The ability to earn trust is a learnable skill, and we shall try in the succeeding pages to show "the yellow brick road" that leads to success.
So begins The Trusted Advisor, a book by Maister, Green and Galford (2002: 5). All three of the authors have been extremely successful in business.
The book is interesting. The core thesis is that there are significant benefits to be had if your clients trust you more. The goal of the book is to scaffold the reader towards a situation where they, the reader, can become fully fledged trusted advisors and thereby gather those benefits to themselves and their clients.
For those of you who've read my work on Medium before, you'll know that I'm interested in the philosophy of trust, but also trust more generally: I'm interested in what trust is, why it matters, and how to build it. And because this book covers so many themes that cross those three different areas, I decided to write a series of pieces on it, exploring what Maister, Green and Galford have to say, offering friendly amendments where I can, and pushing back against what they say where I think they err.
The hope is to give all of you reading this insight into how and why Maister, Green and Galford think we can all become trusted advisors, as well as some hints and tips from me as to how you can improve on what they recommend, if we step back and consider some of the wider research on trust.
Where to start?
Very quickly, the book moves to giving a list of attributes that the authors think are shared by trusted advisors. It's a long list: 22 items. I'm going to reproduce it so that you have it, but you can skip past if you're keen to get to the reflections on it. You can always come back and look later.
- Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
- Are consistent (we can depend on them)
- Always help us to see things from a fresh perspective
- Don't try to force things on us
- Help us think things through (it's our decision)
- Don't substitute their judgement for ours
- Don't panic or get overemotional (they stay calm)
- Help us think and separate our logic from our emotion
- Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly
- Don't pull their punches (we can rely on them to tell us the truth)
- Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
- Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
- Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us recommendations, and let us choose
- Challenge our assumptions (help us uncover the false assumptions we've been working under)
- Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but they take the issues seriously)
- Act like a real person, not someone in a role
- Are reliably on our side and always seem to have our interests at heart
- Remember everything we ever said (without notes)
- Are always honorable (they don't gossip about others, and we trust their values)
- Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories, and anecdotes (few problems are completely unique)
- Have a sense of humour to diffuse (our) tension in tough situations
- Are smart (sometimes in ways we're not) (2002: pp. 4–5)
I occupy the role of advisor in my own professional sphere, and in my view there is a lot to be gained just by reflecting on this list.
Do you agree that these are the attributes of those advisors you trust? Would you add anything or remove anything? Let me know in the comments.
Where do we go from here?
If we start from that list of 22, one point that leaps out at me is conceptual. To appreciate the point, let's step back into the philosophy of trust.
Where else would I go?!
It's fairly standard in the philosophy of trust to see trust treated as something like 'reliance plus'. Sam Baron nicely points out, "Trust is reliance plus something extra" (2025: 3).
What 'extra'?
When we think about trust, we normally mean something that has a moral dimension to it. If you trust me to look after your houseplants while you're away on holiday, and I let you down and they all die, you'll likely feel betrayed. You can only feel betrayed if you think that I've morally wronged you to at least some extent.
And whilst philosophers often argue about how we include the moral dimension of trust alongside reliance in the 'reliance plus' model, many agree that it's there: Baier, 1986; Jones, 1996, Hawley, 2014, Holton, 1994 — even me, Tallant 2024).
Now, let's get back to the list. Imagine that you're trying to decide whether or not I'm a trusted advisor for you. Presumably, you want to be able to rely on me for good advice and you want that moral dimension to be present, too — as we saw in the 'reliance plus' model of trust.
An amendment
Now one thing that I think is conspicuous by absence in the list of attributes put forward by Maister, Green and Galford is that our trusted advisors must be giving us options or recommendations that turn out to be right, or turn out to make us successful. Even if I turned out that (for instance), I am smart (22), have a sense of humour (21), help you put issues in context (20), am honorable (19), remember everything you've said (18)…and so on. Even if I did all of that, if the advice I gave you was bad or led to bad outcomes, I am pretty confident that I would not be your trusted advisor.
I might still be someone you want to talk to; many of the traits described are traits we look for in friends, after all. But if my guidance is not also good, and I don't develop and sustain a good track record of success, you will not come to me for advice.
What the philosophy of trust makes clear to us is that if we are to be a trusted occupier of any role (be that advisor, friend, confidant, coach — whatever!), we need to be reliable in discharging that role well. We need to generate success. And so what I would add — right at the top of Maister, Green and Galford's list — is that the advice and guidance provided by the advisor, reliably lead to good and successful outcomes.
Conclusion
I think it's always interesting to apply philosophical insight, and especially so when it comes to thinking about trust. In this first piece looking at Maister, Green and Galford's Trusted Advisor, we've explored their list of attributes for being such an advisor and I've suggested a small addition: where I think they emphasise the 'plus' aspect of the 'reliance plus' model of trust, I've suggested we need to put back in a little bit of the reliance. As before, I'd be interested in what you think of their list, but also of my suggested addition. In the next piece in this series we'll explore what the philosophy of trust has to say about their conception of a trusted advisor as we move beyond a list, and start to get stuck into the details.
References
- Baier, A. (1986). Trust and Antitrust. Ethics, 96(2), 231–260.
- Baron, S. (2025). Trust, Explainability and AI. Philos. Technol., 38, 4.
- Maister, D., Green, C., and Galford, R. (2002). The Trusted Advisor, Simon and Shuster: London.
- Hawley, K. (2014). Trust, Distrust and Commitment. Noûs, 48(1), 1–20.
- Holton, R. (1994). Deciding to Trust, Coming to Believe. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 72(1), 63–76.
- Jones, K. (1996). Trust as an Affective Attitude. Ethics, 107(1), 4–25.
- Tallant, J. (2024) Trusting what ought to happen. Erkenntnis, 89, 1887–1902.