Trust People with the Truth

Euda Leadership Principle No. 3

By Keegan Evans

We’ve all been on the receiving end when a manager told us things were "mostly going well" with "just a few areas to tighten up." We walk out of these with absolutely no idea what to do differently. Or we’ve received feedback attributed to "some people on the team" and spent the next week wondering who said what instead of actually addressing the issue. Or heard "I don't want to make a big deal out of this, but..." and understood immediately that it was, in fact, a big deal that the leader wasn’t willing to own.

Max De Pree wrote that the first job of a leader is to define the reality and the last is to say thank you. Everything else, the vision, the motivation, the gratitude, happens in between. But defining reality requires saying true things clearly, and many leaders have convinced themselves that softening the truth is the same as delivering it with empathy, when the two couldn't be further apart. 

Niceness ≠ Kindness

Brené Brown puts it simply: clarity is kindness. Unclear is unkind.

The pattern plays out with discouraging consistency. A leader sees someone struggling, softens the feedback, hints instead of naming, sandwiches the truth between compliments. Hopes they’ll just figure it out. Months pass. Then one day the person sits down to learn they’re being put on a performance improvement plan and is genuinely blindsided.

Recently I facilitated a round-robin feedback session with a client's executive team. My role was to help anchor what was being delivered simply with my presence. After 2 hours of raw sharing, the team had more clarity about their collective patterns. When they trusted each other with their personal truths, they were able to address the systemic problems creating those experiences. They just needed a structure that made withholding it harder than sharing it.

Thick Skin, Clear Eyes

Marine Corps aviation is built on a debrief culture where we earn the right to survive the next flight by acknowledging where we need to grow every single day. After any flight, the flight lead guides discussion across three phases: Planning, Briefing, and Execution. We’d write these on the whiteboard, and under each one capture 3 bullets to discuss. The flight lead would go first, which was an opportunity to name their own shortcomings and learning opportunities before others could call them out. The expectation for everyone: Recognize what worked, own what didn’t, and grow as individuals and as a team to ensure success in the future. 

One of my most powerful debriefs came before we’d even taken off. Five months into my first deployment, I was a newly designated aircraft commander and had a chance to practice briefing a section for a general support (GS) mission. I had a couple hundred combat flight hours under my belt at that point and I was cocky. I barely prepared, I didn’t rehearse, and figured I could wing it to nail a casual style that some of the senior captains were able to deliver. What I failed to realize was that their casual shorthand was built on deep trust and long experience. I had neither. My cocky attitude dissolved to meekness as I realized how poorly I was doing. It was a trainwreck.

The actual section leader, a beloved major who had come up through the enlisted infantry ranks before earning his commission and his wings, had multiple combat deployments and a Distinguished Flying Cross. He was tough, deeply respected, and loved by every Marine in the squadron. After I finished the brief, he told the rest of the crews to go preflight the aircraft and come back for a cleanup brief shortly. Then he and I walked outside to the gazebo.

He looked me in the eye and told me, directly and without softening, that my brief was deeply inadequate. He didn’t yell. What he said was even worse than yelling: he reminded me that we were flying in combat and these Marines were trusting their lives to me. My duty and responsibility was to lead them safely through even routine missions, which still carried enormous risk in a combat zone, and bring them back. My casual tone hadn’t earned any trust; it had undermined their confidence that I would bring them back alive.

Then we went back inside to re-brief the crews. I did, with the procedures covered, the contingencies addressed, and a voice that matched the weight of what we were about to do with the humility of my actual experience. And then we went and flew the mission. He could have taken the flight himself. Instead he trusted me with the truth and trusted that I could take it and still function.

They Deserve the Truth

This principle doesn't fade when the stakes are personal. On a sunny afternoon in late 2022, I sat my six-year-old twins down at Five Guys with milkshakes to tell them their parents were separating. I knew that I could best deliver age-appropriate truth and guide them through the difficult feelings that would follow. I reminded them that mommy and daddy had been fighting a lot, and that nobody liked it: not them, not me, not their mom. That we had decided to live separately so we could stop fighting. They asked if that meant I was never coming back.

I told them the truth and then gave them what they needed to hold it: that I was always going to be his daddy, that their mom was always going to be their mommy, that we both loved them. That daddy had a new apartment with bunk beds and our dog Athena was already there waiting for them. They had more questions, and I stayed with them for every one. 

What Your Silence Is Choosing

If you're a leader, is there a conversation you're not having right now. You know which one it is. You've been softening it, postponing it, hoping the situation resolves itself. Every day you wait, the person on the other side of your silence is making decisions without the information they need. They deserve the truth. Trust them with it.