S1 E16 · Practice Guide
The Brave Conversation Blueprint
Free companion workbook · When Telling the Truth Comes with a Severance Package
You already know what needs to be said. The question has never been whether the truth is real — it's whether the conditions exist for it to land without costing you everything. This guide is the companion to S1 E16 of Brave Proximity, where Marissa Green and Susan Page go directly after the system that punishes truth-tellers. Use it to assess your conditions, get the disarming scripts, and build the structural tools that make truth a workflow — not an act of courage.
What’s inside
The Truth Tax Diagnostic
1
Three checkpoints to assess whether the conditions for truth-telling exist in your organisation right now — with a three-tier score interpretation that tells you where to start and how much risk you're walking into.
The Disarming Scripts
2
Three word-for-word scripts for delivering hard truths in a way that creates conditions for them to land — for the individual contributor, the HR professional, and the leader receiving honest feedback for the first time.
The Organisational Readiness Canvas
3
A three-phase worksheet: the departure audit, the feedback direction audit, and the decision brief — the structural tools for making truth part of the workflow rather than a one-off act of bravery.
The Executive Cheat Sheet
4
The Expensive Assistant Rule, the Control Trap, and the Honesty Standard — three non-negotiable commitments for leaders who want to close the gap between the values on the wall and the decisions in the room.