How To Make Your Relationships Exceptional | Carole Robin and David Bradford

10% Happier with Dan Harris

10% Media, LLC

Dan Harris, Health & Fitness, Mindfulness, Dharma, Mental Health, Meditation

4.6 • 12.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 70 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Secrets from the massively popular Stanford business school course on interpersonal hygiene.

Carole Robin and David Bradford taught the most popular elective course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for a combined total of 75 years. Officially, the name of the course is Interpersonal Dynamics, but everybody calls it “Touchy-Feely.” Together they have written the new book, Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends, and Colleagues.

We dive into the six hallmarks of what they call “exceptional relationships,” how to be honest and vulnerable without overdoing it, why the questions “how am I feeling?” and “how are you feeling?” are central to improving our communication, the inevitability of risk when you set out to deepen a relationship, and why meditation is helpful in all of this.

This episode originally aired in 2021.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris.
0:07.8	Hello, my fellow suffering beings, how we doing today?
0:22.0	We talk a lot on this show about social connection.
0:24.9	You might have heard me get on this soapbox before, but I just am continuously amazed by the fact that we are these intensely social animals.
0:33.2	We come out of the womb, you know, helpless and howling, and we need other people in order to survive.
0:38.5	And we survived as a species because of our ability to cooperate and communicate and collaborate.
0:44.1	And yet, very few of us are actually taught interpersonal hygiene, social fitness.
0:50.1	So that brings me to my guests today who are going to get super granular, scientific even,
0:56.5	about how to do relationships better at work and everywhere else.
1:01.2	Carol Robin and David Bradford teach the most popular elective course at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
1:07.9	Officially, the name of the course is interpersonal dynamics, but everybody
1:11.2	there apparently calls it touchy-feely. We cover a lot of fascinating ground here, including the six
1:16.3	hallmarks of what they call exceptional relationships. We talk about how to handle conflict well,
1:21.8	how to be honest and vulnerable without overdoing it, why the questions, how am I feeling,
1:26.5	and how are you feeling, are central to
1:28.7	improving communication, the inevitability of risk when you set out to deepen a relationship,
1:34.1	how to connect across lines of difference, including race and gender, why it really is possible
1:38.1	to have a deep relationships with a broader range of people than you might have imagined,
1:42.3	how to give and receive feedback, which is incredibly important, navigating power dynamics, and why meditation is so helpful in all
1:50.2	of this. A little background on these folks before we dive in. David is the Eugene D. O'Kelly,
1:55.9	the second senior lecturer in leadership emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Carol is the former Dorothy J. King lecturer in leadership emeritus at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
2:01.5	Carol is the former Dorothy J. King lecturer in leadership at the Stanford Graduate School of
	...

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