Leading Without Authority: What Service Teaches Us About Leadership | Jada Hoerr

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What if the strongest leadership lessons are learned in places where you have no authority at all?

In this episode of Fail With Me on Stories and Stanza, Abhra talks with Jada Hoerr, Chief Resource Officer at Midwest Foodbank. Jada spent 21 years in sales and marketing at Caterpillar before moving into nonprofit leadership. She shares how service, volunteering and community work became an unexpected training ground for leading with influence, confidence and accountability.

Jada talks about the early-career leader who offered her an international assignment in Brazil when she had no experience, no industry knowledge and no Portuguese, and told her, "I have confidence you won't fail." She describes the imposter syndrome she felt long before she had a name for it, and the day during the 2008 recession when she phoned young graduates one by one to rescind their job offers. That day taught her that hard conversations, handled with care, are a kindness.

We also explore:

• Why talking openly about failure builds vulnerability, and why vulnerability builds trust
• Moving from control-based to trust-based leadership, and the fine line between supporting your team and micromanaging it
• How shared goals and values give a team something to rally around when cultures clash
• What changes when you go from a multinational corporation to a 65-person nonprofit, where you're the player and the coach
• When your greatest strength becomes your weakness, and why life needs margin just like a page does
• Why "I need help" should be celebrated in a thriving team
• A broken arm, a colleague's hidden illness, and remembering that everyone carries something unseen into work
• Leading 37,000 volunteers a year who aren't motivated by a title or a paycheck, and how to keep "depositing" into their sense of purpose

Whether you lead a team or not yet, this conversation is a reminder that leadership often starts long before anyone gives you the title.

Fail With Me is a Stories and Stanza series about what our failures are telling us, without the shame and guilt that usually come with them.

#Leadership #ServantLeadership #ImposterSyndrome #NonprofitLeadership #StoriesAndStanza

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