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

Research has shown that if you are in a community that is getting healthy or overcoming something difficult, your chances of success go way, way up.

Remember, sometimes doctors wear masks to avoid getting and giving infections. With some highly virulent conditions, they wear hazmat suits!

A metaphor for toxic ppl. True is Coronavirus time

We hear a lot about “managing your energy” these days. That’s important, but it’s not just about managing your workload and taking breaks; it’s just as important to manage the energy sources around you.

For one’s own sake and as an other to someone else, it’s important to know what brand of energy a person needs to fuel growth.

Corner Four relationships affect us physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually as they help us find our purpose in life.

In most cases, no one relationship can supply our needs in all of these dimensions, though sometimes one is paramount.

it’s important to establish multiple connections that feed us diffe...

Don’t trust anything that feels good if it isn’t something you’d want your spouse, partner, family, or your colleagues to know about.

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.

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 100 percent in control of your side of the relationship, your levers in the business, your input, the training and discipline of your kids, and on and on.

Yes, others, in the past and the present, help build our capacity for self-control. That is the paradox of performance.

how much you perceive yourself as being in control of your life depends in part on how much the most significant people in your life support that ability and simultaneously hold you responsible for it.

The “holding you responsible part” sounds important. A thing only “corner four” ppl can do

It’s my game. What an incredible, powerful statement of ownership and self-efficacy. He was defining himself and what he controlled in relation to the person that he was closest to in all of life.

Two things stand out in this exchange: First, Jack was able to express that ownership directly to the person who supported him the most.

This combination—being in control and being supported and respected in your choices even when your other disagrees with them—is one of the most powerful elements of Corner Four relationships.

Horst Schultze, founder of Ritz-Carlton, has stated that his employees are fully empowered to satisfy a customer and solve a problem up to $2,000 without checking with anyone.

What would it mean to you as a spouse if marital partners in general supported each other in their individual pursuits without feeling threatened or left out?

He goes on to make a really big point in this section

But keep in mind that Corner Four supporters don’t just give support willy-nilly. They support your choices but also hold you responsible for them.

Corner Four holds people accountable for their choices.

Not only do Corner Four relationships give us freedom, but also they require us to take it and own it through responsibility.

While he was explaining those, he said that Reagan kept looking out the window. Then, after a while, Reagan said something like, “Hey, look, they’re eating them!”

Powell was giving the president a brief haha

She would be in a position to choose to change her behavior if she didn’t like the outcomes associated with it. That’s self-control.

Often the hard part is figuring out which behavior is responsible for the negative outcome

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.

There’s a country-and-western song by Dan Hicks that asks, “How can I miss you when you won’t go away?”

“Feedback is the breakfast of champions,” as Ken Blanchard

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.

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.

for feedback to be helpful, it has to be, well, helpful. That’s one way Corner Four relationships differ from all others.

The one giving feedback shares an interest in your doing well.

a lot of so-called feedback never comes at all or doesn’t come in a form we can process.

If we don’t talk directly with each other, we’ve drifted out of Corner Four into a disconnected, depressing, or shallow relationship.

but I couldn’t be unhappy with how she is failing me, and be stuck with it, frustrated because I couldn’t tell her without her feeling attacked. I need her to perform, and when she doesn’t, I need to be able to tell her and fix the problem. People in Corner Four relationships care, are honest, and fix problems.

Corner Four demands all three: caring, honesty, and results—caring enough about someone to not be hurtful in how we say things, the honesty to say them directly, and a focus on behavior change and better results.

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

Getting to the next level happens only when you are open to feedback and know how to use it.

Only Corner Four provides both caring and reality in the form of usable, actionable information.

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.

Research has also shown that we are able to retain more focus, have better concentration, think more clearly, and process information better when we aren’t experiencing negative emotions. They just get in the way.

“Connection is a result of doing some specific things.

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

There is no freedom without responsibility,

A standard without consequences is a fantasy,

As Jim Blanchard told me, “People who violate the values really need to be somewhere else.

The boss who allows one team member to make the culture divisive or difficult.

That’s why the combination of feedback and deliberate practice is so important.

Also why feedback after the fact is far less helpful

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

I told them one of my favorite formulas: freedom = responsibility = love.

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.