: No, why don't we talk about the book about relationships.

We've identified six key characteristics in developing a relationship.

: The book is really about how to build more meaningful relationships. What the book describes as exceptional, not all relationships can be or should be, it will take too much effort, but if we're aware of what it takes to develop relationships, we have a choice about how we and the other person wants to go.

We've identified six key characteristics in developing a relationship.

The first part is to what extent can I be myself? Now, this doesn't mean that I share everything, but am I sharing what is relevant to us in our relationship or by holding back or even worse by spinning an image? That really isn't me. The second dimension is, am I doing things which makes it easier for you to be yourself, or do you feel judged by me? Third, do we have confidence that when we share things about ourselves that is becoming more vulnerable and more open. Fourth is, can we be honest with each other, I mean what I say, and we crushed and not have to read between the lines. We raise and productively resolve disagreements in each of us, and invest in the other person's growth and development. Now there are a whole series of competencies that deal with those six, but paying attention to those six could give us a clue as to which ones are most relevant for a particular relationship and make it a deeper and more important.

I would say you build it by paying attention to these six

: I would say you build it by paying attention to these six. Am I sharing stuff that's relevant? Am I really interested in you and wanting to know you, am I committed to building a deeper relationship and building trust between us? I think all of those are derivative of those six. Or am I holding back things, are there disagreements that we aren't dealing with and that can keep a relationship from developing? Do I not feel that you're really committed to my growth? I think paying attention to these six, you have a clue as to what is most important in this specific relationship.

If I have the competencies of not blaming the other, of sticking with my feelings, of being able to raise my concerns, often raising the issue that could potentially damage the relationship is what is needed to move it to the next level.

: Well, in a sense, I've come back again too often, the six key characteristics, give us a clue as to what is needed, but there is one special thing, which I think deals specifically with exceptional often we're in a very good relationship. It's very important to us. And, and something happens that gets in the way, the other person does something that bothers us or annoys us or distances us. We're faced with the issue of, do I raise it or do I not? And the fear we have is if I raise it, will it open up a can of worms? Will it ruin the relationship we now have? And often we find that the room to exceptional, but this also holds all way, all along the continuum, I have to raise the issue that potentially could damage it.

If I have the competencies of not blaming the other, of sticking with my feelings, of being able to raise my concerns, often raising the issue that could potentially damage the relationship is what is needed to move it to the next level.

We often say, oh, let's leave sleeping dogs to lie. The relationship stays there or starts to degrade. And, holding the vision of what we want is one way to build that commitment, to say, this is what I want with you. This is what I think we could have. This is what you want and what could we do to get it. Those goals change as the relationship grows, we may achieve those goals and then say, gee, that's really great, but I'm now seeing a new possibility.

You're not going to build close relationships with everybody.

: How do you handle politics at organizations or unstated assumptions? Is that what you're asking? Okay. Well, let's talk about understanding the best way. We have a colleague who wondered whether, in order to get along, I've got to agree with what people say. Hopefully, I have enough of a relationship with that person. I could say, well, gee, John, I'm trying to understand how things are done around here. It seems to me that this is unstated. Do I have that right? And check it out. Usually, if we take the risk of checking it out, the other response also really is how we handle it, or no, I don't think it's true, but here's what you might be picking up. Now, in terms of being a member of an organization, you're going to build different levels of relationships with different people.

You're not going to build close relationships with everybody.

You don't have the time and it isn't necessary. The first thing to do is to say there's to do what is called a stakeholder's analysis of saying who are the crucial people I need to get my job done. Often almost always it's a boss with some peers, or maybe some people in another department that you need in order to get your work done. That's where you're going to pay your attention.

What you're going to try and do is you're first going to try to understand them.

: What you're going to try and do is you're first going to try to understand them.

You're going to try to understand how is it that you can help them be more successful because you want them to be more successful. Also, you may want to share what you want the relationship to be.

So I may go back to John. I may say, this organization is pretty political, but I would like that not to be part of our relationship. How do you feel about that? And this is how I'm seeing politics playing out. For example, I see frequently that people say one thing to your face and another behind your back, I would not like that. Not to be true with our relationship. We're starting to make that explicit about what we want.

If now I experienced John doing something, rather than jumping to the conclusion, I'm going to try to understand them. I'm going to try and say, gee, John, I thought we talked about this. This was the behavior that I saw. We talked about X and I heard from somebody else about the use of Y. I don't know if you've said it, but I'm worried about that because I want to have a high degree of trust with you. So we raise it and it's likely that he's got a reasonable explanation. Also what I've been made is this is really what I want with you, which is a relationship statement.

both sides

: Again, both sides need to have a certain commitment to work together, to build a certain level of relationships. And it will be different. Yes, there are the areas in which we're in a competition, where there's only so much money to go around. I want more, you want more. But what are the areas in which we need to collaborate? And can we make sure that those areas of competition don't get in the way of the times where we need to collaborate? So, and again, there's going to be differential degrees of closeness with each of these people, but is it meeting my goals of getting my job done? What I want to be clear about is there's a difference between a good working relationship and friendship. So, many of the people in my organization that I work with are not my friends, but we have a good working relationship.

Some of my friends I wouldn't want to work with. Those are two different dimensions and we tend to confuse them. We tend to say, well, gee, because I don't want to have a drink with so-and-so, we can't have a good relationship. That's not necessarily true. We've been clear about what we need from each other. And we are direct and honest with each other.

The leader says we're going to spend the first 10 minutes, not on the agenda, but on getting to know each other

: In a sense, email is one of the worst ways to build a relationship. At least use a phone, if you can't be face-to-face. I have a colleague who once observed, the good thing about zoom is we cut to the chase and cut out other stuff. And I wonder what we cut out. We may actually cut out what allows me to personally know you.

Here's something that I've seen executives in Silicon valley do where their meetings are all by zoom. The leader says we're going to spend the first 10 minutes, not on the agenda, but on getting to know each other. Each person has 60 seconds to say if you really knew me what you would know. You would know that I'm a little distracted. My son was sick. You would really know that I'm excited about this new project we're doing. You would know that I'm concerned about a client that we have, that we might move. They have 60 seconds to do that. They go around. The leader does it too. Then, everybody then has 30 seconds to say, the thing that most struck me when I heard was when Mary said X, and what really struck me was when one said Y, and what they find is that 10 minutes allows them to make the personal connection.

Now we are starting to be more face-to-face. Our tendency is going to be to focus on tasks. I would urge that we double down on getting to know people when we have that opportunity face to face. I'm going to guess that in the future, we're going to be doing a lot of taskwork at home and over zoom. We're going to be going to the office to build those personal relations where I can know the other person, I can know what they need. I can know how to connect with them better. We need to pay more attention to using every opportunity we can to build these personal relationships that we used to have, 40, 50 hours at the office where I could drop by your office. We go to lunch, and so on. We now have to pay special attention to fill in that need.

: I'd be glad to. This book is derivative of the course that you've mentioned the interpersonal dynamics also known as touchy-feely course. We saw this course had a powerful effect on students. People often said it's transformational, it's life-changing. I want to say that as a teacher, we often don't have that impact on students. To have a course in which students say you changed my life, I can now talk to my parents in a way I never used to before, I now can resolve issues of that before would have offended me was very gratifying. What we realized, was we actually had our editor who said, not everybody could afford to go to Stanford. Why not make this available to the world? And, Carol and I want to bring this to the world. And that's very important to me.

This is about the end of my career. I'm not teaching anymore. That I want to have part of my heritage is that we do change the world and we're gratified. We get emails. People say this book has helped me have a conversation. I never thought I could have it, resolve the difficult issue I had with my boss. It migh ha've cost I a job. That's the impact that we want to have. That's what's important to me personally because I think we have to answer for our lives. We spent a life, and this is one way that I'm going to say, this is what I've done.

: I could also suggest that you look at our website because there is a questionnaire which, people might find helpful to do a self-diagnosis and our website https://connectandrelate.com/. I think people will find that, and the book, helpful.

Having genuine curiosity

: Well, people aren't on the front end going to say, yeah, let's build a relationship. They've got to see the benefit. I think that we need to build a relationship by talking about ourselves. We need to share about ourselves. We need to be more personal, but I find that other people are really quite interesting. If we are interested in them, they, in a sense find that very rewarding. Are you interested, do you want to get to know that person? Do you want to understand? Let's go back to the work situation, what they want to get from this job, why do they like working there? What are some of the concerns they have? I'm not trying to solve their problems, but I'm trying to get to know them.

I think that if we do that more, we're really trying to get to know people. They're gonna say, gee, this is a rewarding interaction, and that's gonna make them want to have deeper interactions because most of our interactions in life are really quite superficial and aren't very rewarding. I think that's, we don't have to say, gee, do you want to build a relationship? That's the process of building a relationship that they're going to want even more.

Having genuine curiosity is the key, about the other person, more learning, trying to learn about the person that you're interacting with.

I want to find out everything about you, but am I really interested in your view? And, I think too often we aren't, and then we wonder why relationships stay at a superficial level.

: Yeah. What we have to remember is that organizations are held together by a network of relationships, not by the organizational chart. The more you can build significant relationships with more people in the organization, it's going to be a tighter organization and probably less political.

: Well, I think if we really listen, we would know what questions there are. So, I think that if it had been, if we're building relationships, you've talked about this organization, obviously, it's important to you. I would want to know what you hope to achieve. Why is it personally important? Like you wanted me to share what was personally important about the book. Already that's where I would go first.

The key is having some curiosity to understand why the person is angry and then, having the humility to apologize.

: So if I've done something that upset that person, my first tendency is to explain myself and defend myself. I need to set that aside. I need to say, well, Simone, really seems pissed off and I've clearly done something. Now here's in the book, we talk about the model of feedback of sticking with your reality, which likely that's the one who's going to be making assumptions about me. She might say, well, David, you're just inconsiderate. What we say in the book is you have to focus on the effect of that on you. If she were to say that to me, I'd say, well, yeah, I'm sorry, not my intention, but clearly I've done something. I'm going to force her to name the behavior. What have I done that pissed you off? Well, she said you interrupted me twice and that's inconsiderate. I think that's why you're not a caring person. I, by the way, I've had people say that to me, I do tend to interrupt. I'd say, well again, not my intention, but I see that my interrupting has done that, and I'm sorry.

I really am sorry that I didn't intend that. I'm probably gonna say, I have a tendency to do that. It's for me, not a sign of being inconsiderate. That's not my intention. It's usually because I'm really curious. I think I've gotten your main point and want to move on, but I hear it bothers you. What can we do about it? And we now get into problem-solving. If somebody's mad at me, I want to find out why it might be. But again, what I've said is I'd say Simone, we have to work together. We're interdependent, we've to at least get somewhat passes so that we can be functional colleagues. What is it going to take? What do I need to do? And I've gotta be willing to look at myself. Now, I'm probably gonna say, look, I'm going to work on not doing it. I'd like a little bit of forgiveness. When I do it, call me on it, we will work out a working relationship. That's probably going to be a little better, but now we've moved past her being angry at me, not what the issue is.

The key is having some curiosity to understand why the person is angry and then, having the humility to apologize.

I'm interrupting you and what you see is, oh, we don't want to be a team player. You have a bad attitude. That's what causes defensiveness and gets the other person to want to explain themselves. Somebody does that to you, can you hold your defensiveness, your desire to explain yourself? And I used to just move into curiosity, but it's that labeling that tends to hook us.

: Yeah. What we say is stick with what, I can observe the behavior and I know my response, what I don't know is your intention or motives, and stay away from that. Because if I went up the behavior and share my response, if I say, Steve, when you do X, I feel Y, Steven is likely to tell me why he did it. I don't need to guess his motive. He is telling me.

Well, I always start with the assumption that the other person's well-intentioned.

: Well, I always start with the assumption that the other person's well-intentioned.

Remember the phrase, the road to hell is lined with good intentions rarely. This is a direct report of mine and the report comes in not very good. It's unlikely that the direct report said to themselves, well, I'm purposely going to screw up this report. That's very unlikely. I'm going to start with the assumption that's well intentioned.

Now I'm going to get into curiosity

: Now I'm going to get into curiosity and I'm going to say, well, Sharon, I am disappointed in this report. I'm sharing my feelings about the report. It doesn't seem to me to have the depth of analysis that I know you can do. Can you tell me how you went about this or, why you came up with this? So I'm not saying, can you tell me why the hell you came up with this? That's not a question, that's an attack. And Sharon might say, well, I thought you just wanted the first run of this, not an in-depth analysis. Well, we've now found some of the problems. I think I would say then, what do you remember what I said that conveyed that impression? So I don't want to do that again. She may know that, or she may say, no, I don't remember. I may say, when you're unsure about the thoroughness of it, I wish you'd check with me next time so we don't have this confusion. I'm going to work to be more explicit, but I want you to also work to make sure that I am clear. Okay, now we've resolved it, but I want to make sure I haven't jumped to the conclusion first that she's an incompetent, uncaring, slobby subordinate when there may be other factors at work

: Well, first of all, we identified the problem. She goes back and she does it again. And it's still, isn't quite good. I think what I first did before she went back, I'd say, is it now clear that the level that I want, and hopefully she says, yes, and if not, we'll clear it up that, but she comes back as not great. I think then I'd want to sit down and say, we seem to have different expectations. Let me show you the level of analysis I want. I want to have you have checked with this, and this, and I'd go over the report. I'd say, this is what my expectations are. Now in a sense I'm coaching her.

I think a part of our job as a leader is to develop our direct report. After all, we hire people for their potential, and we want to help them be more competent, help them, and helps us. So now I've coached her. Now she comes back a third time and it's still at that level. We have another conversation to say, Hey, I'm really bothered. I've put in this time to coach you. I don't see the results, what's going on. It might be, we don't know what's going on. It may be that she doesn't have the technical background that she needs, or we need to talk about another job. It may be that she's not interested.

Well, then we need to talk about, how is she going to handle being in a job that doesn't interest her? And again, is outplacement gonna help her? I don't know, but again, we're exploring, but I'm just not going to hit her over the head because that doesn't get at what the issue is or issues are.

We layout these competencies in some detail and give suggestions about how to use them in our book, but the best way to learn them is through practice. But you keep on trying. And, so let's go back to the example of me with Sharon. I'm trying to coach her. Are there ways I could have been better? So I'm also learning how to be a better coach. I may also want to help her better in knowing how to ask the questions that I can coach on. I may say, well, Sharon, if you would have shared where you were confused that would have been much more helpful.

Again, it's a constant learning process and it's a continuous practice.

: Again, I don't think we need special times. I think we use all of our work interactions. Can I get this job done? And can we learn something in the process, that are ought to be constant learning, because the world is changing and we need to acquire new competencies, or apply our old competencies in a different way in this new situation. I don't think we have to set aside necessarily a special time. By the way people are going to say, well, is there time for this? Think of the amount of time that is wasted with confusion with people avoiding each other, with people not coming through when they should. When I work at organizations, I just see a colossal waste of time going on all the time.

Somebody once said, there's nothing more efficient than honesty. I think that if we say, hey, what's going on, this seems to be a problem, what's getting in the way, what are we going to do about it? That doesn't take a lot of time. It takes some willingness to raise a difficult issue, to look at yourself, to hear things that you may not be doing as well as you could, but if you're not willing to learn, why would anybody else be willing to learn?

: One of the advantages of being a leader is you can set some of the rules, you can set your expectations. Later, I'd say, look, I want to build a culture in which we're constantly improving. We need to do that to be competitive with other organizations. What I want is I want us to be committed to our learning and to each other's learning. What I would then want to do is I'd want to model what's going on. I would want to be a coach to different members. I would first do the coaching one-on-one outside, but at some point I would want to start to build a team where we can start to do that coaching within the team where I can say, look, I, I think this report isn't as thorough as it needs to be. Rather than us spending more time at this meeting, I'd like you to go back and do another cut at it. We need to have a conversation about the level of analysis. I'm being open about my dissatisfaction, or if I see that I've done something, I've shut somebody down, I'm going to want to stop and say, did I do something that bothered you? And the subordinate being worried might say no, which is really, yes. Am I going to say, hey, it sounds like that, what did I do? So I'm modeling my openness to learning. I think that I'd be clear about my expectations at the front end, and then I'd try to engage in the appropriate behavior. I would support members doing the same thing.

when I talk with managers, often they blame their subordinates and I find most of the problems are with the managers inadvertently

: Yeah, it's when I talk with managers, often they blame their subordinates and I find most of the problems are with the managers inadvertently. I think it's hard to hear when you have screwed up. I recently was at a meeting, and one of the persons did something that I called on it. He said, I'm sorry, I behaved like a jerk. I said, Jim, you weren't a jerk. That behavior wasn't the best. You don't have to put yourself down. Yeah. That was not the wisest thing to say, but, we recovered. And, so we don't need people beating themselves up and beating each other up.

It's much better that they be more human and say, this is what I know, and this is what I don't know

: Yeah. In essence, in other work I've done, I've developed the Bible called the heroic leader and when leaders act heroic and think they have to have all the answers. They don't fool anybody because they don't have all the answers. It's much better that they be more human and say, this is what I know, and this is what I don't know.

: Where we think we can fool other people, so we try to pretend, we'll see through that pretty quick.

: Well, if we're interviewing somebody for a job, I've always thought it's a mutual game. The applicant is trying to present themselves in perfect terms. The boss is trying to present the organization in perfect terms. Years ago actually it was Ford Motor company decided in the interview, they would tell the interviewer exactly what it was like working at Ford. They found they got fewer acceptances than they had before, but they had subsequently much lower turnover rates. So, what does it cost when we do this mutual conduct? If I'm not going to fit into this organization, wouldn't better than I knew that in the interview, rather than spending six months of my life and then discovering it.

So, again, to what extent can we be more honest, even if this is a first meeting, which doesn't mean that you tell everything, but you, in a sense, tried to cut down on the amount of spin that the applicant and the boss tend to engage in.

: Yeah. At the end of each chapter of Connect, we have a section called deepen your learning and the first or a series of reflection questions, which asks you to take the material of that chapter and reflect on yourself. For example, chapter three is about self disclosure. We ask the reader to say, what aspects of yourself, do you have a hard time sharing, then have them select the relationship they want to deepen. And we say, is there something that's relevant to that relationship that you want to share that you haven't shared out, we'll go out and try it. So there's a whole series of suggestions. And, once you have done that chapter, you may want to read the chapter again. It probably now has more meaning to you and you've been applied that to other relationships. It's a process of constant practice, constant learning.

So it's more like remind each other on the framework and how to think through each scenario, instead of telling someone what to do, it's helping someone think through the scenarios.

: Yes. I, I think that would be great. You may want to set up your own support group and you could take turns of people saying, gee, I've got this issue with my boss and rather than other people giving you advice, could they help you think through what would be challenging you, different approaches you might want to consider and what works and what doesn't.

So it's more like remind each other on the framework and how to think through each scenario, instead of telling someone what to do, it's helping someone think through the scenarios.

One of the beliefs in the coaching field is that person has within themselves the answer to their issues, your job is not to give them the answer. Your job is to help them think through.

: Well, I think that would be great if you could do it, and that would be a very useful function of your organization. I think we're getting close to our time. There is a final question maybe you have.

: Conflict under what conditions? I missed.

: Well, in a certain sense, I think you now have wonderfully given the answer. Rather than assuming the other person who is bad or wrong, it might be that it's more an expectation issue of what each person wanted from that situation or from that interaction. Can I, without assuming that my approach is the best, and I find out what works for you, share what works for me and see if we can find out a way that maybe a third alternative that both of us could live by. And again, it's problem solving, but it's also learning. Learning is not just on the individual level, but it's learning what do we need in our interactions.

: It was my pleasure.