Building Trust and Becoming a Trusted Advisor with Charles Green and Ramit Sethi

Foreign.

Hi everybody.

Ramit Sethi here from I Will Teach youh Be Rich. I'm here today with Charlie Green. He's the CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates and the co author of the Trusted Advisor. He's taught me a lot about what I know about building trust. Trust is just this word that we use, but how do we actually become trustworthy? And how do we step out of this transactional world that so many of us are in and move to a much deeper level of trust? That's what we're going to talk about today.

Hi, I'm Charles H. Green. I am author of the Trusted Advisor book. I am founder and CEO of Trusted Advisor Associates and I'm delighted to be here today.

So I want to talk about trust. And before we dig into the contours of trust, the reason we're both here is we're surrounded in a world of transactional nature. People want to make a quick buck. They want to get you in, get you out. And the sort of relationships that we're used to might be, you know, the local deli, Costco maybe purchasing something on Amazon.com yeah, mostly transactional. But then once in a while we have a deep trust based relationship outside of business. What are some of the examples of trusted relationships that you have?

Well, first let me just make a little alteration to that. Even in those little transactional examples, there is opportunity to behave in a rich personal way. The baristas at Starbucks are meant to be more than just purely transactional reason. They have them facing in front of you, not the other way. They want to encourage that sort of thing. And the person that you pick up at Dunkin Donuts or I'm stuck on a coffee metaphor here, but you know what I'm saying, any retail transaction there's an opportunity to personalize, to remember that person, to interact in a way that isn't purely mechanical. But beyond that. Yeah, I think that good accountants often, if your listeners have got a cpa, an accountant or something, that's often a place to look for trusted advisor relationships. We've all got a best friend, we've all got a brother in law, we've all got a, you know, former neighbor or something with whom we share things. And it's usually not because they're an expert in that area. It's because they're things like a good listener or they know we know they've got our back or they'll cut us some slack or, you know, we know they're secure and safe and you can share things with them. Those Are some of the traits that end up being. Being valuable.

What does that mean? We know they've got our back.

Well, it's. Let me, let me introduce the notion of the trust equation here. If I can. Trust is a two part relationship. There's the trustor and the trustee. Let's talk about the trustee. Those people we trust, we call trustworthy or not trustworthy. Worthy of trust. And in that book, the trusted Advisor, we came up with a four factor model for trustworthiness. Credibility plus reliability plus intimacy. All divided by self orientation. Credibility is basically, do I believe what he tells me? Reliability is, can I depend on what they're going to do? Will they do what they said they do? Intimacy is this one. It's kind of. Am I okay talking with you? Are you going to blab all over the place? Are you going to laugh at me or can I tell you things? And then in the denominator is the one you're asking about self orientation. Are they in it for themselves or do I think that they're actually maybe care a little bit about me? Are they able to focus on me? Or are they neurotically self obsessed and wrapped up in themselves?

Interesting.

So when I say, does somebody, have they got my back? Are they watching out for me? It means number one, are they secure enough in themselves that I can actually drop the crap and just pay attention to me, which is a big deal. We're usually all wrapped up in ourselves. And secondly, are they committed to me in some sense beyond merely the transaction that they can earn the money they can extract from my wallet? So those are the kinds of things.

Okay, so we're gonna dig into all these things. I have a million questions and examples I wanna get out of you. Because trusted advisors are not just lawyers, they're not just consultants. There's trusted advisors in every part of life.

Absolutely.

Okay, and the rewards of being a trusted advisor?

Huge.

Let's talk about those. What do you get if you are a trusted advisor?

Wow. You get a lot of things. First of all, things tend to go a little faster if people trust you. You get more access to information. People will share more with you about context. They'll cut you some slack, they'll give you a break. If you mess up something, you may get a second chance that you might not otherwise. If you're in business development or sales, they'll give you referrals, they'll give you repeat business. It lowers your cost of sales. They'll sole source more often with you. They'll take your advice, which is Huge. We ought to talk more about that. How do you get people's. You got Cialdini here. Number one factor of influence is reciprocity. That plays very much within trust and how we take people's advice. So all those things.

Okay, so we're talking about trust, we're talking about emotions, sort of softer side of it. Besides credentials. You talked about being solicitous, being respectful, coming with a gift, whether it's intellectual or otherwise. What are some other things we need to think about?

Well, let's go back to the risk thing. Here's a little example. Hi, Ramit, how you doing?

How are you?

Good. Now, what just happened? I leaned in, I pushed up the size of my mouth, I extended my hand, and you reciprocated right out of Cialdini's book here. Right. That's the way trust works over and over and over again. These repeated little examples of interactive reciprocating acts of trust. I take a little risk, like saying, you look a little nervous today. Anything going on? And you might say, no, but thanks for asking. And our trust level just, you know, went up a little bit.

Yeah.

Now you take a risk because at any point the other person could say, I don't want anything to do with that, or I don't think that's any of your business. Which, of course, is what we're deathly afraid of. They're going to say, what are you, stupid? You don't know. It's none of your business. Why are you doing it? And therefore we do nothing.

We'd rather stay safe and aloof than take a risk and possibly be wrong.

Exactly. Type one error, type two error. We're so afraid of making a mistake that we do nothing. Which means we make type 2 mistakes of doing nothing over a while. Well repeated nothing will get you absolutely nothing.

Yeah.

And it just. It destroys trust.

Interesting. Now, let's say you are an employee at a company with 100 to 500 employees. You're a marketing manager. You're 32 years old.

Right.

How do you become a trusted advisor to your boss? Okay, let's talk about that.

Okay. Because you can become a trusted advisor to customers, to your boss, whatever. And let's say.

Let's throw in.

They'll say the boss is 10 years older.

Perfect.

Which is not unreasonable. Right. So the boss is in their 40s. One common mistake, one thing not to do is try and blow smoke past your boss and pretend that you know as much as they do. Somebody in their 40s has been through their 30s and they know the difference. So the advice is be the best 30 something that you can, you know, and don't BS it. I think maybe if I had to pick one way, it would be ask your boss advice. And by the way, again, come in with a gift. Don't walk in and say what should they do? Because we value, you know, ability to be self starter. Instead, walk in and say, hey, you know, I was thinking this situation, I'm thinking I should do this, but I want to check your take on it before I do it.

So what you did there, you. You came in, you've done the homework.

You'Ve done the homework.

I think I should do this.

Right.

But you've been through this before.

Exactly. I value your opinion. Would you mind sharing with me, what do you think?

Boy, people love to be asked advice.

Absolutely.

Better yet, they love it when you follow it and tell them that you followed it.

That's true. Which means you can't fake this stuff. You can't go in with a canned answer hoping that your boss will agree with you and then if they disagree with you, violate what they said. No, you got to be open.

I'm really glad you pointed that out because we could follow all the surface level advice of what you say. Oh, read this script that Charlie told me.

Right?

But unless you truly are outcome independent, unless you truly believe that you're putting your clients first.

Right?

It's just words.

Totally right. There is no script. There is no magic words. You got to believe in the underlying ethos of this approach.