This week’s tip is a retrospective on three extraordinary women, each of whom have something to teach us about trust-building:

I’m often telling you about the super-smart clients I regularly work with. (There’s a good chance you’re one of them.) I’m also beating the listening drum a lot. One thing I’ve learned in 10+ years of leading workshops is it’s especially challenging for super-smart people to listen to others when they don’t agree with what’s being said.

I watched a senior leader do something unintentionally trust-diminishing the other day. The hardest part about it was seeing myself in him. I wonder if you might see yourself as well.

A colleague recently sent me a photograph of an ad from a magazine in India (thank you, Sumesh). It’s for a cellular carrier. I was floored by it because it’s rife with compelling trust-building lessons.

“Tough love” is a phrase that comes to mind when I think about trusted advisorship. There’s the love part: traits like compassion, sensitivity, understanding, curiosity, empathy. And there’s bringing a certain toughness, too: a willingness to ask a really provocative question, put a stake in the ground, or put hard truths on the table. Today’s tip focuses on how to do the latter in a way that actually builds trust, rather than breaks it.