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

A BLOOMBERG BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • 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

“Full of thoughtful, actionable advice on showing vulnerability, setting healthy boundaries, earning and restoring trust, handling feedback and conflict, and building and strengthening relationships.”—Adam Grant, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Potential

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. When we find ourselves in an exceptional relationship—the kind of relationship in which 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 hundreds of executives for decades. In Connect, they show readers how to take their relationships from shallow to exceptional by cultivating authenticity, vulnerability, and honesty, while being willing to ask for and offer help, share a commitment to growth, and deal productively with conflict.

Filled with relatable scenarios and research-backed insights, Connect is an important resource for anyone hoping to improve existing relationships and build new ones at any stage of life.

David Bradford is Eugene O’Kelly II Senior Lecturer Emeritus in Leadership at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he helped develop Interpersonal Dynamics (“Touchy Feely”). He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife of more than fifty years.

After more than twenty years at Stanford, Carole Robin was the Dorothy J. King Lecturer in Leadership before co-founding Leaders in Tech, which brings the principles and process of “Touchy Feely” to executives in Silicon Valley. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband of thirty-five years.