Building Exceptional Relationships With Family, Friends And Colleagues
By David Bradford and Carole Robin
A transformative guide to building more fulfilling relationships with colleagues, friends, partners, and family, based on the landmark Interpersonal Dynamics (Touchy Feely) course at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.
The ability to create strong relationships with others is crucial to living a full life and becoming more effective at work. Yet many of us find ourselves struggling to build solid personal and professional connections, or unable to handle challenges that inevitably arise when we grow closer to others.
Building and sustaining relationships
When we find ourselves in an exceptional relationship, the kind of relationship where we feel fully understood and supported for who we are, it can seem like magic. But the truth is that the process of building and sustaining these relationships can be described, learned, and applied.
David Bradford and Carole Robin taught interpersonal skills to MBA candidates for a combined seventy-five years in their legendary Stanford Graduate School of Business course Interpersonal Dynamics (affectionately known to generations of students as ‘Touchy Feely’) and have coached and consulted to hundreds of executives for decades.
In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional, along the way offering time-tested strategies for giving feedback, negotiating boundaries, and working through disagreements.
Through stories of people navigating tricky moments in relationships, all based on real dynamics Bradford and Robin have witnessed or experienced, we see the six hallmarks of an exceptional relationship in action: authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, a willingness to ask for and offer help, a shared commitment to growth, and an ability to deal productively with conflict.
Filled with relatable scenarios and research-backed insights, Connect will be an important resource for anyone hoping to improve existing relationships and build new ones at any stage of life.
About the authors
Dr David L. Bradford is Stanford Graduate School of Business Eugene O’Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership. He joined the faculty in 1969 and was Co-founder of the MBA’s most popular course, ‘Interpersonal Dynamics’.
He was awarded the Jaedicke Silver Apple Award for his outstanding service to the School’s graduates by the Stanford GSB Alumni Association, and The Organisational Behavior Teaching Society named its award to honour excellence in teaching, The David L. Bradford Teaching Award.
Dr Carole Robin is the Co-founder of Leaders in Tech and has been helping leaders grow for more than 35 years. She was affiliated with the Stanford GSB for twenty years, most recently as the Faculty Director of ‘Interpersonal Dynamics’.
She is a winner of Stanford’s MBA Distinguished Teaching Award for her work on numerous courses and when her early retirement was announced, there was outcry from the student population: 131 former students signed a letter in protest.
- PUBLISHER | Penguin Random House |
- ISBN | 9780241406816 |
- Recommended Retail Price | R320.00 |
- Classification | Relationships |