I recently came across two great best practices for building trust virtually: one to use with your team and one to use with your clients.

For your team: A virtual happy hour. I hosted one of these a few weeks ago. We gathered various members of my team from various parts of the US (including different time zones) for 45 minutes using Zoom, so we were all on video. We called it a “happy hour” (as the old saying goes, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere) and I invited everyone to join with their drink of choice—alcoholic or otherwise.

If you’ve been to one of our workshops, you know we emphasize the importance of paraphrasing and empathizing as critical listening skills, and therefore critical influencing skills. These are not mere nice-to-haves in your trusted advisor toolkit. Master these two skills—no kidding and genuinely—and you’ve got a really good chance of being seen by clients as more than just a smart problem solver. “Genuinely,” of course, is a key word, which can be a challenge.

By now you likely know I’m an advocate for personal risk-taking in your relationships as a necessary part of building trust. If you’ve practiced what I preach, you may have found yourself in an uncomfortable spot or two as a result. It happens; that’s why we call it a “risk.” Here are three tips for what to do when your risk-taking leads to … crickets.

I had a simple yet profound experience with a customer support person the other day. It reminded me of something we should all be doing regularly with our clients.

I was online trying to troubleshoot an issue with my Mac (yes, I did the Big Switch earlier this year after a gazillion years working with PCs).

There’s a long-standing epidemic that extends to just about anyone who has attended consulting skills training. You might even be asymptomatic—in other words, you don’t realize you’re suffering. Read on to find out what it is and what to do about it.

The problem, as was recently identified by Charlie Green on the TrustMatters blog, is question obsession.