I previously started to write a piece on becoming a trusted advisor and got side-tracked into a piece on the trend of referring to ones colleagues as *customers” (bugbear). So here I go again…
There’s a book called “The Trusted Advisor“, published in 2000, a slim volume, written by a group of individuals who happen to be experts at creating trust in a professional environment. In their introduction, they say the following:
“Trust takes place between individuals. (…) However, seldom do (ambitious professionals) give enough thought to creating trust relationships…”
I agree on both points.
We wish to become “trusted advisors” and yet I’ve seem people believe that a title like Business Partner or some such similar slug in a job description will do this automatically. It’s as if we assume that trust is a assigned like work, rather than something that is built over time. And, even if we don’t believe this, we are often too busy to give the necessary consideration to how we create trust. Put these two things together, the expectation of trust being granted automatically and the (probably associated) lack of investment in the thought process of how to create it — and is it any wonder we ask at conferences why we aren’t yet trusted advisors to our internal stakeholders?
The authors have a little cartesian graph (of course they do…) to depict the journey to TA, consisting of Breadth of Business Issues on the vertical axis and Depth of Personal Relationship on the horizontal. At the top right of graph is the fabled Trusted Advisor role. Its lesser companions (in ascending order from least TA-like upwards towards the Holy Grail) are Subject Matter or Process Expert, Subject Matter Expert plus Affiliated Field, and Valuable Resource which, on another little graph, are correlated to the relationship characterisation types of Service Offering-Based, Needs-based, Relationship-Based and Trust-Based. If you buy these relationship classifications, it’s arguable that many procurement folks never get much beyond the Service Offering type of relationship. Good reason, then, that we feel a lack of the sense of being a TA. Because we are very far away from it.
There are two pieces of advice the book gives that I believe are essential in forming a trust-based relationship with internal stakeholders:
- Focus on the individual
- Both selling and serving are aspects of professionalism
Busyness prevents the former and the focus on our own functional agendas prevent application of the behaviours required in the latter.
Unless we concentrate on these two elements, it is unlikely our business stakeholders will ever see us as the Trusted Advisor of our aspirations. If you focus on nothing else in building internal relationships, these are the two that most matter.
The rest of the book, should you wish to invest in more thought on this matter, gives a helpfully brief run down of some very practical things that we could all spend a little time thinking about, and acting upon, in order to increase the levels of trust our stakeholders have in us. It’s well worth reading if you have the interest in truly being trusted or dispensing procurement advice.