A Navy Captain on Trust, Self-Doubt, and Leading Under Pressure | Jenn Donahue

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, 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. 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.

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.

What You Will Learn in This Episode

The two inner voices that hold leaders back, what they are, how they work, and why one is harder to catch than the other.

Why self-doubt gets proportionally louder as the stakes get higher, and what neuroscience says about rewiring that response.

How military briefing and debriefing practices translate into 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 determines how well an organization actually performs, and what it looks like when leaders 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