Chris Lesner
Nona, thank you so much for joining today.

Nona Jones
Thank you for having me. really honored to be here.

Chris Lesner
You know this, but my wife and I heard you speak at an event, and I thought you were amazing. I didn't know all of your background, but you've had an amazing background. Share with our audience a little bit of your journey and how you actually helped end up leading one of the largest companies in our lifetime.

Nona Jones
you

Nona Jones
Oh, thank you.

Nona Jones
Well, so I'll start in college because I've had such a like circuitous professional journey. Went to college, I was a microbiology and cell science major. I had planned to become a physician. I wanted to become an oncologist specifically. And I remember my second summer while I was in college, I was selected to do an internship with the National Institutes of Health and I got paired
with a physician who was brilliant, well-respected, older gentleman. Looking back on it now, I can recognize that he was probably jaded, but he asked me this question. He said, why do you want to be a doctor? And I had bright eyes and bushy tail, and I was like, because I want to help people, and I want to be a partner in their hope. And he was like, we don't give people hope. We tell people the facts. This is not about hope. This is about science. And I remember him telling me this, and I was just like, oh!
So I was like, I think I made the wrong decision with my life. And so I ended up changing my major to communications. And I figured, well, if I can't be a physician, maybe I'll be a broadcast journalist because I always liked to communicate. So didn't do that either, but I got married, graduated, and started working at Nationwide Insurance where I was an entry level, kind of mid-level, maybe independent contributor. No leadership role there, of course, fresh out of college.
But within a year, I got appointed to a regional leadership position and I was about 23 years old. And I think a couple of years later, I got recruited to a multi-service utility company. And the role I was recruited into was initially like a community relations, community engagement role. But then one of my colleagues retired and he was handling the environmental and regulatory policy work. And my boss, the CEO was like, I think you can do that. I had never.
heard of carbon credits in my life. Like I didn't know anything about greenhouse gases, none of that. But he appoints me to this expanded role. And I think that truly was, some people talk about inflection points. That was an inflection point for me because I didn't know what I was doing and yet I was trusted with an opportunity that required me to learn more than I would have in my previous role. So I think from there,

Nona Jones
I became a student of business, a student just of the world. And I got recruited into a C-level role with a large network of alternative schools for girls, which I loved doing and thought I would do that for the rest of my life. But being a person of faith, I was in prayer one day and I heard the Lord say, this assignment is over. And I was like, what? I love what I'm doing. But I felt called to resign from that job.
And 25 minutes after I resigned, I got a call from a small startup called Facebook. And I was offered a newly created role as the head of global faith partnerships. And I served there for almost six years before I joined the team at U version, which is the maker of the Bible app. I joined that team as the chief content and partnerships officer. And I was there for about a year. And since that time, I stepped off the team and I'm now
full-time business of entrepreneurship and I get to serve high capacity women, helping them to really discover purpose, even in their own executive roles, leading and building businesses, helping them discover purpose outside of their vocation, which has been extremely rewarding. So I've had quite the security's journey from me thinking, oh, I'm gonna be a doctor to where I am today.

Chris Lesner
I mean, it's one of the most amazing journeys and honestly, extremely impressive. Somewhere along the way, even amidst all of that, you decided, hey, I've got some free time and I'm going to start writing books. And you've written some amazing books. Talk about some of how you decided to start writing books.

Nona Jones
Yeah.

Nona Jones
Thank you.

Nona Jones
You know what's funny? I did not think of myself as an author. I got invited to speak at a really large conference for women. It was a women's leadership conference and this was back in maybe 2017, 2018. And a part of my story that I did not share at the beginning is I actually had a pretty dysfunctional childhood. For anyone who's ever heard of the social science assessment called the adverse childhood experiences,
assessment, the ACEs assessment, what it does is it looks at a given child and it looks at the trauma that that child has sustained and it tries to kind of prognosticate what is the probability that this child given this trauma will have an adverse outcome in life such as drug addiction, premature death, incarceration, system dependency, things like that. And the ACE assessment, it's on a scale from zero to 10.
where if a child scores like a three, they're considered at really high risk for adverse outcomes in life. When I took the assessment, I scored an eight. And that's because I am a survivor of sexual abuse, physical abuse, verbal mental abuse. I experienced all types of violence. I experienced neglect. I experienced a lot of things. And so I'm truly a statistically improbable product of God's grace. And I give you that backstory because
When I was invited to speak at this conference, I decided that I was going to share my story because I was asked to speak just to give leadership principles and to talk about how to be a better leader and manager and business. And I just felt that the best use of my time would be to help the women understand that we all have a story. We all have a story and many times trauma is part of that story.
but that isn't something that we should hide from. That's actually what can make us even stronger and more resilient. And so I gave a talk called Succeeding After Surviving. And a friend of mine said, you need to write that in a book. And so I started to kind of write out my principles and what I was sharing. And lo and behold, after I finished writing it in a book, because I was going to just make it available at the conference, my publisher reached out to me.

Nona Jones
They weren't my publisher at the time, of course, but they reached out to me and they just said, hey, you know, we've heard really good things about you. Would you happen to have a manuscript that we could take a look at to see if we could work with you as an author? And I happened to have a manuscript because of that. And so that actually became my very first book, which was Success From the Inside Out. And I think that as I look back over the last, I don't know, that's been, man, four or five years since I released that, that really speaks to,
what I believe is kind of like my ministry and what I believe is my calling is helping women and men understand that the trauma that happened to you doesn't make you defective. It's part of your story. And if you understand how to harness it, it can actually become a tool for resilience and being that type of servant leader that I think we all aspire to be. But in my case, because I didn't understand that, I actually ended up being the type of leader that
hurt people because hurt people hurt people. And so I know that now, but I also know that healed people heal people. And so part of my calling is really to help leaders heal from the trauma that we don't talk about because we want to be perceived as the most, you know, the strongest person in the room. Well, if only they knew what I had walked through, maybe they would look at me differently. They wouldn't think I was as strong. That is a lie.
We all come from backgrounds that include some sort of trauma and pain, but if we know how to harness it and we know how to learn from it, it can actually make us better because it can make us humble and it can make us the type of servant leader that I think we've all been called to be.

Chris Lesner
That's such a powerful perspective. And I love the heal people, heal people concept as well. You're in the process of coming out with a brand new book. Share a little bit about that book, which I see sitting there as well.

Nona Jones
Yeah.

Nona Jones
Yeah. So thank you. Yeah. So it's titled The Gift of Rejection. And I know that is probably the weirdest title that you could give a book. But it's called The Gift of Rejection because I firmly believe that even though rejection, the experience of it, right, being left out, being unwanted, being abandoned, being discarded, being humiliated, being blamed, being shamed, those experiences are very painful.
But pain is only the wrapping paper. sometimes we stop at the pain without recognizing that there's a gift on the inside of every rejection experience that we have that can teach us about ourselves and teach us about other people. And so I wrote this book because I have been on this journey to deeply understand how all of the rejection experiences that I've had from, you
my mom from my career, I've had rejection experiences in romantic relationships and friendships. How could I learn from them and extrapolate those learnings across my life so that I can become better? And so that's really kind of the nature of the book. And I think it's especially important for leaders because if you don't understand how rejection makes you show up as a leader.
I think that's where we tend to get people who are micromanaging, people who can never be pleased, people who are perfectionists. What they don't know is they're actually carrying an open rejection wound. Someone hurt them and instead of tending to the wound that that created, now they're passing the pain along to the people that they get the privilege of leaving. So my hope is that this book will help leaders understand how to steward rejection as a gift and a tool for building their character.

Chris Lesner
You have such unique experiences, both being a leader in the corporate world, having experience, having all the experiences you talked about personally, having experience in the ministry world as a leader. How do you see servant leadership play out in all of this? Does it play out differently in corporate versus ministry? Is it the same? How do you see rejection play out in them as well?

Nona Jones
Mm-hmm.

Nona Jones
That's a great question. I think servant leadership, it doesn't show up differently in different contexts because when we think about corporate versus ministry, we tend to think that those are different entities, but they're just organizations. They're just organizations of people. They tend to have different missions. They serve a different purpose, but they're organizations of people who are led by people.
And if we don't understand the role that our rejections play and how we show up as a person, it doesn't matter if it's a corporate CEO or the lead pastor of a church, you can end up with someone who hurts people. And we see it all the time. I have worked in corporate contexts for some of the most selfless, loving and compassionate leaders. And I've worked in ministry contexts with people who are certifiably narcissistic.
You know, and so it isn't it isn't the actual structural context that determines how a person shows up I believe it's the way that we make sense of the experiences that we have so for example When I was growing up I was classified as morbidly obese and that's because Part of my response to my childhood trauma is I would overeat that was part of the way that I would Kind of numb the pain of what was happening to me the dopamine of the food would kind of help me numb the pain
And so I would get made fun of all the time. Oh, known as Miss Piggy, known as fat, known as overweight, known as sloppy. I would get called names all the time. And I would start to actually internalize what those people said. The words that they said to me, I came into agreement with, and I believed that I was defective, that I was somehow less than, that I wasn't worthy. Well, that began to manifest itself and express itself in the way that I performed in the classroom. I had to make all A's.
I had to be the president of whatever club I was in. I had to be the first and the best. Why? Because I used those achievements as a proxy for my worth. And that orientation actually followed me into my career where I was one of the youngest executives, you know, in my company. I was, you know, 40 under 40 this 30 under 30 that I was getting all the awards and recognitions because I was pursuing success.

Nona Jones
again as a proxy for worth. so, you know, that's one of the ways that rejection expresses itself is we kind of explode into ambition. And so there are people, whether it's in the corporate space or the ministry space, who are successful, not because they're running toward a bright future, but because they're trying to escape a painful past. And so you end up hurting people. You end up being very demanding, very domineering.
Not because you want to help people be the best that they are, but because you're afraid that their failure will make you look bad. And the origin of that is rejection. It really is. And so, um, sometimes people think, well, that's just my personality. I'm just aggressive. I'm just hard charging. The question is why, why do you show up that way? What is it that's on the other side of your team's failure that makes you say they cannot fail?
Why? It's because their failure will make me look bad. A servant leader isn't worried about how a team's performance will make them look. A servant leader is concerned about making sure that the team's performance reflects that the team is capable of better, right? So it's not about you making me look good. It's that I know there's so much more within you and I'm going to help you extract what's in you. That's an entirely different posture, but you can't get there.
If you are nursing a rejection wound because think about it when we're wounded If we don't tend to the wound it gets infected It gets infected and the way that rejection shows up as an infection is bitterness hostility Will become short-tempered where you can't we can't ever be satisfied. We've got to get more Those are just some of the ways that it expresses itself and you cannot be a servant leader
when you're showing up with that type of orientation.

Chris Lesner
Do people always know how badly they've been wounded or how do people work through that?

Nona Jones
No, that's actually why I wrote the book because we have come to label as personality what is actually a rejection wound. Because we often aren't given language for how we show up with other people. We're not given language for how we show up in the world. People will just say, oh, he's a jerk or oh, she's just mean. They'll label us those ways.
But we don't actually ask the question why. Why is it that you're never satisfied? Why is it that you fly into a rage when someone makes a mistake? Why is that? There has to be a moment of introspection to just say, you know, when that thing happened and I flew into a rage, I was thinking this. Because one of the things I talk about in the book is that
Rejection creates talk tracks. What's a talk track? If you were to go to a museum and you walk in and the docent hands you a pair of headphones, right? And they say, Hey, when you go to the exhibit, press the button and you'll hear the narration for the exhibit. okay. You go to the exhibit, you press the button, you hear the talk track for the exhibit. If you press that button enough, say you press it three, four, five times.
After a while, you will start to memorize the talk track. You don't even need the exhibit to play the talk track. That's the exact same way that rejection is. When people say things repetitively about us, you'll never be anything, you're so stupid, you can't ever get anything right. When those things are said to us, and it's not even just words, it can be actions. If we have a father abandon us or a mother abandon us or maybe...
We had friends who didn't show up for us when we needed them. It creates a talk track in our mind that says you're not worthy. You're not good enough. You'll never be good enough. You're not anything. And so those talk tracks often play before we act out. Right? Like we can be in the meeting and I've seen this happen in a meeting, you know, team members going through the PowerPoint and maybe one of the numbers is off. Maybe one of the numbers is wrong and their boss just

Nona Jones
pairs into them. God, you're just so stupid. I told you that was the wrong number and the person is literally just broken in front of them. But I guarantee you that before that person acted out, there was a talk track that played in their mind and that talk track was seeded into their mind by somebody else. This is why we have to get disciplined at being introspective. Where did this thought come from?
Why do I believe this about myself? Why do I believe this about the other person? In the Bible Proverbs, I think it's chapter 18 verse 21. It says life and death are in the power of the tongue. That word that's translated power is the Hebrew word Yod, which means hand. So life and death are in the hand of the tongue. What does a hand do? A hand molds, a hand builds, a hand creates.
But the same hand that can paint the Mona Lisa is the same hand that can stab someone to death. And the same hand that can build a beautiful monument is the same hand that can pull a trigger. And so the tongue can be used for amazing things to speak life and encouragement and hope, but it can also be used to destroy and degrade. And so we have to begin to ask ourselves,
What is it that I'm believing? What is it that I'm telling myself in this moment that's making me show up this way and where did that come from?

Chris Lesner
That's such great perspective. So you first are working on yourself, and I'm sure many, many people who are listening to this are in leadership positions of some sort. They're trying to push something forward, whatever it is. They might start now to start thinking about it themselves. How do they use this thought to influence others for the better, for that person's own good?

Nona Jones
Well, I would say that again, we have to first pause, right? Because many times what we're acting out of is embarrassment, it's shame, it's humiliation. I'll give you an example. Early in my career, I was very privileged to lead a team where there was one particular woman on the team who I considered her to be a rock star. Like I thought,
She was amazing. As a matter of fact, I thought that she could be my successor. She was so just brilliant. And while I recognized her brilliance, in hindsight, I can also see that I was threatened by her brilliance and the way that it showed up. Because if you would have said this to me then, I would have denied it wholeheartedly. But looking back on it, the way that it showed up is there were meetings that I should have included her in that I didn't include her in. I specifically excluded her
because she was more versed on a topic than I was. And I didn't want my boss to see that she was more familiar with something than me. And so I would exclude her from meetings because frankly, I was ashamed that I didn't know as much as she did on that topic. And I would just encourage any leaders that the first step to getting free from the power of the
the toxic rejection that so many of us are carrying is we've got to get honest. We've got to get honest. You know, who are the people on our teams that we're just not being fair to? Maybe it's because they're brilliant. Maybe it's because, um, you know, they're just straightforward. I've had some people on my team who, uh, they're just straight shooters. They're very direct. And I would take offense to that because I was like, you know, who do you think you are talking to me like that? And they weren't even being disrespectful.
It's that their candor ended up striking a soft place in my heart that had been wounded because of rejection. And so I think we just have to be honest, like, okay, is it that I dislike this person because they're truly disrespectful? Or is it that I dislike this person because resilience, excuse me, rejection has made me fragile? Those are two very different orientations, but we have to ask ourselves that because as leaders,

Nona Jones
You know, it's a privilege to get to inspire and direct people toward a shared goal. But if we are fragile because of rejection, we will end up wounding the people that we have been called to serve. So I think it starts with humility and honesty and being aware.

Chris Lesner
So people who come and work in teams with each other, they're all bringing their own rejection stories from the earliest rejections that happen in life to recent rejections. And they're showing up with a lot of wounds. You've built some great teams, and you've been a part of great teams. How do you build great teams amongst all of the stories that people are bringing into those teams that
that really are at the team's expense almost without purposefully being against the team.

Nona Jones
Yeah, you know, I truly believe that as leaders, we have to be the thermostat of the team and not the thermometer. You know, so the thermostat sets the temperature. The thermometer just tells you the temperature. So when we are again given the privilege of leading a team, we have to go into it with the idea that this team will reflect who I am.
And so I have to be very intentional about the relationships that I build. One of the strategies that I would use and many of my colleagues, especially at the C level, they would always be like, why are you doing that? Is I made a point in every organization I was in, I would make a point of having one-on-one time with every member of my team. And I would set it up to where my one-on-one time with my direct reports was on a weekly basis.
My one-on-one time with their direct reports was every other week. My one-on-one time with the tertiary level direct reports was once a month and everybody else at different levels, it would be at least once throughout the year. And I did that because I wanted everyone on my team to know my heart, to hear my heart. I wanted them to know that I am a partner with you, that I am for you.
that we are in this together. I never wanted to get so far removed from even the person on my team who was interning that they felt like I was somehow above them. It's like, no, we're in this together. So I think as leaders, we have to be very, very intentional about that because you're absolutely right. People bring their own baggage. They bring their own challenges. I remember one time I had a member of my team who was just amazing, amazing, amazing, and come to find out.
He and his family were struggling financially, like significantly struggling on the brink of bankruptcy because he wasn't making enough to support his family. They had special needs children. Well, those are things I never would have known if I hadn't actually sat down in one on one time with him. But this was someone who was coming in, giving it their all every single day. And so I think as leaders, we just have to be committed to that. And we have to do the work ourselves because you cannot expect in others what you're not willing.

Nona Jones
to do in yourself. So do the work yourself. Be honest, be humble, and be willing to spend that time with your people to make sure that the temperature of the team stays healthy.

Chris Lesner
So when you run these different organizations, people might think, well, that's easy. And they might be in roles that they're stuck in somebody else's confines while leading a team. Share a little bit about how you did that at Facebook, for example, where you were leading a major component of faith-based partnerships for Facebook. You were leading communities and groups. How did you see that play out when somebody had already set the structure around you? And did you have freedom to always do that?

Nona Jones
Well, I do think that you have to always honor the structure that is set. But if that structure is not healthy or if it doesn't serve the purpose for the role that you were created to hold, you have to just find ways to operate within that structure to make sure that you're achieving what you need to achieve. And so for me, that could be just setting up cross-functional conversations with colleagues. One of the practices that I would employ all the time
is meeting with colleagues who had nothing to do with anything I was doing. And the reason I did that is because, you know, a company like, you know, now Meta, but then Facebook, that company is so vast and so large. New teams are being created all the time. Teams are being dissolved, restructured all the time. You can get to a place where you literally don't know what's happening in 90 % of the company because you're just so focused on the 10 % of your silo. And so I would set one-on-ones.
with colleagues and other parts of the organization that were super obscure on paper, but come to find out there were areas of synergy and areas where our team could work together. There were questions that they had that I could answer. There were questions I had that they could answer. And so I think it's being really intentional about creating those cross-functional relationships. And when I say cross-functional, I don't just mean adjacently, right? Because sometimes we say, well, I work cross-functionally. If I'm in marketing, I work with communications.
You know HR I work with legal that's cool But maybe if I'm an HR and I'm just gonna make this up from using a Facebook standpoint if I'm an HR I don't know. Maybe I should work with research and development They have nothing to do with HR on paper But perhaps there's something that they're working on or there's an idea that we have that we could collaborate on and I think that makes the team even stronger because then you realize That you're not just a cog in a wheel. You're actually part
of a broader tapestry of an organization. And so another thing that I would do often is when I would have, you know, I'd have like all hands meetings with my team. And I do this throughout the organizations I'm in, but I would have all hands meetings with my team. And I would actually invite in another team just to present, to talk about their work. Because when we learned more about what other teams were doing, it helped us to think differently about the work we were doing and how we could contribute as well. So I think as a leader,

Nona Jones
one of our responsibilities is to broaden the horizons and the understanding of our team and the role that they play in the organization. But we can't do that if we are like heads down, we're just completely focused on what we're doing in our direct partners. We also have to think about, well, what's the new, what's kind of the new lane that the company is creating and is it possible that our team could serve that? And that's one of the things my teams have always loved is just getting to know what's happening around the company that they wouldn't normally know.
because they're not in the conversations that I'm in.

Chris Lesner
Where do you go to grow and get all these ideas and start building better teams? How are you learning all of this?

Nona Jones
So first of all, I am an avid reader. I love to read. I try to read a book a week, which I haven't been able to do because I've been writing my own book and I'm releasing my own book. This is going to sound weird, but one of the reasons why I'm really excited about releasing my book is because now I can go back to my reading cadence and reading other people's books. I'm really excited about that. But yeah, I've been reading a book a week ever since, gosh, I was 23 and I got into my first executive role.
because that helps me to broaden my horizons and understanding. And I don't just read about leadership. I actually read about really obscure things. There's a book called Something Deeply Hidden, which is about metaphysics. And that type of book may seem completely unrelated to anything I'm doing in my life, but it's a really interesting way to think about the world. And when you think about the world differently, now you think about your organization differently.
And so, yeah, I'm an avid reader. I truly believe in being a student of leadership and learning. And I believe you can learn from anyone and anything. So reading is one of my greatest pleasures.

Chris Lesner
Okay, I want to hit you with 10 rapid fire questions, where you just say the first thing that comes to your mind and there's no right or wrong answer. Who's the first person you think of when I say servant leadership?

Nona Jones
Okay.

Nona Jones
Let's do it.

Nona Jones
Jesus. Absolutely.

Chris Lesner
What are the five words that most describe yourself?

Nona Jones
Ooooo
Okay, statistically improbable product of grace.

Chris Lesner
That was so good. Favorite author or book?

Nona Jones
hahahaha

Nona Jones
Ooh, I have so many. will say one that I read every year for sure is Essentialism by Greg Rekian.

Chris Lesner
favorite movie.

Nona Jones
Coming to America. It's one of my favorites, yeah.

Chris Lesner
favorite food.

Nona Jones
Just good food. I am a foodie, like hashtag foodie. I will eat anything as long as it's good. I love it.

Chris Lesner
Favorite thing to do in your free time.

Nona Jones
Oh, read, curl up in like a cold room with a warm blanket, some hot tea, and just read a book. That's my favorite thing to do, especially by the beach where I can hear the waves crashing. Yeah.

Chris Lesner
surprising fact about you.

Nona Jones
Let's see. Well, Whitney Houston was my godmother for the first six months of my life, but then she got famous and that was it.

Chris Lesner
All right, that's sweet. Favorite place you've ever been.

Nona Jones
Oh, there's so many, but I would say the Maldives was amazing. I just went there for my 20th wedding anniversary. It was incredible.

Chris Lesner
where somewhere you wanna go that you have not been before.

Nona Jones
I would love to just visit Africa, specifically South Africa, Nigeria, West Africa, just the whole continent, but Africa for sure.

Chris Lesner
All right, and finally, what's the best advice you've ever gotten?

Nona Jones
Read everything. And this was relative to early in my career. I remember feeling so overwhelmed, so under qualified. was 23 years old in this board room with all these people who had been executives for decades. And I remember an older woman, I've said that to, said, I feel so overwhelmed. And she said, that's just because you're not prepared. She was like, read everything, read all the pre-reads. Even if you don't understand it, become the most informed person in the room.
and you will start to feel like you belong. So that was the best advice I ever got.

Chris Lesner
Wow. I'm so excited for people to be able to hear some of your story, the highlights, just a little bit about your new book. We're going to make sure that people have access to go get that on Amazon and point them to your website as well. I'm just thrilled that you were willing to be on. So thank you.

Nona Jones
Thank you. Thank you.

Nona Jones
Oh, thank you for having me. And again, I'm really just excited for what the future of this platform is going to be because this is such a needed space for leaders to grow. So thank you.