In his well-known book, The Trusted Advisor, David Maister explored the paradigm of that very important business relationship, using the professional services paradigm as a basis. His book covered some key components of trust (the trust equation), the process of creating trust (including the most common trust-breaking mistakes and this post includes a good example).

Trust is not a soft or an ambiguous concept – and it should not be. Some years ago I attended a one-week leadership course by an American trainer – Ken Blanchard (not the writer). During the course we did a trust exercise and the one take-away learning was that trust is an absolute concept. You can think clearly about it and be seen as a trusted advisor by your clients.
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