The Seventh Discipline of the Trusted Strategic Advisor: Show the Boss How to Use Your Advice

The following is an excerpt from Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor by James E. Lukaszewski with Helio Fred Garcia.

In his groundbreaking book, Taking Advice, Dan Ciampa talks about the “attitudes and behaviors of great advice takers.” Among the insights on this topic, Ciampa discusses the relationship that needs to be established between the boss and the trusted advisor. He talks about four behaviors bosses tend to look for: practicality, added value, dependability, and commitment. He actually refers to these as relationship tests because both the advisor and the leader must pass them together.

Practicality, according to Ciampa, puts the advisor in a position to give useful, doable, achievable, advice because instructions, goals, and expected behaviors are clear.

The added-value test refers to the dialogue between the advisor and the leader. This test is passed if “at the end of each substantive meeting the leader knows something more valuable than they did before, or is more clear-headed about how to proceed.”

The third test is dependability. It’s essentially the “can I trust this person” question. Does the advisor spontaneously provide useful, helpful information as expected, and is the leader forthcoming at the same time, responsive to the advice being given in a tone that it respectful and helpful?

The fourth test, commitment, is in relation to the leader-advisor relationship. According to Ciampa the defining questions from the boss’s perspective are:

1. Does the advisor genuinely seem interested in the kinds of problems I have?

2. Does the advisor seem to care about my success?

Clearly, if the answer to these questions is yes, a successful relationship is more likely to develop and the leader is likely to become a better advice taker. But there are other habits and behaviors of trusted advisors that foster, nurture, and maintain this spirit of collaborative dialoguing, resulting in actions and behaviors on the part of leaders that reflect the value of the shared relationship. Once a Trusted Strategic Advisor proves their dependability, the first imperative is to teach clients how to use the advice they are given.

Giving Constructive Advice

Being constructive has a special meaning when it comes to being a Trusted Strategic Advisor. It means avoiding, in fact eliminating, the use of criticism as an advisory technique. Replace that negative approach by always providing helpful, positive assistance.

But being constructive is actually even deeper and broader than that. One of the ingredients of genuine leadership is the ability to hear many voices; then to choose the most interesting, helpful, important, or powerful elements of those voices and to fashion a new structure of ideas, decisions, and actions. It has struck Jim over the years that the “attitude” of the information received determines how useful or acceptable it will be in resolving issues and helping move toward the future. One of the key disciplines of a successful advisor is the ability to provide information with the right tone, the right structure, and the right intention.

Sharing your intentions with those you counsel is also essential to your success. Rather than waiting for your client to notice, take the time to explain the what, why, how, when, and where of your advice style, and the techniques you use.

Constructive approaches have four elements.

Goal Focus

As Stephen Covey would say, plan with the end it mind, have a destination before you start the journey, and understand the outcome you seek to achieve before you begin. More good intentions perish on the rocks and shoals of unknown destinations than for almost any other reason. Goal focus tends to reduce the wandering generality tendency and force focus on more meaningful specifics, more meaningful calls to action that develop the desired outcomes. If the goal is missing, you and the boss are going nowhere.

Long-Term Thinking

It’s true, the vast majority of advice sought and given relates to matters occurring generally within a current budget or fiscal period. The strategic advisor’s perspective is always to look at today’s decisions in terms of their consequences on tomorrow. A wonderfully important achievement today may actually be somewhat cumbersome to explain in a future context when such activity can be viewed from an entirely different and perhaps negative perspective. Long-term thinking says, in some respects, everything we do today, that matters, affects tomorrow. We must at least think about those impacts and outcomes and advise more carefully today if we want to have better outcomes tomorrow.

Process Driven

This approach generally reflects the mentality and attitude of senior managers. They’ve learned that the best results come from processes, steps, parts, elements, phases, and ingredients that can be taught, replicated, evaluated, and help ensure a uniform level of quality in behavior, practice, and process outcomes.

Even the advice given has to be structured using a process-driven format, or it will be largely ignored, misunderstood, or disregarded.

Strategic Relevance

Among all the ingredients of being a Trusted Strategic Advisor, being strategic is the most challenging.

So often, staff functions have difficulty relating to corporate strategy. We talk a good game, even use a lot of management vocabulary, but our minds simply fail to function in a strategic way, and we produce advice that is too shallow, or only of limited use. To a certain extent, this is expected. Each staff function has its relevant applicability to achieving organizational or leadership goals. Yet, among the major lessons of the seven discipline approach that these disciplines aid the trusted advisor in maintaining a sense of management relevance.

Influencing Leaders: The Seven Disciplines of the Trusted Strategic Advisor provides the proven framework for becoming a trusted strategic influencer partner that leaders turn to when facing critical decisions. The book presents seven essential disciplines: establishing trustworthiness, mastering verbal influence, developing management perspective, thinking strategically, recognizing patterns, structuring constructive advice, and teaching leaders to apply counsel effectively.

Influencing Leaders is perfect for mid-career professionals, external consultants, and anyone aspiring to influence organizational leaders. Influencing Leaders demonstrates that true influence is about mastering the disciplines of foresight, strategic thinking, and trust that make trusted strategic advisors and influencers essential to leaders making their most challenging decisions.

Pre-order your copy of Influencing Leaders here.