How to build deeper, more robust relationships

Carole Robin, longtime Stanford GSB lecturer of the Interpersonal Dynamics course ("Touchy Feely") and co-founder of the nonprofit Leaders in Tech, discusses how to build more robust and exceptional relationships. The conversation covers vulnerability and appropriate disclosure, giving and receiving feedback using the "three realities" and staying on your side of the net, the power of inquiry, and how outdated mental models limit leaders.

01Key learnings

• Relationships sit on a continuum from contact-without-connection to functional, robust, and exceptional; you can build the skills to reach robust without turning every relationship exceptional.
• Practice progressive disclosure using the 15% rule: step slightly outside your comfort zone, observe the response, then gradually expand your comfort zone with that person.
• Share appropriate vulnerability, such as admitting uncertainty or mistakes, rather than either oversharing or hiding everything; this tends to increase a leader's credibility and followership.
• Recognize that anger is often a secondary emotion covering fear or hurt, and that naming those connecting emotions invites support where anger creates distance.
• When giving feedback, stay on your side of the net: describe the observable behavior, state the impact and the feeling it produced, and avoid labels, attributions, and imputed motives like "insensitive."
• Raise small irritations early as "pinches" before they become "crunches," since unspoken small issues tend to grow and damage relationships.
• Use open inquiry with what, when, where, and how questions, suspend judgment, and avoid why questions that tend to trigger defensiveness.
• Treat advice-giving with caution: first ask questions and act as a thought partner, because giving answers can disempower others and widen power gaps.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.