Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues

by Carole Robin

meaningful relationships are critical to a fulfilling and healthy life.

by learning to connect with ourselves, we can more easily connect with others and build thriving relationships.”

building high-trust relationships is one of the most important keys to success,

exceptional relationships

In these relationships, you feel seen, known, and appreciated for who you really are, not an edited version of yourself.

Relationships exist on a continuum. At one end you experience contact without real connection, while at the other end you feel known, supported, affirmed, and fully accepted. In the middle of the continuum, you feel attached to people in your life, but with many, you want closer connection.

Exceptional relationships can be developed. They have six hallmarks: You can be more fully yourself, and so can the other person. Both of you are willing to be vulnerable. You trust that self-disclosures will not be used against you. You can be honest with each other. You deal with conflict productively. Both of you are committed to each other’s growth and development.

The first three center around self-disclosure.

Oscar Wilde,

“Be yourself, everybody else is taken.”

fatigue, fear, and burnout are very real in the Valley.

We’re not suggesting you have to reveal everything to one single person. But you do have to share the parts of yourself that are important to that specific relationship. And what you share needs to be the real, wholly authentic you,

The last three hallmarks have to do with feedback and conflict.

Challenging someone can actually be a powerful way of supporting them, and yet few people feel confident they can do it well. Someone with whom you have an exceptional relationship calls you on behaviors that really bother them, and when they do, you know it’s a chance for learning, not something against which you have to put up your guard. They know that in helping you understand the impact of your behavior, they are showing commitment to your relationship and helping you grow.

But a fear of conflict can lead you to bury irritants that, if raised and successfully dealt with, could actually deepen the relationship. Conflicts left unspoken can still cause harm. In an exceptional relationship, it’s easier to raise and resolve issues so that they don’t lurk and result in long-term damage. You see such challenges as opportunities to learn, which decreases the chance that these same difficulties will appear again.

We don’t just study and teach the concepts in this book—we live them. Sometimes imperfectly;

mistakes and misunderstandings happen, and repair and recovery are possible.

the focus of this book is on application.

Soft skills require a lot of hard work.

importance of self-disclosure, how to give and receive feedback, how to connect across differences, and how to influence one another—by interacting with one another and learning from the reactions of their peers.

jarring

Our function is simply to build conditions in which students learn how the way they behave impacts others—and what that might mean to their success as future leaders.

What it takes are the skills to move beyond surface conversations. These don’t necessarily require a lot of time, but they do require a commitment to truly learn about ourselves and about the other.

deep connections require a great deal of effort.

What works for you might not work for someone else, and something that helps grow one relationship might fall flat in another. Exceptional is also not an end state, because relationships can always grow deeper.

think of exceptional relationships as living, breathing organisms that are always changing, always in need of tending, and always, always capable of taking your breath away.

When you have a sense of safety and honesty with another person, the opportunities for growth are unlimited.

When your interactions with another person are at their most authentic, there is a paradigm shift. And in the end, an exceptional relationship is about more than a collection of skills and competencies; it’s fundamentally about a different way of being. And therein lies something that feels magical.

the only mistake is refusing to learn from our mistakes.

cultural norms of your particular relationships.

also the challenge of helping you convert a conceptual understanding into actual behavior.

With experiential learning, you try something first and then learn about it.

inflection

gamut—from

relationships are co-determined, the right course of action also depends on the other person: What do they want? What can they handle? What’s the context for the relationship? Instead of being constraining, this kind of flexibility is liberating.

druthers,

in order to engage with another in the ways we describe throughout the book, you have to become acutely aware of what’s going on for you as well as for the other.

As you become more important to each other, the relationship also becomes increasingly complex. Obligations and expectations build, as do potential points of contention. How will you deal with inevitable annoyances? If you can face and resolve them well, the relationship becomes even stronger.

if the relationship is to progress even further, you have to significantly increase your level of disclosure and risk-taking.

Deep relationships take time—there is no instant intimacy. You can influence the speed and direction of a relationship’s trajectory—and

But it takes two to tango, and so what develops in a relationship will also depend on the other person, including their willingness and ability to take these steps toward growth. You may be able to influence that, but you can’t control it. The arc of development also isn’t necessarily linear. A relationship may stay where it is for a while or even regress and then start growing again.

Whenever we face challenges, we think, “Well, that’s an AFOG”—which is short for “another f**king opportunity for growth.”

You can’t significantly develop a relationship (and certainly can’t reach exceptional) unless you’re open to learning.

“We have met the enemy and he is us.” It’s easy to blame another when things go wrong, but it’s necessary to also be willing to reflect on whether part of the enemy “is us.”

A learning mindset has several characteristics. One is a willingness to let go of the idea that your way of doing things is always best. Another is being game to try new things and take the risk of making mistakes. And a third is seeing mistakes as learning opportunities rather than something to be embarrassed about and hide. Curiosity is key. Thinking, I wonder why this isn’t working, is much more productive than blaming another person when something goes awry.

When the going gets tough, there’s a temptation to say, “I can’t. That’s not me.” True, that may not be you now, but can it never be you? Perhaps it’s not you yet,

mindset had to first shift from “I can’t” to “I see I have a choice, even though it’s hard.”

Good luck, and may you make many rich learning mistakes.

your first task is to select four or five relationships—with family, friends, or work colleagues—that you would like to significantly deepen.

We encourage you to share your goals with the people you have chosen so that they have some context and understand why you will be asking them for help. You may want to stress that you see this as an opportunity to make the relationship you already value even stronger rather than only a learning opportunity for you. Hopefully, they will join you in your learning journey.