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My copy of the original Trusted Advisor sits on my "easy-reach" shelf and has been there and dipped into often since I bought it a decade or so ago. So I was excited when Charles H. Green and Andrea Howe got together and created The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook. I had some questions about the new book, and we decided that a short email interview was the best way to get my questions answered and share the results with you. Here goes. My questions are in italics.

The original Trusted Advisor is an excellent book, but I've always thought of it as a niche book, for, well, advisors who wanted to be trusted more. Your new book has the subtitle, "A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust." That leads to my first question.

How is the new book different from the original Trusted Advisor?

That’s a great question, Wally. The Fieldbook is really a successor to The Trusted Advisor, which is routinely read by people at the middle manager, pre-partner, and partner level in law firms, consulting firms, and accounting firms around the world. And it came to be true as well for industries like financial services, health care, architecture, and project management.

At the time it was written in 2000, it was hard to imagine its popularity or envision the impact the ensuing decade would have on the importance of trust in business and society at large. But the case for trust is even more compelling now than it was then. It was changes in the business landscape that drove revisiting the topic. The book didn't change—the world changed. And we (re)discovered that the best way to lead today is leading with trust. So the Fieldbook offers answers to pervasive questions about trust and leadership—how to develop business with trust, nurture trust-based relationships, build and run a trustworthy organization, and develop your trust skill set.

What, exactly, makes this a "fieldbook?"

We chose "fieldbook" to suggest a practical, dog-eared manual you keep on your desk or in your bag. It delivers everyday tools, approaches, exercises, resources, and actionable to-do lists for the wide range of situations that leaders inevitably encounter.

Four specific conventions make it fieldbook-worthy:

1. The chapters reflect the “how do I’s” that leaders have asked us over the years. If you’re a team leader wondering, “How do I build trust at a distance?” then we've got a chapter for you. If you’re a salesperson asking, “How do I handle objections?” we've got another. And so on. There’s no reason to read the book cover-to-cover; go where you need help the most on any given day.

2. Each chapter includes short case studies and insights that provide real-life examples demonstrating proven ways to walk the talk.

3. We've stayed with the trusted advisor approach of practical lists, like A Five-Step Model for Navigating Client Politics and Six Fast Payback Actions to Create Credibility. And there’s a list of lists in the back of the book for people who like one-stop-shopping.

4. Every chapter ends with self-administered worksheets and coaching questions that provide insights and help you create your own action plans based on them.

I write the Three Star Leadership blog for "bosses at all levels." What can a boss take away from here, regardless of the level where they find themselves on the org chart?

Here are three take-aways:

Lead by example: Be someone of influence who has the courage to address untrustworthy behavior in an organization. This speaks volumes.

Use the language of trust: Language reinforces your commitment to working from principles, not processes. Language also expresses the values of the organization, along with what those values explicitly mean in terms of behaviors.

Establish metrics that are wise, rather than smart: Seek qualitative feedback, focus on intrinsic rewards, and invest in doing the right thing.

As a side note, the question you asked is about bosses. We believe that even people with no formal organizational authority can commit themselves to thinking, speaking, doing, and being in ways that reflect how you want others to think, speak, do, and be.

Those different levels generate different needs, so let me ask about three of them. In addition to the things any boss will get, is there something for each of the following.

A first line supervisor such as a police sergeant, call center supervisor, utility company crew chief or sales manager?

There a several chapters in the Managing Relationships with Trust section that anyone in a front line supervisory role would benefit from, such as Accelerating Trust, Dealing with Untrustworthy People, Building Trust at a Distance, and My Client is a Jerk: Transforming Relationships Gone Bad (which applies to anyone facing relationship challenges, not just those in consultative roles).

How about a middle manager, probably with a technical specialty such as accounting, marketing, or logistics?

If the technical specialty is an internal staff function like accounting, we’ve got a chapter just for that called—big surprise here—Trust in Internal Staff Functions. Marketers will probably make a bee-line for the Developing Business with Trust section, where we offer specific views and tips on topics like trust-based marketing and trust-based networking. A logistician or other technical specialist will probably gain the most from searching out the “how do I’s” that pertain to specific leadership or people challenges they are facing, more so than their particular area of specialty.

And we can't forget the C-suite execs. What's here that a general manager in any size organization can use?

The pages in the section called Building and Running a Trustworthy Organization will probably get the most wear and tear from execs and general managers. Topics covered including making the case for trust, creating a culture of trust, trust in internal staff functions, and training for trustworthiness.

We also recommend that everyone spend some time with the Trust Primer, which is the first section in the book. It puts the conversation about trust in context, and defines the key terms and concepts of our trust framework. We walk you through the difference between trusting and being trustworthy, along with other fundamental truths about trust. We define five skills of trustworthiness. We also explore the dynamics of influence, which is important to grasp if you wish to consistently lead with trust.

One final question. Please identify what you think is the single most important take-away from this book.

You know how to ask the tough questions, Wally! That’s a good one. For me (Andrea), it’s that trustworthiness can be learned. Aristotle said, “Excellence is but a habit.” The same is true for building trust. Train your thinking, and your everyday actions, and you’ll be well on your way to earning the trust that is necessary to be influential, successful, and known as someone who makes a difference.

For me (Charlie), I think it’s the importance of trusting as well as being trustworthy. The world doesn’t make enough distinction between the two, and you can’t have one without the other. If you never work on trusting others, eventually no one will trust you. You have to work it from both sides.

And, now that my questions are out of the way, is there anything more you want to say to my readers about the book?

Wally, thanks to your insightful questions, it hit me (Charlie) between the eyes that the book has not changed; the world has changed. We’ve moved to a distributed, flat, fast-paced, collaborative, modular and principles-based model. In such a world, everyone needs to lead. The material originally written in The Trusted Advisor is 570% more important now than it was then.

This is my (Andrea’s) first book and one of the unexpected benefits of writing it has been the opportunity to build stronger relationships with the Wally Bocks of the world. Thank you, Wally, for your encouragement and interest.

Your readers might also like to know that anyone who’d like to try before they buy can find sample chapter content here.

Boss's Bottom Line

You can find out a lot more about The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust on the book's web site. 

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.