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

Don’t wait to give feedback until you see someone already falling off a cliff. Give it in the moment, while the climber can still adjust. And don’t wait to ask for feedback until you feel the earth sliding away underneath your feet.

“Can we find a way that, when I let you know that something isn’t working for me, it doesn’t turn into a bad thing for us? I don’t want you to feel like I’m out to get you at all, ever. And at the same time, I need to feel like I can tell you what I need for you to do better. Let’s talk about the best way for me to do that.”

Getting to the next level happens only when you are open to feedback and know how to use it. Moreover, it happens only when you’re actually getting feedback, when someone is telling you the truth. We can’t change what we do not know we need to change.

Whenever we’re in fight-or-flight mode, we can’t absorb feedback and improve our self-control and learning. To learn and grow, we have to embrace the feedback.

Research into brain circuitry shows that new capacities grow when we have to grapple with a problem ourselves instead of hearing someone tell us how to fix it or watching someone fix it for us. We remember about 10 to 20 percent of what we read or hear or see, but 80 percent of what we experience in such a learning process. When someone provides feedback that leaves us in shape to grapple with the problem ourselves, we learn.

Blanchard said two things that stood out to me. One was that the leadership team made a vow that they wouldn’t give anyone a boss they wouldn’t work for themselves. The other was that they wouldn’t tolerate anyone being mistreated, bullied, or dealt with in any way that was not respectful and caring.

There is no freedom without responsibility, and that is generally taken only if there are consequences for not taking it.

That’s why the combination of feedback and deliberate practice is so important. It’s not just a matter of swinging the golf club for ten thousand hours; it’s doing so with feedback from coaches, from your results, and from exposure to different techniques (and don’t forget talent). Repetition creates wiring, but it’s constructive feedback that creates the positive patterns we want to repeat and reinforce.

them. I told them one of my favorite formulas: freedom = responsibility = love. Here is a summary of what I said: “Girls, you’re becoming teenagers. It is an exciting time. One of the reasons is that you will be getting more and more independent. That means that you get to do a lot more stuff on your own, and you’re going to want the freedom to do those things. So I want you to understand something. “My deepest desire is to give you as much freedom as you want. I have no plans to control you on some short leash. In fact, I want the opposite. I want you to be in control of yourself and have as much freedom as you can. So here is how it works. It’s a formula. The amount of freedom that you will have will be equal to the amount of responsibility that you take when you have it, and that responsibility should be measured by love. The choices you make, that you will be responsible for, are to be loving. They must be good for others and for yourself. Your choices should not hurt anyone in any way—you or anyone else. That is your guide to responsibility. If you are responsible in that way, guided by love, you will get more and more freedom. As much as you want, as long as you follow the formula: freedom = responsibility = love. “If you are not responsible with the freedom that I give you, if you do things that are not good for yourself or others, things that are not loving, then your freedom will be limited to that same degree. It is totally up to you how much freedom you will get...

And here’s where it gets tricky. Healthy cultures need to make it safe for people, but they also need to make sure people don’t get too comfortable. Healthy cultures embrace people where they are but they also nudge them and sometimes even push them to get better.

Central to this effort is the intentional and proactive creation of two things: 1. Standards for how we communicate that we want something to be better. 2. Monitoring how well that communication is being done.

One team I worked with came up with this guiding paragraph for their rules of engagement: “We engage in respectful, collaborative, timely, and complete dialogue. We clearly and directly convey ideas and share our points of view, while maintaining openness to different perspectives. We listen to understand and respectfully question to achieve clarity, in both message and mutual expectations. We openly discuss critical issues and deliver difficult messages with care. We commit to not leaving important things unsaid, and we avoid saying them to someone other than the person who should hear them.”

Others have done it in other ways. Here are a few examples: Focus on the problem, not the person. Let’s love every idea for five minutes (or some amount of time—forty-five seconds?). Say it with respect, but say it all. Listen and think about it before negating or disagreeing. No zingers or over-the-line personal attacks. No back-channeling or side conversations.

Similarly, so-called process checks are helpful in other meetings of teams. They can also be helpful with couples or in family meetings. It’s useful to take a moment and ask questions such as: How are we doing in trying to help each other get better? How is our feedback going? Are we giving enough? How could I make my feedback even more useful to you? How could I receive this feedback in a more open manner?

there are two ingredients essential for breaking out of the cycle of decline: new sources of energy and intelligence.

Still, you have to be willing to open yourself—your team, your business, your family—to receiving this influx of energy and intelligence.

The best kinds of others balance a couple of factors in setting stretch targets: 1. They will push you to go farther than you’ve gone in the past, encouraging you to develop new skills in order to reach the goal. 2. However, they will not stretch you to a point that will overwhelm you or take you backward.

Although top talents want exposure to opportunities that will test their potential, if you constantly put people in a position of high stress that’s too big a stretch, they’re likely to become discouraged, overwhelmed, and anxious. Eventually (or quickly) they will leave. Leaders must inject just the right amount of tension into the system to motivate their people, but not so much that their people shut down.

We know from neuroscience and education research that learning takes place and performance improves with higher states of arousal, but only up to a point, beyond which performance falls off. This relationship is called the Yerkes-Dodson law.

Am I being appropriately pushed to be better, to be more? What specifically am I being challenged to do better? What specifically am I being challenged to do that is more than I’m doing now? Am I being pushed past my comfort zone? When I resist or struggle, how are these feelings addressed? Do others remain firm in my need to grow?

Sometimes the stretching we need is what Jim Collins refers to as “big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs).” To reach these goals would surpass anything we have ever done before. Not just incremental steps, but goals that change everything, taking us ten times farther than we ever thought possible.

He said the lesson he learned and wanted to pass on was this: “What is the one-sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting” (Larry Page, University of Michigan Commencement Address, May 2009).

An absolutely critical role that others play in helping us achieve our goals is to help us create a realistic plan for getting there. As you think about the others in your life, ask yourself these questions: Do they help me set small, achievable goals that are aligned with the big ones I desire? Do they help me monitor progress in ways that are helpful and specific? Do they value the small steps I’m taking, or do they only praise “home runs”? Do they celebrate small wins? Are they or have they been on a get-better path that was incremental and step-by-step to a very large goal? Do they understand that process? Do they compare me to the ideal examples only? Do they help me identify multiple options for achieving my goals, or is it their way or the highway?

People with a growth mind-set see talent as something that can be developed and improved, not as an innate, fixed asset that doesn’t change over time. The way I like to think of this is what researchers have termed mastery goals. You are focused on trying to get better and master something, rather than thinking that you’re either good at it or you aren’t. In fact, researcher Heidi Grant Halvorson actually calls them “get-better” goals, a great way to think about them.

But there is another group of people who look at the world through the growth mind-set. They believe that people can grow and change. They have a developmental bias in the way that they see other people—not as they are now but as they can be.

The “be-good” group tends to see any mistakes or failings as a sign that they aren’t worthy; the “be-better” group sees failure as a chance to learn and try again.

In contrast, Halvorson points out another aspect of the “get-better” orientation: it leads people to ask for more help, which leads to improvement and busting through limits. People with this orientation ask for help more than the be-gooders, because asking for help proves to be-gooders that they’re not as good or smart as they want to be, and others might see that as well.

What makes Corner Four relationships so powerful is that they don’t end even after they end. The lessons we learn, the phrases that motivate us, are ours to keep forever. Psychologists refer to this process as internalization. It’s bringing what was on the outside inside. It sounds a little mysterious, and it is. It’s a gradual process by which the patterns, tones, fueling, and cadences of our relationships become embedded in the internal structure of our minds, our psyche.

How do we ensure that our lessons, experiences, and values get passed along without our having to be there each and every moment? That’s the magic of internalization.

I went on to explain why I didn’t need to be there in person before every date. I said it was important for my daughter to internalize the values of a father who loves her and wants the best for her. I said she needs to make those her own, because if the values protecting her from bad guys live in her head, then they will be protecting her whenever she leaves the house, long after my interview.

One of my pet peeves is that many (not all) of the psychological methods and techniques popularized and even professionalized in the last few decades disregard internalization altogether, even though it is the basis for all growth. Consider these popular phrases: Change your thinking, change your life! You can’t love anyone else until you love yourself! Find the “power within.” Overcome fear with positive “self-talk.” Positive thinking: the key to success. You have the power! Here’s the problem. None of these slogans recognizes the power of the “R-word”: relationship. Yet all the research supports the view that the Big R is the key to the Big G: growth. Don’t get me wrong. There is truth in each of these methodologies. For example, we know that internal destructive messages, “self-talk,” can be a real source of pain and can limit performance in every area of life, and it must be replaced with positive self-talk. And we do indeed have personal power, the agency or self-efficacy discussed earlier. But what limits these approaches is their assumption that we can just do those things. It is as if we can each improve as a closed system, as if it all comes down to our own thinking and choosing, as if we can just do it, even when we have never been able to do it before. As if! The slogan I find most infuriating is the one about how “we can’t love others until we love ourselves.” When your car is out of gas, you have to visit a...

Even if our physical needs are taken care of, we can’t develop the capacity to love and bond with others unless we’ve been cared for and loved by someone else.

Thus, whenever you embark on the goal of surpassing limits, you need to consider several factors: 1. What is the ability we are trying to form? 2. What are the ingredients we’ll need? 3. What process will we use to form the new structure?

I’m talking about a situation in which A should be talking to B but is talking to C about B instead. Obviously it will be impossible for A to work out his issues with B if he’s not even speaking to her, but that’s just the beginning of the problem with this indirect (aka passive-aggressive) style of noncommunication, which I like to call triangulation. The destructiveness of this kind of entanglement is far more troubling. Here’s why. Triangulation sets up something called the victim-persecutor-rescuer (VPR) triad, which I’m calling the Bermuda Triangle of relationships. It works like this. I’m A, you’re B, and someone else is C. Let’s say I’m bugged with you or disagree with you or don’t like the way you recently confronted me. I feel like the victim of something you did to me, and that makes you the persecutor. Therefore, instead of talking directly to you about what’s bothering me, I take my hurt feelings to a sympathetic third person, who becomes my “rescuer.” I gripe about you, how mean, wrong, abusive, or attacking you were to do what you did or say what you said. I’m not talking to the rescuer for legitimate feedback about our conflict and for help resolving it. That would be a good motivation, but instead, I’m talking to the rescuer just to get validation that I’m right and you’re wrong. I want C’s support for my side of the argument. It makes me feel better, bleeds off the pain, and helps me avoid talking directly to you. Talking to a trusted other can often be he...

The reason is that triangulation has also now created division between B and C, who haven’t even had a conflict! Person C now has a one-sided perspective about what happened. Who knows what Person B actually did! C got only one side, which painted B as entirely in the wrong. A’s complaints might even be valid, but C can’t know without hearing the other side.

Divisiveness is one of the most destructive forces in teams, companies, families, marriages, friendships, and any other relational systems. It not only prevents resolution, growth, and forward movement, but it also makes problems worse by pitting one person against another and creating further splits throughout the team, family, or organization.

With one simple pattern, triangulation, they have managed to keep issues from getting resolved, turn people against each other, prevent individual growth and change, divide organizations, and then infect other situations with that same pattern. Like any cancer, unchecked, it spreads and destroys more and more cells. Persons who use rescuers for validation seldom look at themselves and change. As a result, they repeat the same pattern over and over, destroying relationships, teams, and organizations.

The real issue is that people who habitually do this are not willing to look at themselves and try to resolve things. Instead, they prefer to get people to side with them and agree with them rather than create unity and resolution.

To stop infection, there are a few important steps. First, name the problem. Start by talking about the disease of triangulation with the people that it might be affecting. Sometimes people’s intent isn’t nefarious, but they’ve found in previous relationships that talking to someone directly hasn’t worked.

Sometimes C can help you gain insight or soothe your hurt so that you can deal with it better. That’s not gossip, nor is it divisive if it’s done in the spirit of trying to heal or find resolution. It all depends on the motive and the effect. If the conversation is in the service of making things better, that is often good. The problem is that often these sidebar conversations are done not to work it out, but to avoid talking to the person directly.

Second, establish a rule or a covenant with each other to help eliminate triangulation from your relationships. Don’t do it yourself, and don’t participate when someone else offers you the part of the rescuer.

Third, here’s where the rubber really meets the road. You and all the other people in your relationship should agree that, if someone does begin to gossip to you about someone else, you will decline to join in. Promise instead to ask A, “Have you talked to B about this?”

Tell A, “I don’t feel comfortable talking about B when he’s not here. I don’t like saying things about someone that I wouldn’t say to his face.” (As long as it is safe!)

Fourth, be a good receiver of feedback. If you model the kind of behavior that shows you’re open to feedback and willing to listen to other points of view, you may be able to prevent triangulation from starting in the first place.

Finally, be wise. Talking about others is not a bad thing. People need to, and love to, talk about each other. “How’s your sister doing? What’s happening with your team?” Others are frequently the topic of our conversations, and even on the job we must talk about one another and the work we’re doing with them, as well as the issues we’re having with them. That’s normal and good. But, you’ll know when it is not divisive.

Trust can be defined as a confident expectation. In the same way that we invest in the stock market when we feel confident that we’ll see a positive return, so it goes with trust in relationships. We invest ourselves, our time, our energy, our resources, our talents, and so forth when we’re confident that doing so will lead to good outcomes. Trust fuels investment—of money, time, energy, and self.

I have come to believe that there are five crucial ingredients to look for when you’re ready to make such investments. 1. Understanding 2. Intent or Motive 3. Ability 4. Character 5. Track Record

The highest-performing teams share a deep understanding of each individual’s needs as well as a shared understanding of what the group is dealing with and what it needs from each member to succeed.

When we find people who seem to truly understand us, next we need to know their motives. What’s driving them in this relationship? Are they in it only for themselves and their interests, or do they care about ours as well?

Too often we think of character strictly in moral terms: Is this person honest and ethical? But character is much more than whether or not someone is going to lie, cheat, or steal. Those are merely “permission to play” character traits. Anyone who’s dishonest or tries to cheat you or steal shouldn’t even be under consideration for your trust. Run away, and keep your hands on your wallet and your heart. That’s elementary. I’m talking about other character traits beyond honesty and ethics: Optimist or pessimist? Proactive or passive? Does she persevere and solve problems when things get difficult? Is he too soft for what you need? Too hard? Too rigid? Too impulsive? Too paralyzed by fear of failure? Compassionate? Kind? Brittle? Fun? Resilient? Forgiving? We could go on and on.