None is so perfect that he does not need at times the advice of others. He is an incorrigible ass who will never listen to any one... There are some that are incorrigible simply because they are inaccessible: they fall to ruin because none dares to extricate them. A friend must be free to advise, and even to upbraid, without feeling embarrassed.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
The mechanism here is worth stating plainly: people fall to ruin because nobody dares to save them. Not because the warning did not exist, but because the cost of delivering it exceeded what anyone was willing to pay. Every senior person is running this experiment continuously, and the results show in what reaches them: correction, dissent, and bad news arrive freely, or they arrive too late to matter. The requirement is one person, at least, licensed to upbraid you without embarrassment. Most successful people have removed all such licences by fifty, usually without noticing, and the removal feels like respect.
Practice
- Appoint at least one honest critic explicitly, and thank them audibly when they use the licence. Gratitude is what renews it.
- Watch what happens when someone corrects you in public: your reaction sets the price for everyone watching (maxim 74 keeps the door affordable).
- Ask directly and periodically: what am I doing that nobody tells me about? The question, asked seriously twice, produces answers the first time it is believed.
Use this when
- Use this after every promotion, when the flow of honest information silently narrows.
- Use it in family businesses and long marriages, where the licences either get renewed or expire without anyone noticing (maxim 88 chooses what to notice, but this one keeps the channel open).
Ignore this when
- Don't open the door to everyone; accessible to correction is not the same as available to all opinions (maxim 248 warns against the last speaker).
- Don't confuse access with agreement; you must hear the upbraiding, not necessarily accept it.
A picture of it
The founder's assistant of nine years was the only person in the company who told him when he was wrong, in private, plainly, and she was right often enough that he had come to expect it. When she left, three of his senior people separately noticed that the quality of his decisions declined within two quarters, and none of them said so. He worked out why in the end, and did the only sensible thing: appointed a replacement critic, explicitly, and told the room he had done it. The decisions improved. Nothing else had changed.
Keep one person licensed to tell you the truth. Most careers end from the absence of that licence, not from bad luck.