I have a close friend who's a director. I've always treated him like an equal but one day I told him that he was never getting the whole story. He felt devastated because he thought it was him but it's not him, it's just the title.

Part of getting the fancy title is understanding that you will never get the truth from subordinates, you will get a sugar-coated version of the truth that is close enough to the truth, but not so close that you'd rage and fire someone on the spot. Even if you've never even do that in a million years, somewhere, somehow, someone who is giving you good and bad news will always sugarcoat the truth on the bad news yet hype up the good news.