Ordinarily, Becoming You is a podcast about the information we have to excavate, the decisions we need to make, and the actions we have to take, in order to live by design, not default. This week, in an unusually intimate episode, our host Suzy Welch talks about the words you need to say, three to be exact, to the same end. The only hitch is, you need to say them before it’s too late.

Suzy almost missed that chance with her lifelong best friend, Sue Jacobson, this week’s special guest, in an episode that brings us inside a hospital room awash with despair, and plumbs just what it means to demonstrate the very hard, very necessary act of mattering.

Yes, mattering. It sounds simple. It feels obvious. And yet, as this episode explores, most of us are getting it wrong.

Drawing on the research of Professor Zach Mercurio, and decades of real-life friendship, work, loss, and resilience, Suzy breaks mattering down into three teachable practices: Noticing, affirming, and needing. These aren’t platitudes. They’re behaviors. And when done right, their impact is profound.

You’ll hear live demonstrations with Suzy and Sue, honest missteps, and one extraordinary story that reveals why telling people “you matter” isn’t enough. Along the way, Suzy and Sue admit to friendship ruptures, leadership lessons, near-loss, and why vulnerability is the most underused advantage in work and life.

If you want to be a better boss, partner, friend – or simply a more impactful human – this episode will give you tools you can use today. Fair warning: it may also make you cry.

The Values Bridge digital assessment is available at thevaluesbridge.com
PIE360 Feedback tool is available at pie360feedback.com
Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book.
You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: @suzywelch
• Linkedin: @suzywelch
• TikTok: @suzywelch
• YouTube: @suzywelch_
• X: @SuzyWelch

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Before you're fired, you're a ghost. You just don't know it yet.

Suzy Welch calls this phenomenon "dead man walking"—that strange purgatory when your boss has mentally let you go but hasn't said the words yet. You're still showing up, still sending emails, still thinking you have a job. But something has already ended.

In this special "Career Confidential" episode of Becoming You, Suzy and her NYU Stern colleague Dustin Liu pull back the curtain on the part of getting fired no one talks about: what's happening on the other side of the desk. The guilt. The anger. The calculus about when to do it. The weird emotional roller coaster your boss rides before ending your career.

But this isn't just the boss's story. Suzy and Dustin dig into what it feels like to be on the other side—the shock, the shame, the strange grief of a professional death. Suzy has been fired three times herself. Once by Harvard Business Review. Once by a consulting firm. And once—in a story she tells here in full—by her own husband. Dustin watched three friends get let go within ninety minutes of each other. They've seen the drama of career collapse from every angle.

This is a podcast of specifics. The five signs you're about to be fired aren't vague hunches—they're patterns, and Suzy walks through each one with the kind of bluntness that might make you uncomfortable. The meeting invites that dry up. The feedback that stops. The subtle shifts in how people talk to you. By the time you notice, you may already be halfway out the door.

But here's what most career advice won't tell you: sometimes you can climb back. Not always, but sometimes. Suzy breaks down exactly what that looks like—the conversations you need to have, the moves that can reverse your trajectory, and why most people won't do them. It requires honesty most of us would rather avoid.

This isn't a pep talk. It's your boss's diary—and possibly your last chance to rewrite the ending.

The Values Bridge digital assessment is available at thevaluesbridge.com
PIE360 Feedback tool is available at pie360feedback.com
Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book.
You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: @suzywelch
• Linkedin: @suzywelch
• TikTok: @suzywelch
• YouTube: @suzywelch_
• X: @SuzyWelch

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Every year, we make New Year’s resolutions. And every year…we break them. But why?

In this episode of Becoming You, your host Suzy Welch takes on one of the most universal – and quietly painful – rituals of the calendar year, and explains why New Year’s resolutions almost never work…unless you understand what’s really driving them.

In the Becoming You methodology, that’s called the Authenticity Gap: the distance between the values you hold and how much you’re actually living them. That ache you feel, the sense that you’re “fine, but not quite fine,” that’s where New Year’s resolutions come from. A values disconnect.

Drawing on exclusive data from Becoming You’s Values Bridge digital assessment, Suzy breaks down why the average person is walking around with a 27% authenticity gap (and what that number means), which values tend to cause the biggest riffs for people, and why your resolutions might be making your Authenticity Gap worse.

Along the way, Suzy shares deeply personal stories, from a family resolution tradition that still hurts to remember, to a hairdresser’s very honest shopping confession. Plus, Suzy explores what it really means to live an A-plus life in a world that often pulls us away from ourselves. And yes…finally…Suzy explains her lifelong crush on Pitbull.

If you’ve ever made a New Year’s resolution that didn’t stick, this episode will give you a completely new way to make your goals for the year ahead. So stick with Suzy for 30 minutes. This one might actually change your year.

The Values Bridge digital assessment is available at thevaluesbridge.com
PIE360 Feedback tool is available at pie360feedback.com
Want more Becoming You? Check out the Becoming You book.
You are always growing and evolving and so are we. Sign up for the Becoming You newsletter for fresh new content in one tidy package.

You can follow and tag Suzy on:

• Instagram: @suzywelch
• Linkedin: @suzywelch
• TikTok: @suzywelch
• YouTube: @suzywelch_
• X: @SuzyWelch

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.