Good morning and welcome to the Increase Your Impact Podcast. I'm Justin Sua, episode

2039. I recently heard a story of Tigranus the Great of Armenia. He was a powerful leader who

killed one of his messengers because the messenger delivered news that he didn't like.

Now as a result, as you could imagine, there were no other messengers who

wanted to deliver bad news to him. And as a result, it led to his downfall because he didn't

receive critical information that led to optimal decision making. When I heard that story,

I thought about all of the head coaches that I had a chance to work with.

Now, it's interesting about the head coach position in the NFL, NBA, managers in baseball, or even CEOs of companies.

Because of the power dynamics, sometimes people are afraid to share with them critical information, shine a light

on their blind spots or to push against their own assumptions. Now, the reason is it's understandable.

It's people don't want to lose their jobs. They don't want to be the bearer of bad news. But a lot of

times, I hear these coaches say, no one wants to tell me the truth, to which I respond, of course not.

And a lot of these coaches are open-minded. They have an open-door policy. They want the critical

feedback. They want people to tell them how to get better, but people are afraid to do so.

Now, if that's you, here is a simple strategy on how you could nudge people to give you the

truth. And essentially, it looks like this. You bring the person in and you share with them all of your

shortcomings. You're critical about yourself, all the things you want to improve, all the things that you think

are wrong with your plan or the process or the culture. You just go and be honest and be truthful

and be real, be open, be vulnerable, be transparent. Now, doing this requires a lot of self-reflection,

self-awareness, situational awareness, and you need to be able to self-disclose

some things that other people don't realize. But if you are faking it, people are going to see right

through it. When you are done putting these things on the table, then you ask the question,

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