8 Tips to Being an Effective Trusted Advisor

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Career Development   Talent Management  

In my article 9 Ways to Be a Better Feedback Receiver, I discuss nine points that a feedback recipient should consider when accepting feedback. Gracefully and constructively receiving feedback is a skill some master, but many never seem to learn.

Sometimes it’s about the receiver’s unwillingness to accept feedback, but it could also be about the sender doing a poor job of creating a conducive environment to complete the feedback sender-receiver exchange. The sender plays a crucial role in the exchange, which is vital if the sender has aspirations of attaining trusted advisor status.

Core to being a trusted advisor is internalizing the following:

My job is to tell you what I think, yours is to decide what to do with it.

A trusted advisor not only provides helpful advice that a recipient can put to use, but also recognizes that her role is to allow the receiver the freedom to decide what to do with the feedback. There are four paths a receiver can take:

1. Reject the feedback: The receiver doesn’t provide a forum for the sender to provide feedback.
2. Fight the feedback: The receiver argues with the sender as to the validity of the feedback.
3. Accept the feedback but decide to not use it: The receiver listens to the feedback, but decides not to incorporate it.
4. Accept the feedback and use it: The receiver listens to the feedback and makes some …

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