The Zoom call started on time. Jeff appeared, fiddling with his headphones.
He had a polite smile. Maybe too polite. The kind you could fold up like a receipt and forget in your jacket pocket.
His Zoom background was honest in a way most aren’t. No blur. No flickering beach. Just the real stuff: an uneven bookshelf, a framed map of a bike trail, and a photo tucked off to the right. He and a kid, maybe twelve, mid-laugh in the stands of a baseball game.
You could almost hear the crack of a bat. Summer, frozen in a frame.
"Thanks for making time," he said.
He was interviewing for an M2 role at Meta. Manager of managers. The kind of job where you don’t just lead, you absorb fire. You inherit scale, velocity, politics, and a salary that makes your friends quietly do the math.
Jeff wasn’t new. Three years leading other leaders. Recently let go from a Director role at a startup. His résumé read like a case study: led, scaled, delivered, transformed.
But under the words, I felt it. That tightness in the air. The tension of a man who played by the rules and still got benched.
“I want to work on my leadership stories,” he said. Like the stories just needed polishing. Like the cracks were cosmetic.
I’ve coached hundreds of leaders. Here’s what no one tells you:
Interviews are mirrors.
And if you’re not ready to see what’s staring back, you’ll spend the whole time adjusting your mask.
Startups reward velocity. Big tech rewards alignment. One teaches you to move fast; the other, to move well.
And somewhere between those worlds, most leaders collect scars that look like promotions. Jeff had a few. Still healing, just beneath the surface.
I already had a guess where the break was. But you can’t just hand someone the truth. You have to give them a flashlight, hang on tight, and walk them to the edge. Slowly.