Carole Robin - Connect : building exceptional relationships with family, friends and colleagues

Carole Robin and David Bradford are masters at helping people bring IQ and EQ together to satisfy both and be successful. I recommend this book

RAY DALIO , founder of Bridgewater Associates
and author of Principles: Life and Work

Its never been clearer that meaningful relationships are critical to a fulfilling and healthy life. Connect is a practical and timely book I highly recommend that shows us that by learning to connect with ourselves, we can more easily connect with others and build thriving relationships

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, founder and CEO of Thrive Global

At LinkedIn, we made Relationships Matter one of our core values because the personal connections you make persist across jobs, companies and careers. Connect offers a compelling and highly accessible road map for building relationships that leads to professional success and personal fulfillment. I highly recommend this book

REID HOFFMAN, co-founder of LinkedIn
and co-author of Blitzscaling and The Alliance

Learning to connect across differences and develop relationships in which we can actually see and hear others for who they are is becoming an imperative for nations and individuals alike. Connect is a carefully structured set of concepts and practices that readers can apply to everything from their marriages to their management challenges. Its a treasure!

ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER, CEO of New America

One of my goals, and the reason I founded MasterClass, is my fervent commitment to democratizing access to the worlds best. I am thrilled that the immensely valuable lessons in Connect are now available to millions of people. I encourage anyone who cares about developing stronger and more meaningful relationships anywhere in their life to read this book

DAVID ROGIER, founder and CEO of MasterClass

I owe most of what I have accomplished in both my career and my personal life to the lessons I learned in the course on which Connect is based. I cant wait to give a copy of Connect to my teammates, my family and my friends

DARA TRESEDER, CMO of Peloton and board director of PG&E

Decades in business have shown me that building high-trust relationships is one of the most important keys to success, whether in negotiations or on the basketball court. With practical insights into relationship building in both personal and professional environments, Connect is the best book in its class

IRV GROUSBECK, entrepreneur, co-owner of the Boston Celtics
and professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business

Carole and Davids classes have been an invaluable resource what a gift to have their insights and lessons in a book. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to feel happier and more fulfilled, and to anyone who wants a better, smarter future for our world

DR JENNIFER AAKER, co-author of Humour, Seriously
and The Dragonfly Effect

To Eva and Andy
our heroic spouses who love and accept us
for who we are and whose patience and support
sustained us throughout this journey

This book is about a special type of relationship we call exceptional. You may have one or two exceptional relationships alreadymaybe even more. In these relationships, you feel seen, known, and appreciated for who you really are, not an edited version of yourself. Your hundreds of Instagram friends might know what you ordered for dinner at that fancy restaurant last week, but the person you have an exceptional relationship with knows that youve actually been struggling with food issues for years, or that this was the dinner when you and your partner talked about starting a family, or that the impetus for the evening was to discuss the pros and cons of leaving your job. Those subjects are off-limits to the friend you havent seen since high school who follows your feed. They rarely come up with the person you carpool with. They are not germane to the aunt you check in on every so often. But someone youre in an exceptional relationship with knows whats really going on for you because that someone really knows you.

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. The question is, How? How do you move along this continuum? We have dedicated our lives to answering this question for thousands of students and clients, and now, for you.

Exceptional relationships can be developed. They have six hallmarks:

1. You can be more fully yourself, and so can the other person.
2. Both of you are willing to be vulnerable.
3. You trust that self-disclosures will not be used against you.
4. You can be honest with each other.
5. You deal with conflict productively.
6. Both of you are committed to each others growth and development.

Lets unpack these a bit.

THE FIRST THREE center around self-disclosure. Why are we still talking about this, when many would say weve become a culture of oversharers? Because there is a difference between a presented image and sharing who you really are. Oscar Wilde, among others, wryly commented, Be yourself, everybody else is taken. Too often, we edit what we disclose out of fear of being poorly judged.

Social media has created a world where were pressured to spin everything into a positive. Your Facebook posts might show you smiling in front of the Eiffel Tower, but in reality, the trip was a disaster. Silicon Valley CEOs we know talk about the incessant need to describe everything in terms of how much they are crushing it, but fatigue, fear, and burnout are very real in the Valley. Its exhausting to keep up these false fronts. Editing and spinning who you are not only costs you your ability to be authentic but leads others to create their own spin. Were 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, not one obscured by a smiling vacation picture or cheery holiday greetings.

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 its 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.

Fights happen, even in the best of relationships (as youll see, the two of us are proof of that!). 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, its easier to raise and resolve issues so that they dont 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.