(156b) The Trusted Advisor: A Model for Career Success

The classic book Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister presents highly effective tactics for building and maintaining long lasting relationships as part of a successful career strategy. A Trusted Advisor is a person who has purposefully elevated their personal and professional relationships to a level where solving problems is more valuable than technical mastery. Trusted Advisors have self-confidence and driven curiosity. They believe that there is distinction between business life and personal life, but both are seamlessly interconnected.

This presentation will outline the three core skills needed to become a Trusted Advisor: earning trust, giving advice and building relationships. Effective ways to develop each of these three skills will be presented in an easy-to-understand format. Pitfalls for destroying trust will be discussed along with tactics to avoid doing so. The goal of the presentation is to outline these tactics in the form of constructive actions that you can perform daily for the rest of your career. Trusted Advisors are easy to spot: they seem confident, selfless and laser focused on helping themselves and others achieve their goals.