Just Tell Me the Truth

When I was coaching high school basketball, I recommended to one of my players that they join a particular club for the spring and summer season.

I believed it would be a good experience and help him further his development toward his aspirations as a player. He was happy with the team he got offered a place on, and the season got underway.

It didn’t take long for him to realize that the role he thought he’d been promised wasn’t materializing.

He talked to his coach multiple times. That conversation didn’t give him any real clarity. He came to me and while I had a conversation with the coach, I couldn’t provide him any new clarity or information. So his parents encouraged him to talk to the director directly and ask if there was a path to the experience he’d been told he would get.

I still think about what happened next.

He kept asking the same question, in different ways, over several conversations:

Just tell me the truth. If you don’t think I have what it takes to get the opportunity I was told I’d get, let me know so I can figure out my next move.

He was told, repeatedly, that he did.

The opportunity never came.

I don’t know if those answers were sincere. I don’t know if they were what someone thought he needed to hear at the moment, hoping the rest would sort itself out. It might have been some combination of both. I’ve come to understand that from the player’s side of the relationship, it eventually didn’t matter which was the reason.

Because somewhere in that stretch of conversations, he stopped trying to trust the people leading him and started feeling like he’d been misled. Not lied to about one thing. Misled about the entire arrangement, the coach, the director, the club, and me, since I was the one who’d pointed him there in the first place.

Two things I still lead by

That experience left me with two principles I still use to guide how I lead.

People can deal with mistakes. They struggle when they feel misled.

People don’t see our intentions. They see our actions.

The first is about what people can forgive. A missed roster spot, a role that didn’t work out, a plan that changed, all survivable, even when disappointing. What’s much harder to survive is the sense that you were told one thing while something else was true, and nobody said so.

The second explains why the first is so easy to violate without meaning to.

Why good intentions don’t protect you

Here’s what makes this uncomfortable. A sincere “you’ve got what it takes, keep working” and an avoidant “you’ve got what it takes, keep working” sound identical from the other side of the conversation.

The player couldn’t see whether the coach and director believed what they were telling him or were simply trying to get through an uncomfortable moment. He could only see what he was told, and then what actually happened. When those two things kept failing to match, the gap itself became the message, whatever the intention behind it had been.

Your intentions might be completely good. Your actions, including the things you say in the moment, are still what gets judged, because they’re the only evidence anyone else has to work with. And when what you say and what actually happens keep failing to line up, eventually people will believe what happened.

What he was actually asking for

It took me a long time to fully understand what was underneath his question.

He wasn’t asking for reassurance because reassurance feels better than an uncomfortable truth. He was asking for enough truth to make his own decision. If the opportunity wasn’t real, he could handle that. He could keep working for it, change his role, leave for another program, whatever made sense once he actually knew where he stood. What he couldn’t do was choose well without an honest picture of his actual situation.

Truth doesn’t guarantee someone the outcome they want. It gives them the ability to choose among the outcomes they actually have.

Don’t give someone reassurance when what they actually need is clarity.

The trust I didn’t know I had at risk

There’s another layer to this I didn’t fully see at the time.

I wasn’t the one who placed him on that team or decided what he’d be told about his role. I made a recommendation, in good faith, based on what I believed. But when the promises didn’t hold up, my own credibility took the same damage the coach’s and director’s did, because I had vouched for the placement. Club leaders end up in this position constantly, recommending a coach, vouching for a program, putting a little of their own credibility behind an outcome they don’t fully control.

What changed for me

Two things came out of that experience that still shape how I lead.

I became far more careful about distinguishing what I know from what I believe, and what I hope from what I can actually promise. There’s a real difference between “I think this will work out” and “this will work out.” Between “I believe this is a good fit for you” and “I know what your experience will be.” Those distinctions can feel unnecessarily careful when things are going well. They matter enormously when they aren’t.

And when someone is coming on board with me, or with something I’m involved in, I try to see my own communication the way they’ll experience it, not the way I mean it. If there’s a version of what I’m saying that could be misread as a promise I’m not sure I can keep, I’d rather find that gap before they do.

Where this leaves you

Every club eventually faces a moment when reassurance is easier than clarity.

Maybe it’s a player’s role. A coaching assignment. A schedule. A promised opportunity. In those moments, good intentions aren’t enough.

Club leaders won’t always be able to give families, athletes, or coaches the answer they want. They can give them something else: enough truth to make their own decisions.

I’ve forgotten plenty of conversations from my years coaching and running programs. I haven’t forgotten the frustration behind that player’s request:

Just tell me the truth.

I’ve tried to remember it ever since.

Questions for Leaders

• Where might we be giving reassurance because it’s true, versus because it’s easier than the honest answer?

• Whose trust are we currently holding on behalf of someone else, a coach we recommended, a program we vouched for, a promise we didn’t personally make but stood behind?

• Is there a conversation we’re avoiding right now because the truth is less comfortable than the reassurance?