Before your first team meeting. Before you said a word. Before you had a chance to prove anything either way.

They grew up watching politicians lie on camera. CEOs collect bonuses while laying people off. Institutions fail in real time. And then they went home and opened TikTok and watched more people performing authenticity for an algorithm.

That’s who you’re leading in 2026.

In this episode I get into something most leadership content won’t touch — why the employee trust crisis isn’t really about bad managers. It’s about what authority has meant to an entire generation. And why the most radical thing you can do as a leader right now is actually give a damn about the people underneath you.

I also use Jesus as a leadership example. Not in a religious way. In a historical, behavioral, what-actually-worked way. Because he operated in the exact same environment you’re operating in — corrupt authority, disillusioned people, institutions that had failed everyone — and he built the most loyal team in human history by doing the opposite of every leader around him.

There’s also a personal story in here that I haven’t told before. A mentor. A crowd of thousands. Fifteen minutes that I still remember years later.

Press play.

That is part of the problem.

Self-awareness is not journaling once, learning your personality type, or being able to explain your patterns after the damage is done. For a leader, self-awareness is practical. It is the ability to notice what is happening inside you before it becomes tone, avoidance, control, defensiveness, people-pleasing, or a softened standard.

In this episode, I break down what a self-aware leader actually is — not as a concept, but as a daily leadership practice.

We talk about the meeting where your ego gets hit. The feedback you do not want to hear. The hard conversation you keep delaying. The moment you feel yourself needing to explain, defend, prove, withdraw, or control the room.

Because if you lead people, your inner life does not stay private.

It becomes culture.

It becomes tone.

It becomes trust or tension.

It becomes the room everyone else has to work inside.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why self-awareness is not self-obsession

• The difference between intention and impact

• How defensiveness, control, avoidance, and people-pleasing leak into leadership

• Why “why am I like this?” often keeps leaders stuck

• The better questions to ask after you get triggered

• A simple practice: catch the signal, name the pattern, choose the cleaner move

A self-aware leader is not perfect.

A self-aware leader is interruptible.

They can be stopped by the truth before the pattern takes over.

That is the work.

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Nearly 300 executives were asked to predict Nvidia’s stock price. Half could consult ChatGPT first. The other half just talked to their peers.

The ChatGPT group walked away more confident. More optimistic. More certain in their predictions.

And significantly more wrong.

That’s not a technology problem. That’s a posture problem. And it’s playing out in leadership decisions everywhere — hiring, strategy, opportunity calls, the hard conversations that keep getting delayed.

This week’s episode is about why AI is quietly corrupting how leaders think — and how to use it the right way.

What’s Actually Happening

There’s a term researchers use for it: sycophancy.

AI is trained through human feedback. Humans rate responses higher when the AI agrees with them, validates their thinking, and makes them feel good about their existing position. So the model learns: agreement equals approval.

One study found that over 58% of all AI interactions are sycophantic. The AI adjusts its answer to match what you seem to want to hear.

The part that matters most for leaders: the more convinced you are that you’re right — the more evidence you include supporting your own position — the more AI agrees with you. Sycophancy rates jump past 61% when users argue their own case first.

You’re not getting a second opinion. You’re getting your own opinion handed back to you with better vocabulary.

The Two Scenarios

In this episode I walk through two decisions every leader faces:

The toxic high performer. You know what needs to happen. You keep not doing it. You go to AI and walk away with six well-reasoned arguments for waiting. Nothing changes except you feel more justified in the same indecision.

The opportunity with bad timing. You frame it as a “significant opportunity that won’t come back around” before you even ask the question. AI builds its answer on your premise. You feel better about saying yes. You never examined the premise.

Same tool. Same failure mode. Different decision.

The Four Prompt Postures That Change Everything

1. Inversion Don’t ask AI if your decision is good. Ask it to make the strongest case that you’re wrong. “I’m leaning toward X. Give me the best argument that X is a mistake.”

2. Steel Man Ask it to build the strongest possible version of the position you’re about to reject. If you can’t answer it, you’re not ready to decide.

3. Second-Order Thinking “If this plays out the way I hope, what does it set in motion? If it doesn’t, what does it set in motion?” Trace the downstream before you commit — not just what happens next, but what happens after that.

4. Socratic Interrogation “What assumptions am I making in how I framed this question? Which assumption is doing the most work? What would I have to believe for my current position to be wrong?”

These four postures don’t require new tools. They require a different relationship with the conversation — one where you walk in without your conclusion already made.

The Deeper Point

AI gives every leader access to the vocabulary, frameworks, and counterarguments of almost any domain instantly. That feels like having thought through something. It isn’t the same thing.

The question to ask yourself after every AI conversation about a real decision:

Did AI change my thinking — or did it just organize my existing thinking?

If it only organized — you haven’t thought harder. You’ve thought more fluently about what you already thought.

Certainty is a feeling. Clarity is seeing what’s actually there.

Use AI to find what’s actually there.

🎧 Listen to the full episode above — 20 minutes, two real scenarios, the complete framework.

📩 New here? Every Thursday I publish a deep-dive essay on the inner game of leadership — self-awareness, unconscious patterns, and the decisions that actually define how you lead.

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The Self-Aware Leader

The inner game of leadership. Shadow work, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom for leaders who've outgrown surface-level advice. By Jason Rigby — Marine · Trader · Philosopher.

By Jason Rigby

The Self Aware Leader with Jason Rigby. Marine · Trader · Philosopher. Self-awareness is the only leadership skill that compounds.