Advising is the ability to bring your knowledge, experience, insights, and observations to guide the client and move them forward. As a trusted adviser, you are invested in the success of the client and will necessarily create a long-term relationship.
As a trusted advisor you:
- Are a truth teller, challenging false assumptions and correcting misunderstandings in gentle, effective ways.
- Provide context, options, reasoning and space to think about the things of greatest importance to the client while always giving choice.
- Share advice as required, when both relevant and helpful to the client in service of their goals.
The advising stance is important at all levels of an organization, not merely at the enterprise or leadership levels. You may be called upon to advise teams and stakeholders as well as leaders.
As a trusted advisor, remember that the company’s people understand their goals, needs, culture, and work processes best. Your role is to bridge the gap between identifying the client’s objectives and proposing specific actions. Empower clients to control their agenda and choose their direction, even if it deviates from your suggestions.
Keep in mind, being a trusted advisor doesn’t always mean being an external consultant.
Advising Mindset
As a trusted advisor, your mindset must include the behaviors and actions that have the greatest likelihood of helping your client meet their goals through increasing the organization’s agility.
You must…
- Be a trusted partner whereupon you will create trust and build an ongoing relationship by establishing rapport and by being empathic; by instilling confidence; and by understanding both the business and personal client context.
- Empathize with the client’s intellectual, emotional, and financial needs.
- Foster an environment in which feedback is sought and given.
- Be confident, establishing gravitas, presence and persona.
- Think and operate collaboratively, co-creating outcomes while deepening your relationship with the client.
- View the system using a holistic outside-in perspective.
- Be curious, allowing no important questions to remain unasked. “What is possible in this situation?”
- Be carefully critical, challenging assertions and assumptions.
- Be aware of your own biases.
Competency Level Definitions:
1 Beginner
- Demonstrate empathy as a first step toward becoming a trusted partner.
- Understand the need to be reliable and do what you say you will do.
- Understand that your success in other contexts, will not be directly applicable by the client, but may still be useful.
- Identify the importance of keeping an open mind.
2 Advanced Beginner
2 Advanced Beginner
- Recognize the importance of co-creating goals and agreements with your client.
- Understand your responsibility as a trusted advisor to challenge your client’s limiting beliefs and inertia.
- Identify your biases and acknowledge the need to be aware of them.
- Demonstrate flexibility, effective communication, and empathy when working with clients and colleagues.
3 Practitioner
- Foster an environment that embraces a growth mindset.
- Examine the impact of your actions and decisions on your agility, and identify areas for improvement.
- Assess the quality of your collaborative efforts and the relevance of your proposed solutions in addressing client needs.
- Build trust and establish a long-term relationship with your client.
4 Guide
4 Guide
- Provide context, options, reasoning, and space for your client to think about things of greatest importance to them.
- Demonstrate the ability to challenge assertions and assumptions in a careful but critical manner.
- Develop strategies to continuously refine an agile mindset, incorporating feedback, building resiliency and embracing growth opportunities.
5 Catalyst
5 Catalyst
- Design customized advising strategies for your client based on their specific needs and goals.
- Innovate and contribute to the evolution of the agile coaching profession by sharing your knowledge and insights with the community.
- Act as a thought leader in the agile coaching field, with a deep understanding of the intellectual, emotional, and financial needs of clients.
Advising Skills
As an agile coach who provides advice to your client, your responsibility includes sharing ideas, patterns, stories and examples of successful agile transformations and solutions that are relevant to your client’s particular circumstances.
As a trusted advisor, you must…
- Continuously build trust to help deepen your relationship with the client.
- Be an active listener so as to understand the client’s goals and constraints.
- Be able to recite what the client says they want to get out of the relationship.
- Set boundaries.
- Have the ability to read and understand emotions in others. (emotional intelligence)
- Navigate social situations effectively by understanding and managing interpersonal dynamics and emotions. (social intelligence)
- Have the courage to say the things that must be said.
- Speak plainly but with kindness and respect.
- Establish the practice of providing and requesting feedback, and evaluate that feedback as an ongoing part of the relationship.
- Have a breadth of knowledge over many domains AND a depth of knowledge sufficient to provide value in your client’s industry.
- Assess, document, and communicate assumptions behind recommendations.
- Tell them what to do on occasions when they do not have the language, the skill or the understanding to construct a path to their stated goals.
Competency Level Definitions:
1 Beginner
- Highlight the key skills and behaviors of a trusted advisor, such as building trust, listening actively, and setting boundaries.
- Summarize the value of emotional and social intelligence.
- Express the importance of having a broad knowledge base to support clients effectively.
2 Advanced Beginner
2 Advanced Beginner
- Practice asking open-ended questions to understand your client’s goals and constraints.
- Co-create clear goals and agreements with the client.
- Apply effective feedback techniques by actively seeking input, listening attentively, and responding with appreciation and actionable steps.
3 Practitioner
- Align on goals with your client.
- Apply emotional and social intelligence to communicate clearly with kindness even when delivering difficult messages to your client.
- Demonstrate the ability to communicate clearly and respectfully, assess assumptions, and offer guidance when clients lack direction.
4 Guide
4 Guide
- Share ideas, patterns, stories, and examples of successful agile transformations and solutions that are relevant to your client’s particular circumstances.
- Assess and improve the effectiveness of your recommendations, feedback, and communication in achieving clients’ goals and addressing their constraints.
- Develop strategies to continuously refine your skills as a trusted advisor, incorporating feedback, deepening knowledge, and strengthening relationships.
5 Catalyst
5 Catalyst
- Design customized advising strategies for your client based on their specific needs and goals.
- Innovate and contribute to the evolution of advisory by sharing experience, knowledge, and insights with the community.
- Develop effective, empathic feedback systems and foster their use at all holons.
- Act as a thought leader, with a deep understanding of the intellectual, emotional, and financial needs of clients.