We’re continuing our focus on listening from last week because it’s an underdeveloped business skill that can’t be emphasized enough.

Listening, listening, listening. It’s been the subject of many weekly tips, like #2, #7, #34 and #56.

Why so much talk about listening? Because it’s such a critical skill for trusted advisors to master.

Have you ever been annoyed by someone, only to have them teach you a really valuable lesson?

That happened today.

It seems I’m destined to have car trouble, and to therefore develop close relationships with auto service people. Years ago, a mechanic screwed up in a big way and taught me a valuable lesson about how mistakes can build trust. A few weeks ago, a service rep reminded me just how much the medium shapes the message.

You know that trust doesn’t just happen. It gets created person-to-person, and usually through conversations. The trust creation process, which was first shared by my co-author Charlie Green in his book The Trusted Advisor, is a five-step model describing how it works: engage, listen, frame, envision, and commit (“ELFEC” for short).