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

I really need her to come to me and tell me. (See chapter 11, “The Deadly Triangle

we don’t talk directly with each other, we’ve drifted out of Corner Four into a disconnected, depress...

However, I couldn’t let the performance issue that was bothering me go by without talking about that, too. By not doing what I needed done, she hadn’t lived up to our performance standards.

People in Corner Four relationships care, are honest, and fix problems. Corner Four demands all three: caring, honesty, and results—caring enough about someone

corner four summary

Remember these three accountability aspects: the individuals, the relationship, and the outcomes.

You will never get to the next level if you can’t embrace feedback about your performance at the current level. Executive coach

Corner One is getting no feedback at all. Corner Two is getting it without caring and probably without accuracy, as the other person always has a standard that is somehow unhelpful or unreachable. In Corner Three, anything but feel-good backslapping or flattery is off-limits. Only Corner Four provides both caring and reality in the form of usable, actionable information. When we get that, it helps build self-control and the

cornrr 1-3 summary

Corner One is getting no feedback at all. Corner Two is getting it without caring and probably without accuracy, as the other person always has a standard that is somehow unhelpful or unreachable. In Corner Three, anything but feel-good backslapping or flattery is off-limits. Only Corner Four provides both caring and reality in the form of usable, actionable information. When we get that, it helps build self-control and the

Summary of corners

No doubt you were much more in touch with how you were feeling—awful—than with what was being

Research has shown that the brain responds best to a ratio of five positive feedback messages for every negative message. In business research, the best ratio is actually six to one. The highest

the research shows us, apparently the brain needs a lot of love, safety, and good feelings to be able to handle negative inputs and use them.

When I called my dad to tell him about the car accident, he didn’t yell at me. In fact, he seemed kind of amused at my mess

The accident summary

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.

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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.

Key

The problem is that when someone is not doing something, it’s probably because they don’t know how.

true

The difference, I explained, is that this suggestion is something actionable, a specific something that you’d like him to do

Corner Four relationships don’t rescue us. They hold us responsible for our performance. There are standards and there are consequences. Few

important

Leading up to this recognition, many important things happened. The leaders established the values and norms of behavior that the company would embody—to care for, develop, respect, appreciate, empower, and help employees—and

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. He also told all of his employees that if they were mistreated by a boss, they should try to work it out with him or her first, but if they couldn’t

Over the next two years, about two hundred leaders departed Synovus. Some were regular retirees. Some

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First, it got all personnel in control of themselves. Someone who was treating others badly was given a choice: improve or leave for somewhere more suited to that approach.

There is no freedom without responsibility, and that is generally taken only if there are consequences for not taking it. A standard without consequences is a fantasy, a wish, or a suggestion, not a standard. And consequences

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If you allow bad behavior, the entire system suffers. As Jim Blanchard told me, “People who violate the values really need to be somewhere else. If not, they really ruin what

Unfortunately, we’ve all seen it happen. A teacher who allows one student to constantly disrupt the class. The boss who allows one team member to make the culture divisive or difficult.

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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. If we’re doing something that’s not helpful to us or

Once you know what is helpful and good, you can pay attention to that behavior

of this writing, my two daughters are thirteen and

2 daughters

my favorite formulas: freedom = responsibility = love. Here is a summary of what I said:

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

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dad—supporting them, offering them feedback, giving them freedom, and requiring responsibility with it—that’s the best I can do.

His kindness and empathy made me feel less alone during that time.

The “fangs” of the beast that was slaying me were feelings of judgment, failure, guilt, shame, and condemnation for missing the standard against which I was judging myself. I had really, really blown it, and winners don’t blow it this badly.

“Well, we’ve all been there.” But why? Why were these five words

true

when we are in a negative critical state, the brain, the mind, the spirit, and the soul are all in a downturn.

The brain is not doing its best thinking, problem solving, or a host of other

We need to take the fangs out of failure. That’s what my friend’s statement—“We’ve all been there”—did. It normalized failure.

failing should be viewed as just another way of putting yourself on the path to winning.

failure

high performers resolve that tension in very, very different ways than the people they consistently outperform.

Basically this: they are fueled by the possibility of better instead of defeated by it.

course, I already understood that intellectually. We all do, but when the fangs have us

Rather than focusing on possible solutions, we become overwhelmed by fears of rejection, insecurity, and failure.

In everything we do, whether as a business leader, a parent, an amateur athlete, or a spouse—two realities exist simultaneously: where we are at any given moment, and where we want to

“What makes Pixar so special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work so hard

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Pixar doesn’t police mistakes, but it does try to root out negative attitudes and counterproductive structures and behaviors.

Jessica Grant

“I’ve spent nearly forty years thinking about how to help smart, ambitious people work effectively with one another. The way I see it, my job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it.”

Healthy cultures embrace people where they are but they also nudge them and sometimes even push them to get better.

key

I recently had an experience in an executive team off-site for a technology company where this dilemma

read experience of criticism

The senior member just didn’t like the product. Rightly, she said so, following one of the key values this team had established for itself.

“What do you mean?” he said. “You have totally disengaged, pulled away, and you sound very different, like you’re really miffed or something. I don’t feel like we’re really talking about things anymore, even though we are still talking. You seem like something is really wrong. What happened?” “Ok . . . you want to know? I’ll tell you. She is so critical of everything I do, and so difficult to work with,” he said. “I just find it better to stop trying. Ever since I joined this team, she has been shooting me down.”