There’s a point in every leader’s journey when self-awareness stops being a strength, and quietly becomes a performance.
You start reflecting to grow… and end up reflecting to look like you’re growing. The mirror becomes a stage. Humility becomes a script. Awareness becomes image-management.
That’s where Jeff Matlow steps in.
A three-time founder and the writer behind The Best Leadership Newsletter Ever, Jeff has spent years helping leaders confront the hardest thing to manage: themselves.
He has a gift for naming the performance we don’t even realize we’re giving: the therapy language we hide behind, the curated “authenticity,” the brand of self-awareness that sells better than real change.
In this conversation, we get honest about the shift leaders don’t like to admit:
When does knowing yourself stop helping you grow… and start helping you perform?
Jeff breaks down:
• why modern “authenticity” often reveals nothing
• how post-pandemic introspection turned into a public persona
• the difference between self-awareness and self-editing
• how to separate the talkers from the doers in an AI-driven world
• why change (not just insight) is the only real metric of maturity
This episode is for anyone who’s ever caught themselves narrating their growth instead of living it.
Anyone who has felt their truth harden into a persona. Anyone who wants their leadership to feel human again: flawed, funny, honest, and still worth getting right.
Clarity Over Noise — One question, one take, and the courage to look beneath the story you tell.