the things that you did to be able to center yourself and process through that with such tight timelines, heavy pressure, a lot of responsibility, and I imagine, you know, a lot of fear.

Jenn Donahue (11:37.048)
Well, the first problem during that whole thing is that my brain got completely hijacked by imposter syndrome. In the first couple of seconds, all of a sudden I started to think, instead of actually like working through the problem like I had been trained to do, my brain all of a sudden went to what am I doing here? Who am I to be in charge? Like what is going on? And I started to compare myself to all of my other colleagues about what they would do in this situation, how they would know the exact right answer. And I started to doubt myself as a leader instead of trying to work through the process that I had been going through like for almost 20 years in the military, you all of these high stress situations. And it’s almost embarrassing that my brain went in that direction as opposed to being very logical like I normally am, but it’s something that’s very real.

And we get in these crises, we get in these situations where if we’re not really paying attention, man, our brain could go, you know, in the wrong direction. And it took me a couple of minutes, or not actually minutes, it felt like minutes at my head, to try to tamp down that voice. And then I started to look around at all my people who, some of them were scared, some of them were, they were pretty angry and realized, wait a minute, I have an incredible team around me and we can get through this because over the last six months, all we’ve been doing is practicing for this type of thing. We’ve been training. We have absolute trust in each other. And I was able to make the decision, but it took me a minute to basically tamp down that other voice that was trying to, you know, dissuade me and basically make me feel so small and that I wasn’t worthy making that choice.

Blake Schofield
It’s interesting to hear you recount it. And what I know to be true is you just experienced the human condition. know, 95 % of the decisions we make are from our subconscious and from our survival based instincts. so of course, in that circumstance, I’m not sure anyone could have overridden that. And, and I, I stopped to say that because I think that…

Blake Schofield
So often we see those human natural instinctual things as failures or weaknesses or examples of what we could have done better as opposed to just acknowledging the humanity of it, that we all experience that, that our brain does tell us a bunch of lies when we’re in panic or when we’re in fear and that we’re not alone in that, that doesn’t make us weak or incapable, it makes us human.

Jenn Donahue
I completely agree. I really do. And you know, it’s just so silly to compare yourself to others in those type of situations. It really is.

Blake Schofield (15:37.408)
Well, it’s fascinating to me, like I said, it’s probably near impossible to put myself in your shoes and imagine what I would do in that, right? We all like to say we would know what we would do. But it’s fascinating to me that your first instinct was that you weren’t capable of being in that spot. And that is not something that came to me as a thought at all.

Blake Schofield
And I think it just, but it speaks to like the imposter syndrome that you experienced in that moment. have experienced in so many ways in lesser stress environments in that particular one. think the stress level would have been so high that I would have been in a complete panic that I was probably going to be killed and, trying to figure out how to get myself evacuated. and so I do think it’s really such a beautiful conversation to have because I think for so long as a society, we didn’t talk about these things. Or if we did, it was like, you’re weak for experiencing them and you just need to shut them down and push them away. And I’m really hoping, and certainly a huge part of the work that I do is to help normalize the human experience and remove the shame from it and help give leaders the tools to understand if you experience those moments where you start comparing yourself or you feel not good enough.

That doesn’t mean it’s true. It means that you are kind of pulled into that survival based moment and you’re trying to figure out how to deal with it. And so when I hear you, I have 20 years of experience and you know, I, the logic didn’t override it, but then you’re like, but then I pulled myself together pretty quickly. So much of this to me is about helping normalize it and then helping individuals realize how can I raise the floor? How can I shorten the depth and duration of being emotionally out of it or not feeling like I can see straight. Because if we can focus on raising the floor, we can focus on not judging or shaming ourselves for the feelings or the emotions or the nervous systems reactions. And instead we can acknowledge and honor that that’s part of our humanity and we can find ways to work through it faster. I believe and have consistently seen that enables us to show up in ways that build confidence and self-trust and capability and impact and the ability to be an even stronger leader.

Jenn Donahue
I completely agree. you know, I talk about this situation in Afghanistan, but you know, I still get imposter syndrome every once in a while, like for no good reason. Like I was asked to go to speak at a conference and I looked at all the other speakers and I was like, why did they invite me? You know, it’s the same thing. it’s like, so it doesn’t have to happen like in a crisis where somebody’s trying to kill you can just be like the everyday invitation to a conference, you know, and it’s okay to have these. I honestly think that unless we’re under a crisis or especially when we’re trying to grow, when we’re trying to grow and try to do something different, wow, that little voice starts to pipe up and it starts to get a little bit louder again. So those are the moments that I’ve really noticed when it starts to, it starts to come in and it starts to talk to me.

Blake (18:22.633)
A hundred percent, because your brain is wired to repeat what it already knows. So anytime we are trying to do something we’ve never done, all of that fear and anxiety will show up because it doesn’t, it’s not wired for growth.

Jenn Donahue (18:37.966)
Let’s stay where we are. It’s nice, it’s comfortable.

Blake Schofield
Yeah, well, in so many cases, right? That is, and in so many cases when our brain says that it’s literally the polar opposite from the truth. It’s like staying where you’re at is actually greater risk because either you are in burnout or you are in danger or the things you are doing will never get you what you actually want to accomplish. And so I love the fact that you’re sharing this because…

Jenn Donahue
Great.

Blake Schofield (19:43.094)
I think it really normalizes no matter what you accomplish, no matter how much training you have, you will never be able to overcome the human experience. It just is, but how can you learn to understand that inner critic that you have and we all have them? And how can you learn to start to challenge it? And be able to work through it in a way that enables you to still create the growth or the impact or the decision that you need to make.

Jenn Donahue
I’ve got a good friend named Chris and he has imposter syndrome, but he took a really interesting look at it and he started to track all of the different times through his life when the imposter syndrome started to speak up. And he found that whenever he just pushed through, that he has some really great success on the other side. And so he was telling me, I was interviewing him for my book. He was telling me that when he gets imposter syndrome now, like he gets giddy, like he gets excited about it. He’s like, that’s that feeling right before like I grow and I have a great accomplishment. So it’s really interesting to see how, what his take is that he’s like, he starts to hear that voice and he’s like, Ooh, like he gets all excited and he’s like, okay, all right, let’s go do this. Like I know something good is going to happen on the other side. So it’s all in like how you, how you take it. I’m really trying to take more of that tact whenever I start to hear that. And I’m also trying to train my brain to amplify sort of like the opposite of that mean little voice. There is a voice that you have inside of you that says, can, that I want to do this. And so what I’ve been doing over the last, like probably three years is training that side to be louder than that mean little voice that’s just trying to hold you back.

Blake Schofield
Yeah, with neuroplasticity we do. We train our brain and we create new neural pathways to look at the world differently. I love your story about your friend Chris. I guess I would say I’ve had a similar experience, but a little different in that I spent 18 years in corporate retail before I became an entrepreneur and was highly successful doing what I was doing, but I kept going through these cycles after a certain period of time for the new job where I would become less fulfilled and then I was going through these burnout cycles.

Blake Schofield (21:58.582) And I knew for more than a decade of the 18 years that I was in corporate retail that something wasn’t right. And I needed to do something different and I really struggled to make that change. I had a lot of belief systems that change was difficult, painful, hard and took a long time. And I see that so often with so many people that belief that it will be. And so we stay in the thing that we know, because we think the devil you know is better than the one you don’t. And I, like so many people, resisted change until I could no longer tolerate the circumstances that I was in. So I had to be in extreme pain before I would really make that change. And through the last nine years of my journey, what I have seen over and over and over again is that pain is inevitable, right? We have to have the opposite, we have joy, we have to have pain, but suffering is a choice. And when you really look at it, what I’ve consistently seen is that right before our breakthrough is always surrender.

Blake (22:59.105)
If you look consistently over and over and over again, when you go through really difficult times, what precedes that breakthrough is always a surrender and an acceptance of the circumstance that you’re in and a willingness to let go of what you think it has to look like to move forward. And once I began to understand that there was a methodology and a process to creating change without having to go through all the suffering, where I could see earlier, like, this is misaligned or, this doesn’t feel good. And I began to understand that the things that I feared were very often things that were the lies, very often things that were the things that if I did would give me freedom on the other side. And so I have gotten to a place much like your friend Chris, where I guess that it used to be really painful and a very long journey for me to create change. And now I can rapidly create change with a lot more ease because I see it earlier. I’m able to recognize like, this is interesting. This is something that I fear. And this is an opportunity for me to be able to figure out really where to go to, where to go to really be able to create the life that I want and the freedom that I want and really be able to move forward through my journey, I came to see the pattern over and over again and through personal experience of being able to see and understand where things were misaligned in my life.

Jenn Donahue
Yes.

Blake Schofield
And recognizing the pattern, getting to it earlier, I have walked through 90 % of the fear, like my worst fears in life. Not always by choice. Sometimes they came my way. But on the other side of that every time was some immense blessing, incredible peace and freedom and I think so often in our society, we are trying to remove the challenges that we face or we misperceive understanding the reality of life, which is that we grow through our challenges and growth comes through discomfort. And also we can learn how to grow through things that are challenging and come out so much stronger than we really ever thought that we were and I wonder what your perspective is on that because obviously you have walked through challenges that so many people never have and may never experience in their life.

Jenn Donahue
I think that’s one of the most important things is to do a debrief. You know, something that we talk about all the time in the military, whether things go right or things go wrong. We always sit down and take a look at what did we do well and what could we do better? And that’s really part of growth as well. As you said, like whenever you break through some of these really hard challenges, take stock in what you just did realize, know how strong you really are and that’s gonna help you whatever you continue to try to grow and you get that momentum going behind you but just have the grace to realize everything that you’ve done to me. That’s so important that so many people they just overlook it They do something hard and they’re like, okay fine and then they’re just on to the next thing and the next and the next and they never take stock like of what what amazing accomplishments that they’ve done

That’s one of the things I think is so important for everybody to just have some gratitude for what they’ve done in their life.

Blake Schofield
As we talked about earlier, you’ve worked in some very high pressure, male dominated environments. I’m interested in what are the biggest lessons you learned about staying grounded and also authentic in those types of settings.

Jenn Donahue
Well, I messed it up at the beginning. I’ll just be honest. I thought that I was supposed to be like all of the guys. I looked around at them. They were all yelling at their troops. And I thought, okay, well, I guess that’s how you get things done is you yell at the troops and, it didn’t feel good. And I think a lot of us realize that when we’re trying to be like somebody else, if we really kind of take a step back, we realize like, this just doesn’t feel good.

Luckily, I found a really good mentor and he saw right through what I was trying to do. Like he could tell like, this is not who this person is. You know, I was losing the trust of all of my troops because they could also see right through me as well that I wasn’t this type of person. And he really took me aside and over like the course of about maybe two months, he basically said, you need to figure out who you are and how you want to lead. And that was the best two months of like my entire life because I was able to kind of think about like, what am I good at? I’m really good at listening to people. I am really good at trying to figure out like who works best with who and how can we get the most out of everybody? And I started to do that. And I started to listen to my troops and like what they needed and what their challenges were. And I started to think about, well, how can I help them? I know that sounds odd, but like that’s something that I had to learn.

Jenn Donahue (28:13.504) And once I started to do that, everything started to click, everything started to get easier. I felt good inside my body that I could be myself and I didn’t have to yell and I didn’t have to scream that, you know, there is quiet leadership and that’s what I had to learn. so, yes, I was very different from many of my male counterparts because they all were still on that track of like, you know, being standing up and like, we’re going to yell at people and you need to do this and you need to do that.

And I get up there and I just have a very different approach. I say like, okay, this is what we’re going to do today. Does anybody have some great ideas about how we can make this even better? And everybody’s looking around like, what? Like she’s asking for our opinion. It like, that’s been never been done. And that’s how I’ve continued to grow and how I’ve taken on more challenges. And it all has to just go back to who are you? What are your own strengths? Stop trying to be like everybody else and just lead the best that you can. So what, you know, if we look different than all of our male counterparts? You know, so what if we lead differently? Are we effective? That’s the most important thing. If you’re effective in what you’re doing, it doesn’t matter that you’re not doing it like everybody else. That was probably one of the biggest lessons that I learned is that you have to be yourself in order to be efficient, to be effective, to really get the job done better than those other people who were just, a lot of them were also trying to fake it too.

Blake Schofield
I could not agree with you more. A huge part of the work I do is really focused on helping people tap into what I call their Unique Fingerprint for Success™, which is the natural pattern behind how they’ve created every success they’ve ever had in their life. And when you really understand and can own that, there’s a depth of confidence and capability that I think really helps you to become unstoppable.

Blake Schofield (30:12.756)
And I, like you, suffered from all the same slings and arrows. I became a leader because I was a highly successful individual contributor. And I had so many beliefs as a leader that I had to know everything. I had to have all the answers. The team was looking for me to be responsible and hold everything together. And it didn’t enable me. Those belief systems didn’t enable me to show up as the person I really am, right? Highly empathetic, feels other people’s feelings, really sees people for who they are and wants to see them thrive and develop. And I wasn’t in that realm, at least the first number of years as a leader, it wasn’t showing up that way because I felt like there was a certain way that I was supposed to be a leader and this is what a leader looked like. And so I see so many leaders that are exhausted after years of operating out of alignment with who they are, because they’ve been doing that for so long that they don’t even, maybe in a lot of cases, they’ve lost that connection to who they really are and what that would look and feel like to feel that in their body, that they have that level of confidence and capability on their own and how they operate versus how everyone else does.

Jenn Donahue
What’s really fascinating about this is I wrote an article on LinkedIn about, you know, my challenges and figuring out who I really was and that I wasn’t a yeller, that I was empathetic, you know, and I had all of these very different traits. Cause again, I was like the only female officer that they’d ever, I was actually one of the first female officers that the battalion even had. So they didn’t even know what to do with us. But what’s interesting is so many years later, one of the admirals that I had read that article and contacted me.

And he said, I wish I had figured that out when I was the same rank as you. I went through my entire career acting the way that I thought I was supposed to act. And he said, I’m so glad you figured it out so early. So it’s not just us women. A lot of times, a lot of the men are in the same position where they feel like they have all this pressure that they have to act a certain way. And maybe they have more pressure than we do. Maybe we’re braver, where we’re like, no, we’re not gonna do that. We’re gonna be ourselves. So I would definitely say, don’t get to that point in the end of your career where you look back and say, you know what, I really wish I could have just been myself and I probably would have been a whole lot happier.

Blake Schofield
One of the consistent patterns or challenges I’ve seen when you are a leader who leads differently or sees things differently is that at times that can create some political challenges, especially if you’re working with somebody who has, say you are a vulnerable leader and you’re working with someone who really stuffs down their emotions and doesn’t believe vulnerability should be in the workforce.

Did you face some of those challenges and can you share a story about how you went through that and maybe the lessons you learned to help others who might be struggling with the same?

Jenn Donahue
Luckily, I was a little bit older in my career and I did have somebody that, you know, we call them old and crusty or salty, you know, in the military. And they just believe that, you know, no, this is how it should be. There’s no feelings. We don’t have feelings. They weren’t issued to us whenever we went through boot camp, you know, that whole thing. it was one of those things where it’s like, hey, you know, back off.

I’m not only my competitive, I’m also kind of a mama bear and like I protect the people around me. And so it almost gave me a way to be like that, that kind of mama bear attitude of like, don’t talk to me like that. Don’t talk to any of my troops like that. If you need, if you have something, you come through me first. You know, don’t ever tell me, you know, no, because guess what? We are getting it done. We’re getting the mission done. We’re getting things done probably better than your team.

Jenn Donahue (35:57.09) So, you know what, go deal with your own thing. Let me do what I need to do because we’re getting it done. And, you know, it’s not the greatest way to go about it, but there’s certain times when you have people that you have to talk to them in a certain way so that you can get through to them. And after that point, he was like, pretty much, yeah, he just left me alone. He left me and all my troops alone and we were able to do what we needed to do. I’ve also had other times in my civilian career where this has been flat out, you know, misogynistic, you know, I was on a project and I had one guy that basically said, well, no, I changed all the plans, things that were absolutely illegal to do. They had to go through all these different reviews and he did them himself without any recognition. And he basically put his feet up on the desk, crossed his arms and said, because that’s what men do. And I was like, oh, so luckily I didn’t, you know, grab my mechanical pencil and try to stab his eyes out. That was my first thought. But I realized that’s probably going to wind up in jail and lots of paperwork. And I just had to calm myself and say, you know, everybody around the table were all men also and they were just aghast. And so one of the things I found is like, I had several allies that I already had around that table. And, you know, many of them came up to me and said, hey, this is not how it should be. Many of them went and talked to him, told him how it wasn’t supposed to be. And then finally I went and talked to him and said, this is not appropriate, this is not professional and you need to change what you just said. Because we were colleagues and that kind of thing, you have to address it. You don’t have to throw your hands up in the air or things like that, but maybe it’s just behind closed doors. Maybe you go and address it that way. But those types of things definitely need to be addressed.

Blake Schofield
I agree and I think that it’s an area that is a skill that you develop and you understand how to do that in a way that honors who you are. But one of the things you said, I know to be a great strategy within that. So I want to highlight it. The fact that you had allies in the room.

Often I see when these circumstances happen, it’s really easy to get emotional to your point. You’re like, I want to stab him. It’s very easy to get into that emotional place where we feel triggered and disrespected and you almost never win like that. So the being able to create the space to calm down and be more centered and to be able to get allies around you that agree with the circumstances so that it’s not one person against the other. And so that there is a support for a culture that is healthier. I think it’s really key. And I read something on LinkedIn probably six months ago. It was this woman talking about how she worked in an organization and there were only two women in this meeting. 

In the meeting, the CEO looked at her and wanted her to go out and leave and get coffee and then wanted her to take the notes. And from her standpoint, she felt that that was very misogynistic. Why is the woman picked to do this, et cetera? And she shared in her LinkedIn post basically how she said that in front of the entire room of people to the CEO directly, like point blank said, no, I won’t go do that. 

What I thought was really interesting about it was from her standpoint, she saw it as very empowering. For mine, I saw it as the kiss of death for her career because she wasn’t strategic in being able to understand, there other allies here that understand and are seeing what I’m seeing? Are there other people, other women, other men, other people that see what’s happening and can join with me in support that, there’s some things happening inside this organization that aren’t balanced or aren’t healthy. And so I looked at what she shared and I thought, what a huge missed opportunity because she ended up being let go. And she never really solved the issue, which was fundamentally that she felt that there wasn’t that equality and she therefore had an experience that didn’t actually yield the benefit and it didn’t benefit her, it didn’t benefit anyone else. And so when you talk about the fact that you had allies and you were strategic about it, I think that’s so important to understand because it’s so easy to get emotional and not think about what needs to happen in order to create the right environment because if this is happening for me, it may also be happening to other people.

Maybe that person is completely unaware that what they said is offensive. Maybe they really have no idea or maybe they do and they don’t want to create change and then there needs to be a strategic effort to ensure that the right thing happens for everyone.

Jenn Donahue
Right. No, absolutely. You know, in this case, it was definitely targeted. ButI would tell anybody that’s in that same situation, give yourself about three to four seconds to just breathe first before saying the first thing that comes, you know, flying out of your mouth. Just having that three to four seconds where, you know, basically just stared the person down and kind of looked around the room and saw everybody else’s response to this.

I realized that I wasn’t the only one that was absolutely flabbergasted. You know, if I would have said exactly what I wanted to say, then I probably would have alienated the rest of the allies that I had around the table. But just taking that few seconds, you know, it just takes like three to four seconds. Don’t say anything. Take it all in. See what the lay of the land is and then respond appropriately. Whenever he said this, I said, that’s not appropriate. And I said, we’ll probably, we’ll need to table that discussion after work or basically after the meeting and we went on. I didn’t, I wasn’t goaded into it because he was totally trying to goad me. And you’ll have those types of situations. But like you said, sometimes people say things and they don’t really mean it. They don’t even recognize it. And like you said, those are great opportunities to kind of pull somebody aside and say, hey, you might not have meant this, but this is really how that made me feel. Was that what you were trying to do? Do you realize this?

A lot of times people are like, man, I’m so, so sorry. And they’re apologetic. And it also brings it to the forefront of their consciousness to probably not do that again.

Blake Schofield (42:24.878)
I’m so glad we dove into it. Such a good story. I know we’re already coming in on time and this has been so much fun talking to you. So I have to make sure I get this question in. Jen, you developed the Warrior Framework to help leaders make better decisions under pressure. I can think of no better time given all of the pressure leaders are feeling today. Could you break down the Warrior Framework for us?

Jenn Donahue
Absolutely, it’s four very easy steps. I believe in meeting people where they are. So a lot of times when I say, hey, have you thought about the voices in your head? A lot of people are like, no. And then they think about it they’re like, yeah, yeah, I guess you’re right. So the very first step is just to perceive. Perceive that there are all these different little voices in your head. Some of them are helpful, some of them are annoying, some of them are mean, some of them are procrastinating, understand that there’s a lot of dialogue that’s probably going on. The second step is about assessing. Is this a friend or is this a foe? Is this a voice that is trying to hold you back? Like we were talking about that mean little voice that’s telling you that you’re not worthy, that you’re not ready, you need to just stay where you are. Or is this one actually trying to be helpful? Like for instance, don’t run into the street because you’re going to get run over by a truck. You know, that’s helpful. The other voice, not really so much.

The next part is about being ready. And I talked a little bit about that other little voice, that positive voice, the one that says, you know, I can do this. That’s what I call your inner warrior. That’s the one who’s like, you know what, I can do this. I can make this happen. And we have to strengthen that warrior through training and through discipline and through readiness. And we get that warrior ready so that it’s able to be a better counterpoint to that mean little voice. And then the final step is just to act. Just take the first step. Whatever that might be. I mean it might be a big scary, scary goal, but find whatever the very first little thing is that you need in order to just take that little step. Maybe it’s doing a search on the internet for whatever it is that you want to do. Make that the first step. You don’t have to go all in. You don’t have to make some kind of grandiose step. but just take that first step. And it doesn’t matter if it’s to the left, to the right, if it’s center, as long as you’re taking a step and you’re not staying in your status quo, that’s the most important thing. So it’s just perceive, assess, ready, and act. And all of these are coming from the military. It’s the same four steps that we go through any time that we have some type of enemy, like a real enemy coming at us. And so I’ve just kind of made it more for the enemies that are in our head.

Blake Schofield
I love that. Jenn, it’s been such a pleasure having you today. I have so enjoyed this conversation.

Jenn Donahue
I have too, this has been really fun.

Blake Schofield
If the listeners are here and they’re like, my gosh, I love Jenn. I want to continue to follow her and learn more from her. How can they do that?

Jenn Donahue
There’s two different ways. Follow me on LinkedIn. I’m putting out all kinds of great content about the things that we just talked about. So I’m just Jenn Donahue, a PhD PE that’s on LinkedIn. Or you can go to my website, which is jendonahue.com. You can find all kinds of information there as well. And also you can pre-order the book that’s now available.

Blake Schofield
And what’s the name of your book?

Jenn Donahue
Becoming the Warrior: Harnessing Your Inner Strength to Silence Self-Doubt

Blake Schofield
Becoming the warrior. I love it. Well, Jenn, we’ve come to the end. So I will ask you the question I ask every guest that I have here. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that I should have or anything that’s on your heart that you would like to close with?

Jenn Donahue
One of the things that I always like to tell people is like, find something that you love. Find that thing that you love and hold onto it. And you know what, might need that you need to change a little bit in order to get there. Don’t stay in the position where you are if you are miserable. Go find what you love and it’ll all take care of itself.

Blake Schofield
That’s nice.

Blake Schofield
Thank you, Jenn, and thank you for listening. Until next time, lead with intention and create your impact with ease.