Blog - Page 48 of 52 - The Get Real Project

Trust and golf: how neither makes sense

by Andrea Howe | Oct 5, 2009 | Trusted advisorship

I’ve been reading Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.

I was particularly struck by the way they tell Robert Scoble‘s story (a success story, but not usually painted as a trust story). They call Scoble one of the first trust agents ever on the World Wide Web.

Though hindsight is 20-20, many people watching Scoble’s moves at the time would have labeled him at best irreverent, irresponsible, and committed to career suicide … at worst a complete idiot. But looking at him through the lens of what it takes to become trustworthy, I’m siding with Brogan and Smith—what he did was brilliant.

How to be a self-deprecating horn-tooter

by Andrea Howe | Sep 16, 2009 | Client relationships

I recently ran for a seat on the condo board of the brand new community I live in. I lost. In front of about 60 people.

My reaction was a mixture of gratitude (“I think I just got spared a LOT of work”), huffiness (“How could they pass ME over?”), and a dash of embarrassment (“Oh no, I think I just looked like an IDIOT in front of a large group of people”).

In reflecting on what worked and didn’t about my little platform speech (I had three minutes to pitch myself to the group), I realized there are some important lessons about trust-based selling to tease out of my defeat.

The great empathy famine

by Andrea Howe | May 13, 2009 | Client relationships

I spent the weekend in California. It started as a mini-vacation—joining a friend’s 50th birthday celebration. It ended with most of the time in my hotel room with the flu.

At first, my demeanor was positive (why compound physical misery with a bad attitude) but steadily declined as I negotiated all the logistical changes required to extend my stay until I could haul my ailing self back across the country.

Consulting and the Art of Self-deprecation

by Andrea Howe | Apr 28, 2009 | Consulting

According to Wikipedia, comedians use self-deprecating humor “to avoid seeming arrogant or pompous and to help the audience identify with them.” Sounds like a good strategy for anyone looking to build trust and rapport with another human being. Sounds like an especially good strategy for anyone in the consulting profession.

Trusted Advisor: 12 more ways to walk the talk

by Andrea Howe | Feb 20, 2009 | Client relationships, Trusted advisorship

I just led a program called Being a Trusted Advisor for a global consulting firm. The list of collective “ahas” that was generated at the end of class is worth sharing. As always, the beauty lies in the simplicity of each item on the list; the mastery lies in their application. Here’s a Top 12 list, in no particular order, with a little bit of voice-over added:

Trust matters: trusted-based business development in a recession

by Andrea Howe | Feb 18, 2009 | Trusted advisorship

We were honored to collaborate recently with Trusted Advisor Associates on a series of blog posts devoted to selling in down times, organized by the Four Trust Principles. Use these links to access about 50 suggestions for developing business in tough economic times:

I screwed up

by Andrea Howe | Feb 6, 2009 | Client relationships, Trusted advisorship

Thanks go to President Obama for timing his first major Presidential misstep to coincide with my delivery of a “Being a Trusted Advisor” workshop.

In class, we had been talking about human nature and the gravitational pull to avoid admitting culpability and generally looking bad when—voila—there appeared the perfect teaching point on the front page of the New York Times.

Are you a competent jerk or a lovable fool?

by Andrea Howe | Dec 15, 2008 | Client relationships

Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo wrote in “Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks” in the Harvard Business Review (June 2005) about how people choose who they work with.

“In most cases, people choose their work partners according to two criteria. One is competence at the job…the other is likability.”

Learning that STICks

by Andrea Howe | Dec 10, 2008 | Client relationships

Next week we’ll be unveiling our new white paper called Learning that STICks – a practical guide to avoiding disappointing returns on soft skills training.

Learning that STICks is learning that is Sustainable, Transformational, Intelligent and Collaborative. STICky learning is flexible; it can expand or contract to fit time, budget, and resource constraints. But in every case, being STICky pays off.

To give you a taste of what Learning that STICks is all about, here are some examples of quick ways to implement STICky learning:

Zen and the Art of Trusted Advisorship

by Andrea Howe | Nov 18, 2008 | Client relationships, Featured blogs, Trusted advisorship

In our Trusted Advisor workshops and coaching engagements, we spend a lot of time on listening. Why? Because not listening is one of the top two causes of trust breakdown. (The other — accelerating too quickly to a solution – is another form of not listening.)

Listening is critical to advice-giving because it’s through listening that we earn the right to offer advice.

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