Connect

Connect

Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

A transformative guide to building more fulfilling relationships with colleagues, friends, partners, and family, based on the landmark Interpersonal Dynamics ("Touchy Feely") course at Stanford's Graduate School of Business


The ability to create strong relationships with others is crucial to living a full life and becoming more effective at work. Yet many of us find ourselves struggling to build solid personal and professional connections, or unable to handle challenges that inevitably arise when we grow closer to others. When we find ourselves in an exceptional relationship--the kind of relationship where we feel fully understood and supported for who we are--it can seem like magic. But the truth is that the process of building and sustaining these relationships can be described, learned, and applied.

David Bradford and Carole Robin taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years in their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course Interpersonal Dynamics (affectionately known to generations of students as "Touchy Feely") and have coached and consulted to hundreds of executives for decades.

In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional, along the way offering time-tested strategies for giving feedback, negotiating boundaries, and working through disagreements. Through stories of people navigating tricky moments in relationships--all based on real dynamics Bradford and Robin have witnessed or experienced--we see the six hallmarks of an exceptional relationship in action: authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, a willingness to ask for and offer help, a shared commitment to growth, and an ability to deal productively with conflict.

Filled with relatable scenarios and research-backed insights, Connect will be an important resource for anyone hoping to improve existing relationships and build new ones at any stage of life.

© David L. Bradford, Carole Robin 2021(P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

  • 'I can't believe how much I learned about myself and about how others see the world'; 'I feel so much better equipped to create the kinds of relationships I want in my life'; 'Worth the entire price of admission'; 'This course changed my life; it was transformational'
    Previous students of ‘Interpersonal Dynamics'

About the authors

David L. Bradford

David Bradford is the Eugene O'Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was the principal developer of Interpersonal Dynamics ("Touchy Feely"). He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife of more than fifty years.
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Carole Robin

Carole Robin was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership at Stanford, where she taught for more than twenty years before co-founding Leaders in Tech, which brings the principles and process of Interpersonal Dynamics to executives in Silicon Valley. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband of thirty-five years.
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