The Power of the Other: The startling effect other people have on you, from the boardroom to the bedroom and beyond-and what to do about it

by Henry Cloud

Human performance, your performance, has its limits. Or does it? In large measure, that question is the focus of this book—not so much whether there are limits, as that is almost an unknowable question. After all, who knows what the real human limits are?

Our focus here will be on how and why some people are able to surpass limits.

Relationship affects our physical and mental functioning throughout life. This invisible power, the power of the other, builds both the hardware and the software that leads to healthy functioning and better performance.

For example, research shows over and over again that people trying to reach goals succeed at a much greater rate if they are connected to a strong human support system.

Ask many people about their greatest accomplishments and challenges overcome, and you will find one thing in common: there was someone on the other end who made it possible. Both your best and worst seasons were not just about the market or the business cycle, or even your own skills. Your best and worst seasons were also about who was in that season with you. Either for good or bad. It was not just about you. It was about the others who were playing a big part in whom you were becoming and how you were doing.

your own performance is either improved or diminished by the other people in your scenario.

You don’t have a choice about whether or not others have power in your life. They do. But you do have a choice as to what kind of power others are going to have.

You can’t master people, but you can become a master at choosing and dealing with people.

Science confirms that getting to the next level is 100 percent dependent on relationship. But . . . the relationship must be the right kind of relationship, more than just hanging out with pals. The relationship must provide very specific functions and very specific energy; it must deliver very specific constructive experiences and encode very specific information within the brains of those in the relationship. The right kinds of relationships wire us for resilience and success.

Daniel Siegel is a professor at UCLA and a leading neurobiologist. He is one of the scientists whose studies of the brain help elucidate how it interfaces with the aspects of life that determine our success: The clinical arena: how we feel, think, and behave; The relational arena: how we relate to others; and The performance arena: how we perform and what we achieve.

He pulls all of the research together with a threefold focus, which he refers to as the triangle of well-being, in his Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind (New York: Norton, 2012).

The three elements that form the triangle of well-being work together to build, drive, create, and regulate our functioning and performance.

What are the three? They are our brain/body (the physical), our relational connections, and our minds, which regulate the energy and information needed to live and perform.

We are connected in such ways that the reality of how we function always involves these three elements: our physical makeup, our relationships, and our minds.

Moreover, it is in relationships that our minds are actually built. These relationships affect not only our bodies and brains, but our mind’s abilities as well. Infants who have a loving, caring, supportive, and attuned relationship develop all sorts of internal physical and mental equipment thereby.

Healthy relationship wires their brains for a host of functions—such as the ability to regulate their own emotions, solve problems, deal with stress, and be resilient.

To get to the next level of performance, you certainly do have to think differently, but to think differently, you have to have a different mind, and your brain has to fire differently. To develop these differences in your mind and brain, the equipment in which thoughts and feelings and behaviors are embodied, you need to connect in ways that rewire you.

Whatever we hope to achieve, our success depends on relationships with others. Without the help of others or with negative dynamics from destructive others, we will usually fail. There is no standing still. We are either thriving in relational energy and growth or we are going backward, slowly or quickly.

From the moment we are born, the moment we land, a “chip” inside each of us starts searching for a connection to the right network, one that will provide us with the energy and information (coding) to go beyond our present ability, experience, and performance. And this searching, this needing a connection, is not optional for any of us. It is hardwired and always on, even when we don’t know it and even when we don’t even desire it.

The reality is that you are always in one of four places of connection. No matter what life circumstances you are going through on the outside—victory or defeat, or somewhere in between—there are only four possibilities of connection that you can be in at any given time. It is the premise of this book, and science and experience agree, that figuring out where you are is one of the most important things you can do for yourself.

While there are four different kinds of connectedness—four possible corners of our relational space—only one of them will help you thrive. The other three corners will always diminish your performance and your well-being. They can even destroy your vision, your relationships, your performance, and your health. The key is to get out of any of the other three and into the only one that works. Think of this dynamic as the geography of relationships, a map with four corners: 1. Disconnected, No Connection 2. The Bad Connection 3. The Pseudo-Good Connection 4. True Connection

Disconnection lacks something, in one direction or the other—either in the giving or the receiving. Truly connected people do both. They are emotionally present and able to give and to receive.

Under disconnected leaders, decision making tends to be done in isolation, either solely by the leaders or in organizational silos that they build or foster. Sometimes disconnected leaders allow one or two people into their worlds, but usually only to act as human shields, allowing the Corner One leader to stay in a bubble.

If you want to find out where you are, just ask the people in your life who depend on you. Ask them if they feel needed, valued, listened to, and taken into your confidence. If they answer yes, then you are probably not stuck in Corner One. Indeed, if you are reading this and understanding it, then you are unlikely to be living in Corner One.

Sometimes this is even the natural path by which someone gets into leadership: a kid is a doer, the family hero, or a caretaker—the one everyone else depends on. I can’t tell you how many CEOs I have worked with who were the higher-performing sibling who learned early to make up for what others weren’t doing. Early in life, they became the persons others depended on, not the ones who depended upon others. But when they continue that style of interaction in the executive suite, in a marriage, or in other significant relationships that must thrive on mutual interdependency, it creates problems for them. They are always putting out, performing for others, getting it done, and yet rarely ever taking in what they need from the outside world.

Corner Number One, the corner of disconnection, does not mean that you might not be a people person. Nor does it necessarily mean that you don’t have people in your life or that you might not be helping a lot of others. Lots of people in Corner One seem to be people persons, constantly helping others. It does mean that it’s all coming from you. You might be giving to others and having a lot of others around you, but you are not connecting to them so that anyone is there for you, in the deepest ways that you need them. This is a recipe for burnout and diminished or limited performance at best, and failing or derailing at worst.

At some point, for most people, Corner One gives way to Corner Number Two: the Bad Connection. It is as if the connecting chip makes a calculation that a bad relationship is better than no relationship at all. It’s not a conscious move, mind you. I mean, who would actively seek out a bad connection? But it seems to happen more than any of us want to admit. Corner Number Two, the Bad Connection, is not necessarily a connection with a bad or abusive person, although it may be. Instead, it is a connection, preoccupation, or pull toward a person who has the effect of making you feel bad or “not good enough” in some way. Inferior. Defective perhaps. As though something is wrong with you. Somehow this person or persons have come to have the power in your life of making you feel bad.

High expectations, perfectionism, unreasonable demands, a critical spirit, withholding of praise, shame, guilt, put-downs, silence—these are just a few of the many ways that a person like this can hook someone into feeling the Corner Number Two bad connection.

Corner Number Two annihilates high performance through self-doubt and self-deprecation. You become more concerned with gaining someone’s approval than with the performance itself.

Whereas a Corner Two connection leaves you feeling bad, or not good enough in some way, in Corner Three it’s the opposite. You feel good! Sometimes really good. The positive feelings take a variety of forms: the affair, the addiction, the attachment to promotions, awards, or positive results, the next acquisition, the next big product launch, accolades from others. Food, sex, drugs, . . . a new Ferrari. It’s all an attempt to soothe the soul. The problem is that painkillers do not really cure the disease. They just ease the pain, temporarily and superficially making one feel better.

Flattery is perhaps the worst drug of all for Corner Three leaders. They thrive on it, and unfortunately their position puts them in the exactly right circumstance for the pushers of this drug. They have the title that makes them feel that the flattery actually means something about them, when in reality they are being controlled and manipulated by the flatterer.

The same is true with relationships. They are as essential as oxygen, water, and food, yet we often avoid taking them in, let alone asking for the critical fuel that relationships provide.

We fear the vulnerability that it takes to embrace our needs, so they go unmet. The more we need things from people, the scarier it gets to ask for what we need.

In the simplest terms, a real connection is one in which you can be your whole self, the real, authentic you, a relationship to which you can bring your heart, mind, soul, and passion. Both parties to the relationship are wholly present, known, understood, and mutually invested. What each truly thinks, feels, believes, fears, and needs can be shared safely.

The true self is who you really are, and the false self is the mask that we put on to protect ourselves. Many CEOs and high performers have told me that their number-one challenge is the tension between the two.

All great leaders need to be able to address their constituents—whether voters, employees, or investors—with confidence and the courage of their convictions, but those same leaders need a safe place to nurse their wounds, to be restored, and to let down their guard and be real. Too many leaders think that these two faces of leadership are incompatible, but as we have seen, the search for connection never ends.

Relationship, the connection between people, not only enhances our mental functioning, but actually works to impart it, to provide it. Capacity is built through energy and intelligence. I love the definition of energy that Siegel uses, borrowing a phrase from physicists. It is “the capacity to do something.”

The true fuel of performance comes first from the experience of connectedness that is available only in Corner Four, where you experience the other as being with you, and for you.

If you are a business leader, please make sure to take your teams and people to off-site learning experiences, leadership conferences, continuing education, and the like. Place them in cross-functional assignments, and lend them out to other bosses, departments, and companies. Keep the learning high, and you will keep the energy high as well.

There are simple ways to do this. Just get a good leadership book every month, have the team read it, and take a little time once a week to discuss what you all are learning. Watch the energy go up.

Whether as a leader, a parent, or a spouse, think about whether the dynamic you’re creating will help release positive or negative energy. I’m talking not just about what kind of energy you personally bring to these encounters, but also what kind of energy others bring.

I have never seen great performers who felt themselves to be out of control of their own performance, emotions, direction, purpose, decisions, beliefs, choices, or any other human faculties. They don’t blame others or external factors. The greats are not like lesser performers, who try to explain away their failure as being somehow caused, forced, or controlled by someone else. Self-control is a big deal in human performance. Getting better depends upon it. You cannot get better if it’s not you who has to get better. You are the performer, period. You are the only thing you can control. In the psychological world, this idea and description of health is called by many names. “Self-efficacy,” “agency,” and “locus of control” are a few.

But this is not a book about self-control. In fact, this isn’t even a book just about self. It’s a book about the power of the other—the power that someone else, not you, has in your life of performance, achievement, and well-being. Seems like a contradiction, right? On the one hand, I’m saying you’re totally in control of your performance, but on the other, I’m telling you that other people have power over your performance too. Which is it? Self-control or the power of others? Anyone confused? The answer is yes. We all are confused. The reason we’re confused is that we see self-control and our individual performance as totally dependent upon ourselves and what we do, which is right, and as having nothing to do with anyone else, which is wrong. The truth is that, while our self-control and performance is totally in our control, it derives much of its sustenance from the power of our formative relationships. Yes, others, in the past and the present, help build our capacity for self-control. That is the paradox of performance.

Self-control, agency, self-efficacy—all hallmarks of psychological health that undergird performance—are built and supported in relationship to others.

How many people of great talent wish that their bosses, parents, coworkers, spouses, or friends could be unobtrusive rooters, giving them freedom as well as support and not withdrawing when they decide to follow their own paths?

One of the words we hear thrown around the most in any kind of performance circle is accountable. Most people mean by it that someone who is accountable is being held responsible for some result, choice, behavior, or the like, and with consequences. One of the problems we see most often is that accountability conversations are held in negative emotional climates, with toxic outbursts and shaming. We hear “How could you have done that?” and “How could you have let that happen?” (These are really statements, not questions. They mean “You’re an idiot!”) Accountability has too often meant coming down hard on someone, and we know what that accomplishes: division without learning.

Corner Four accountability is a commitment to what is best at three levels: (1) both or all the individuals involved, (2) the relationship(s), and (3) the outcomes.

Likewise, research in marriage success shows that couples who do well “check in” frequently, sometimes multiple times a day. They stay current. This need is no different for management teams and direct-report relationships as well: stay current, whatever that means and however necessary.

Micromanaging each other in any kind of relationship makes our entire emotional, relational, and biological system scream, “Get out of my face!” In personal and business relationships, it must be clear to all what the right balance is, what is enough communication to stay connected and what is too much, suffocating.

First, the science of feedback tells us that it is crucial to performance. Without it, you cannot achieve new levels of performance, much less get past a current limit. You must know how you are doing in order to get better. One of my favorite works of performance research is Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (Harper & Row, 1990), by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who points out that the best zones of performance occur when there is immediate feedback. Rock climbers, for example, get this. They know very quickly how well what they are doing is working—maybe too quickly! Do something that works, you stay on the wall. Do something that doesn’t, you feel a quick drop—hopefully not too far.