The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust [Paperback]

Charles H. Green (Author), Andrea P. Howe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2011

A practical guide to being a trusted advisor for leaders in any industry

In this hands-on successor to the popular book The Trusted Advisor, you'll find answers to pervasive questions about trust and leadership—such as how to develop business with trust, nurture trust-based relationships, build and run a trustworthy organization, and develop your trust skill set. This pragmatic workbook delivers everyday tools, exercises, resources, and actionable to-do lists for the wide range of situations a trusted advisor inevitably encounters. The authors speak in concrete terms about how to dramatically improve your results in sales, relationship management, and organizational performance.

Your success as a leader will always be based on the degree to which you are trusted by your stakeholders. Each chapter offers specific ways to train your thinking and your habits in order to earn the trust that is necessary to be influential, successful, and known as someone who makes a difference.

• Self-administered worksheets and coaching questions provide immediate insights into your current business challenges
• Real-life examples demonstrate proven ways to "walk the talk"
• Action plans bridge the gap between insights and outcomes

Put the knowledge and practices in this fieldbook to work, and you'll be someone who earns trust quickly, consistently, and sustainably—in business and in life.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

A practical guide to being a trusted advisor for leaders in any industry

Your success as a leader depends on your stakeholders' trust. In this hands-on companion to the bestselling The Trusted Advisor, you'll find actionable tools, exercises, and resources for the situations that any leader inevitably encounters. Put them to work, and you'll earn trust quickly, consistently, and sustainably—in business and in life.

"Leaders and aspiring leaders understand the central importance of trust-based relationships. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook is a practical guide for leaders at all levels in building and maintaining relationships with clients and colleagues. Success requires this critical asset."

—Jim Quigley, former CEO of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited

"This is an extensive and in-depth collection of practical tools and exercises that will help anyone improve his or her ability to earn trust. A major contribution." —David Maister, coauthor of The Trusted Advisor

"This book is a really valuable resource for anyone who needs to sharpen their trust-building skills—and who doesn't? It's packed with practical tools and ideas." —Matt Nixon, VP Organisation Effectiveness, Royal Dutch Shell

"Everyone talks about being a 'trusted advisor,' but few people have real science behind it. Green and Howe have got experience, data, and perspective; they don't shy from the really difficult tasks in client relationships. We have found them to bring practical, tactical expertise to the ideas already developed in The Trusted Advisor and Trust-Based Selling." —Mark Hawn, Managing Partner, Accenture

"When The Trusted Advisor published in 2000, I called it a brilliant and practical book. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook is even more practical—and instructive—on how to develop trustworthiness, both in yourself and your organization." —Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence

About the Author

Charles H. Green is founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates. The author of Trust-Based Selling and coauthor of The Trusted Advisor, he is a noted speaker on trust in sales, within organizations, and in external business relationships.

Andrea P. Howe is part of the leadership team of Trusted Advisor Associates. She is also the founder and President of BossaNova Consulting Group. A veteran consultant and seminar leader, Andrea specializes in serving global professional services firms.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 15, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1118085647
• ISBN-13: 978-1118085646
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 0.5 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #67,172 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #41 in Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > Consulting

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Trust is the bedrock of influence November 14, 2011

By J. F. Malcolm

Format:Paperback

Trust between individuals is one of the most essential and important ingredients of personal influence. If motivation is the fuel of persuasion, trust is its lubricant. Trust lowers risk; it opens communication; it makes decisions more efficient and effective.

Of course, you don't need a book to tell you that. The critical point is that trust is also within your control, and this excellent book by Charles H. Green and Andrea P. Howe shows you how to establish, accelerate, and maintain it.

Whether or not you are in sales, you exert influence and make a difference in others' lives when they take your advice--but even if you are always right it's no guarantee that people will take you advice. (And you don't have to have teenage kids for this to be true.) As the authors tell us, you have to earn the right to be right.

The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook shows you how by opening up the black box and exposing how the process works so that you can become more trustworthy to others. It then goes into specific practical detail on how to apply the trust principles in everyday situations, from different aspects of the sales cycle to personal and organizational relationships.

Most "how-to" books such as this provide value on three levels:
* Things you already "know" you should do but need reminding or prompting to do more of
* Things you kind of know how to do, but get expert instruction on how to do it better
* Things you thought you knew, but were wrong

The fieldbook has a lot of material in the first category, but to me the most important reminder is worth quoting at length:

"The goal of traditional selling is to convince the buyer to buy from you--the goal of trust-based selling is to help the buyer do what is right for him. The difference is a question of focus and motives. Helping, as distinct from closing, is other-focused, nonmanipulative and trust-enhancing."

I believe this quote could encapsulate the entire book, and because one of my pet causes is the professionalization of selling, I urge any salesperson reading this article to print this and post it somewhere that you can see it before any communication with a client or prospect. Even if you're not in sales, change the words slightly and they will apply equally to you.

In the second category, there are a number of specific situations, including presenting, selling to the C-Suite, and negotiating, where they give useful advice and excellent insights. Most importantly, the examples of the phrases they provide to illustrate their points ring true, and demonstrate that the authors have very deep experience in these areas.

As to the third category, I pride myself on being right, and this is awkward to admit, but I may have to reconsider my traditional advice to keep price out of the discussion until the end. The authors make a convincing case that this just adds to the tension and angers the potential buyer; it's best to let the buyer control when the topic comes out in the discussion.

Finally, I like the format of the book. In the form of a fieldbook, it provides numerous questions, forms and suggestions to think further about how to apply their ideas to your own particular situation. The "list of lists" at the end is also helpful; I found it easier to read them before beginning a new chapter.

I am in the business of teaching people how to be more influential, and I personally learned a lot from this book. I trust you will get a lot of value out of it as well.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Every leader should read this book January 5, 2012

By Kristi Hedges

Format:Paperback

As a business owner of a consulting firm for more than a decade, I was introduced to The Trusted Advisor and Charles H. Green's work on trust years ago and finally understood what relationship-based sales really meant. I've introduced those trust concepts to many people since then and have seen numerous light bulbs go off. Most people don't talk about trust in a diagnostic and prescriptive way, so these concepts are a breath of fresh air.

In the Trusted Advisor Fieldbook, Green and Howe offer a straightforward, practical toolkit for building trust across situations like business development, networking, C-suite selling, and internal communications. They include useful lists and exercises to use as reference for building relationships in multiple settings. For example, there's a 5-point checklist for preparing for meetings. With so many wasteful meetings, 10 minutes of prep can dramatically shift the outcome. There are also lots of tips for sales here, including how to strengthen trust instead of hard selling. This often runs counter to what you hear in sales trainings, but is definitely my personal experience for what works.

Finally, what I find personally most helpful is the advice around strengthening relationships that aren't working. I wish I'd had this book as a new manager, struggling to motivate employees! For anyone who has had an employee they are trying to "turn around," you'll find inspiration in the book.

As a leader, if you don't have trust, you'll never get buy-in. I felt so strongly about the ideas in this book that I included an entire chapter in my own book about them. I saw what a difference they'd made in my life, and wanted to share them with anyone seeking to influence others.

This book is a must-read for leaders.

Kristi Hedges, author, The Power of Presence: Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Definitely a book to keep in arm's reach November 11, 2011

By Alison Lester

Format:Paperback

I got such a strong feeling of experience, openness and commitment from the authors of this book as I read it - a real feeling that they are walking their talk, developing our trust in them all along the way. When I read business-related self-help books, I'm always on the lookout for the padding that often is a hallmark of the genre, and I didn't find it here. What I did find was a very rich mine of information, and a regular return to the most important components of trusting relationships. The aim is clear, the details are helpful and memorable, and the opportunity for reflection and real work on self-development is excellent.

So many sections seem to stand alone very nicely that it is dangerously tempting to just dip in and out. Two that stood out for me were the one on maintaining trust when you don't agree, and also the chapter on building trust at a distance (so important now that so many of us are working in virtual teams). But the book is an importnat whole, with a great deal of know-how and passion behind its structure and its meaning. Read the whole thing.

While they've got a very welcome final section called their "List of Lists" which itemizes all the concepts, recommendations, and step-by-step approaches of the book, by that time most readers will have absorbed the understanding that developing trust is not about following a behavioral checklist, and that trust-based relationships cry out for principles, rather than processes.