Servant Leadership: How a jar can change the way you lead and serve | Ali Fett | TEDxFondduLac

Summary

Ali Fett’s TEDx talk uses a simple jar metaphor to explain servant leadership and how it changes the way we lead, serve, and relate to others. She opens with a powerful story from her first year coaching girls basketball, where her frustration over losing revealed that she was measuring success in a way that wasn’t helping her team. A tough but loving lesson from her father pushed her toward humility and a new leadership mindset focused on confidence, teamwork, growth, and effort rather than just winning. From there, she introduces seven leadership concepts represented by parts of a jar: pausing before reacting, creating conditions for people to be themselves, giving specific praise, checking assumptions, setting clear goalposts, empowering creativity, and staying transparent. Her message is that great leadership is common sense, but not commonly practiced, and that it starts with improving ourselves first.

Highlights

• A coaching loss becomes the turning point that teaches Ali what servant leadership really means 🏀
• Her father’s blunt response helps her realize she was the one who needed to change, not just the team 👨‍👧
• The jar metaphor makes leadership feel practical with seven simple but powerful habits 🫙
• She explains how assumptions come from our own life experience and can easily mislead us 🧠
• Specific praise is described as filling an invisible bucket that people carry around every day 🪣
• The talk closes with a challenge: lead yourself well first, because everyone wins when leaders get better 🎯

Key Takeaways

• Pause before reacting so you can listen better and build trust 🫶
• Create space for people to show up as their full, authentic selves 🌟
• Give specific, genuine praise often to fill people up, not drain them 💬
• Seek to understand instead of believing every assumption you make 🤔
• Empower others with clear goals, creativity, and transparency for better results 🚀

Overview

Ali Fett delivers a personal, upbeat TEDx talk about servant leadership through the memorable image of a jar and its parts. She begins with an emotional story from her first year coaching high school basketball, where losing games made her question her ability to lead. Instead of getting the validation she expected, she received a tough lesson from her father that shifted her perspective from winning games to developing people.

From there, she walks through the jar’s seven leadership concepts: pausing before reacting, making room for authenticity, offering specific praise, challenging assumptions, setting clear goals, empowering creativity, and practicing transparency. Each idea is presented as simple, practical, and rooted in everyday relationships, not just workplace management. The message is that leadership is less about control and more about creating the conditions for people to grow.

Ali closes by reminding the audience that servant leadership starts with self-leadership. She encourages people to look at how they communicate, how they ask questions, and how they treat others, especially when they’re frustrated or unsure. Her core point is that when leaders get better, everyone around them benefits—and that change begins with intentional, humble choices.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Opening: Assumptions and the Cost of Misreading Others The speaker opens by noting that the audience formed assumptions about her within seconds, using this to introduce the idea that assumptions are natural but become harmful when left unchecked. Unchecked assumptions can damage trust, communication, and relationships, and she previews a framework for addressing them later in the talk.
• 02:30 - 05:00: A Coach’s Silence and a Lesson in Humility The speaker recalls a losing season in which the team won only three games, prompting frustration and a call to her father for support. Instead of simply validating her complaints, he stays silent and then challenges her to reconsider what her role as a coach is really about.
• 05:00 - 07:30: From Winning to Serving: Reframing Leadership The speaker describes a personal lesson in humility from his father, realizing he had been focused on winning for himself rather than serving his team. He changed his coaching approach by emphasizing love, care, respect, encouragement, and intentional praise, while asking more questions and seeking to understand others. This shift led to greater team success, including a conference championship and a state title appearance, and reinforced the idea that servant leaders help others become their best selves. The segment closes by arguing that people in families, schools, and workplaces deserve better leadership, supported by research showing many employees leave due to poor bosses and experience work as frustrating.
• 07:30 - 10:00: The Seven Concepts of Servant Leadership This section introduces the urgency of better servant leadership, arguing that fulfillment and most of life are tied to work and that leadership must begin with each person, supported by intentional practice and community. It frames the seven concepts as simple but powerful habits that have transformed the speaker’s life.
• 10:00 - 12:30: Filling People Up with Specific, Genuine Praise This chapter emphasizes the power of filling people up with praise that is both specific and genuine. Using the example of the Campbell Soup CEO who wrote 30,000 acknowledgement letters, it shows that meaningful praise goes beyond generic compliments by noticing a person’s real strengths, effort, and even personal sacrifices, making the appreciation feel deeply authentic.
• 12:30 - 15:00: Selection, Meaning, and Understanding Ourselves and Others The speaker explains how people naturally select certain details, fill in missing information, and make assumptions about others based on limited data. They emphasize that this is human nature, but warn that it becomes harmful when we believe our assumptions without checking them. Instead, servant leaders should seek to understand others, ask good questions, and communicate effectively by setting clear goalposts.
• 15:00 - 17:30: Empowerment, Transparency, and the Final Servant Leadership Principles This segment concludes the servant leadership framework by emphasizing empowerment and transparency. Leaders are encouraged to fill people up with specific, genuine praise, create opportunities for others to grow, and lead in a way that helps others succeed. The message stresses that servant leaders should be authentic and transparent in their communication, ask great questions, and seek to understand before responding.

Servant Leadership: How a jar can change the way you lead and serve | Ali Fett | TEDxFondduLac Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 one two three four five six seven within seven seconds of me walking on this stage you made some assumptions about me you can laugh you did and it's okay we all make assumptions it's human nature it's not wrong what is wrong though is when we don't take the time to check out our assumptions and we believe everything we think that can be destructive it can lead to mistrust poor communication and damaged relationships later I'm going to share with you how you can dispel those assumptions with the concept here in the jar but for now allow me to be vulnerable and share a defining moment in my life a story that taught me most about the assumptions I was making in leadership about other people the assumptions I was making and myself you see the basketball had bounced for the very last time that season the crowd dispersed in the scoreboard red 56 232 it was the season-ending loss for the Lady Knights and that was the first year my very first year of coaching high school girls basketball and I have to tell you as my childhood dream my one and only childhood dream to coach girls basketball and here I was at 26 with this amazing opportunity it didn't feel so amazing we had only won three games all season long three games in I was distraught I was frustrated so I thought I'm gonna call the one person in my life that I know is going to support me that one person that's gonna validate my frustration I picked up the phone and I called my daddy I said dad I don't think I'm cut out for this I don't think I can do it the girls aren't listening the offensive principals are not sticking the defensive concepts it's like they don't understand and I don't think they like to compete who doesn't like to compete
• Segment 2: 02:30 - 05:00 do you know we won three games all season long three games that's it dad one two three three that's it do you know how long of a season it is to have only won three games he's still silent now you have to know one thing about my dad he is a tough Italian man very direct and when he loves you he loves you hard and when he yells well he yells loud but when he's silent when he is silent you know you're gonna get it so let me get this straight Alison you only want a coach when you win if you think you were put on this earth and in these young women's lives to just win basketball games well I didn't do my job as a parent you see my sweet daughter you were placed in these young women's lives to teach them how to be confident you were placed in these young women's lives to teach them to overcome adversity you were placed in these young women's lives to show them what teamwork looks like and to show them how to set up goals and exceed their own expectations and if you happen to win more than you lose that's just icing on the cake baby I called for support didn't get that I called for him to validate my venting and my frustration that it was pointed in the right direction at the players not me well I didn't get that oh no I didn't get that at all I got something much more you see that day my dad gave me a gift and it didn't feel
• Segment 3: 05:00 - 07:30 like a gift at the time certainly not it didn't come with a package and a nice bow it was a gift nonetheless he gave me the gift of humility you see I was the problem I was the issue how I was measuring success in leading my girls was not serving then it was serving me that next year I went in and I said hey listen up we are going to love care and respect one another and if we don't win a game all season long I don't care you see that next year I was intentional about making each team member feel like an essential piece regardless of how many points or rebounds they had that next year I was intentional about giving praise and acknowledgement and filling people up often thanking them for their hard work you see that year I sought to understand by asking good questions versus always be understood that next year that second year of coaching they went out and won a conference championship three years later we played in the state championship game you see my dad didn't know it at the time but he was teaching me my first lesson in servant leadership he was teaching me that in that very moment I had a choice he helped inspired me to choose to create the next best version of myself you see that's what servant leaders do they inspire you to create the next best version of yourself our parents our coaches our workforce our family our friends our neighbors deserve a better brand of leadership a Dale Carnegie study shows us that 75% of people leave an organization not because of the work that they do it's because of their boss a Gallup research shows us that 87% of workers worldwide worldwide sort their job as more of a frustration than that
• Segment 4: 07:30 - 10:00 of fulfillment and 60% of our lives is spent working or preparing to work we are craving a better brand of leadership and it starts with you and it starts with me but it's not easy no no it certainly is not easy and we need each other's help and support so we need to be intentional about our practice and these seven concepts you know it's quite amazing how a simple jar can change the way you serve and lead there just seven concepts they are common sense but they are not commonly practiced and I will tell you that these seven concepts have changed the way I work live play parent and ultimately love so let's start with the top of the jar the cork sometimes is servant leaders let's be honest we just need to put a cork in it we do right come on sometimes we need to just stop and pause you see the pause is so powerful when we pause we can then respond to one another versus just react when we pause we can listen to what's not being said leading to deeper trust with one another the next concept is the puzzle piece and I'm not talking about what you've normally heard like the essential piece like oh make sure everybody feels like an essential piece of the puzzle that's hard to do you can't make someone feel that way but you know what servant leaders do they provide the conditions in a workplace for people to come and be exactly who they were meant to be servant leaders believe that when they allow their people the permission to be exactly who they were meant to be and they bring their warts their wounds their skaars they will also bring their creativity their passion and their beauty marks resulting in a deeper level of confidence the next one praise and acknowledgement so servant leaders understand that we all walk around with an invisible bucket and based off of our interactions we are there filling each other up or we are taking from one
• Segment 5: 07:30 - 10:00 another servant leaders are intentional
• Segment 6: 10:00 - 12:30 about filling people up and they do it they do it often and they're specific and they're genuine with their praise the CEO of Campbell Soup rolled over 30,000 praise and acknowledgement letters to his team when he was serving as CEO 30,000 and he was specific he didn't just say all thanks for your hard work thanks for your many years of service oh no it was specific like he knew the people he said hey I am so appreciative your discipline and your positivity those strengths that you possess they really shine through in that project you just did and I'm sure you spend some late nights at work and we're away from your husband Jeff and your two beautiful daughters Lilly and Ava let them know I appreciate that and send them my best true true appreciation the assumptions in the the latter okay so the latter of assumption is a pretty broad concept so I'm going to do my best this is the concept I shared with you at the beginning of the 7 seconds and the assumptions that we make and how to check those assumptions by flipping the coin and asking great questions so here's the thing we all have this pool of data ok it's our own experiences it's it's how we were raised it was an education that we had right maybe where we lived all of those experiences really correspond with how I'm going to assume things of you of myself and everyone for that matter so I'm going to give you a quick snapshot of my pool of data to try to explain this concept to you a little bit better so my given name is Allie star or Alice star says Navarre I was Bart star you have to know that I'm Packer fan big time big time Thank You koa skansen so I was raised in the Chicago area my parents got divorced at five I was raised by my brother and my father I love sports growing up in fact loved them so much Tyra sieved a scholarship to play college basketball I received a my major was in radio TV
• Segment 7: 10:00 - 12:30 film a master's in educational leadership I work for the NBA NBC n-c-double-a and I went on to be a personal trainer an elementary school principal and now I work at a credit union I have two beautiful babies Vincent is six we call him Vinny and PJ
• Segment 8: 12:30 - 15:00 Penelope Joanna is three that is my quick snapshot pool of data and what's happening is you are selecting meaning that's important to you okay so you're selecting meaning maybe some of you selected the piece about my parents getting divorced maybe there's some sort of connection so you're trying to fill in the blanks and make assumptions about that maybe you're selecting the piece about oh gosh that's interesting why did her dad and her brother raise her has her mother passed she's still around and some of you are probably sitting there thinking - she's pretty short I can't believe she played college basketball - sorry and so as servant leaders what happens is is we fill these gaps in and it's not wrong people it is not wrong it's human nature what's wrong is to believe everything we assume that's why we need to flip the coin seek to understand one another versus just be understood now a true story my team member Brooke and I were on our way back from an organization doing this exact training and we're driving back and all of a sudden someone cuts us off boom I'm slammed on the brakes cuts over three lanes of traffic cuts three other people off and gets on the highway well my Italian heritage yeah there was a lot of colorful expletives going and you're making assumptions right now what were those colorful expletives that we're about to come out of my mouth I um and there they were colorful huh and so what happened is they got to about here and then I remembered the ladder and I looked at her and I said I'm not going up the ladder broke I'm going to choose to assume that that person would have never put our lives in danger or anybody else's for that matter if it weren't for an emergency that they were going to took a deep breath positive vibes we continued on our way that's the power of checking your assumptions asking good questions to seek to understand the goalposts so good leaders
• Segment 9: 12:30 - 15:00 give effective goalposts effective communication to produce great results ok that's servant leaders take it a whole step further servant leaders know the power of empowerment they want you to be creative they don't want you to do the job the way they want you to do the job because I said right they want your creativity your unique talents and they want to empower you to develop the
• Segment 10: 15:00 - 17:30 project in your own creative way that's empowerment they understand how important that is in last and final concept great servant leaders are transparent and they allow for a safe environment for others to be transparent with them they don't get defensive or if they do they hide it really well see transparency is powerful servant leaders ask how can I get better how can I serve you better they invite feedback in and they're also not afraid to be confidently vulnerable so there it is the seven concepts again basic right there common sense but they're not commonly practiced Bill Hybels one of my favorite mentors says everyone wins when a leader gets better everyone wins when the leader gets better and so you've got some decisions to make today how are you going to live out these seven concepts are you going to fill people up with specific and genuine praise are you going to be authentic and transparent with your communication are you going to ask great questions and seek to understand and then pause to hear the response or are you going to step back and say Ally I don't serve anybody in my organization this isn't for me I want you to step forward and I'm going to challenge you to think about it like this you my friends lead the most important person in this world yourself one two three four five six seven thank you [Applause]