There are many ways to help people. One approach is to be a good trusted advisor. This article is based on the workshops I run for organisations that want their people to act as trusted advisors.

If you wish, you can take the ideas you like from this article and use them in your own way to run such workshops. Here is the introduction to the workshop.

The Trusted Advisor Workshop 

This workshop focuses on how people can build on their strengths and be good trusted advisors. It shows how they can use their knowledge to help their customers and their organisation to achieve ongoing success.

The workshop provides practical tools that people can use:

To identify the qualities demonstrated by good trusted advisors.

To prepare properly for a session with a customer and make sure they understand the person’s world.

To create a positive environment in which the customer feels ease and able to explore their challenges. 

To clarify the real results the customer wants to achieve and translate these into a clear picture of success.

To use the Three C Model – focusing on Clarity, Creativity and Concrete Results – to help the customer to achieve their goals.  

To pass on knowledge in a way that the customer can use to achieve their picture of success.

To continue to build good relationships that enable both the customer and their own organisation to achieve ongoing success. 

The workshop will be positive and practical. The session is best followed up by producing success stories. These are to show how people have used the principles to help both the customers and their own organisation to achieve success. 

The following sections provide ideas you can adapt in your own way to run a workshop. The article also invites you to do some of the exercises that you can give to people. Let’s start by exploring the first theme.