Connect; Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues by David L. Bradford and Carole Robin is a book about how to communicate better with your loved ones.

There are examples of pairs of people who have issues, and how they try to communicate.  The authors then break it down to show the things they do incorrectly, and those that they do well.  They give suggestions, so that you as the reader are learning how to explain your feelings to another person.

This was a really interesting book, with suggestions like 'when you do x, it makes me feel y', which is something I've seen elsewhere, and has other ideas, and is aimed at you using it as a workbook, complete with the suggestion of writing a journal as you go through it.

 Connect; Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues  was published on 4th March 2021, and is available on  Amazon ,  Waterstones  and  Bookshop.org .

I'm afraid I couldn't find anywhere you can follow the authors.

I was given this book in exchange for an unbiased review, so my thanks to NetGalley and to  Penguin .

I got this book from Netgally so I dont know if it is the finished article but there are 100's of spelling mistakes which made this book very hard going. I have only got to 11% and dicult is difficult, eort is effort and st is first to give a short example. It is a constant brain teaser working out what the word should be and train of thought is lost. I found the scenarios that I have read a tad unbelievable and embellished to fit the theory, we just don't speak like that to each other in the UK they may in USA who knows? I see that the 5* reviews are from USA and have done a course at the University by the authors obviously I have not. I have not got very far in this book but I am sceptical that this would work, for me anyway.

Thank you very much to Penguin Life for the ARC.
Connect is a practical, easy-to-read book that opens up your thinking and why relationships matter and how to make them exceptional.
It is a wonderful guide to how anyone can develop effective and rewarding interpersonal relationships. This book will make you feel and think differently - and for the better!
Learning to connect across differences helps anyone develop skills that, as a leadership coach, I see in such short supply - gaining self-knowledge, building trust, giving and receiving feedback, and exercising influence.
If you wish to make your relationships exceptional, this book is a must-read!

Connect is a guide to improving relationships between us in our everyday lives whether at work or personal.
I wanted to read the book as I thought that I could improve some of the relationships in my life and to that extent it has worked, in making me look at situations afresh.
The book's main focus is on conflicts within relationships and how to resolve conflicts within relationships and not cause lasting damage. This is helped by the authors use of both fictional and real accounts of conflict between people and the actions taken to resolve the conflict, the authors also use their own experiences to illustrate the points being made in the book.
The book also encourages us to look at our own relationships and make steps to possibly improve those.
A interesting read, although it can be a bit heavy at times.
If you are looking at improving your relationships or developing yourself, it is a worthwhile read.

Thank you to both NetGalley and the Authors and publishers for the ARC of this book.

Viewing your professional and personal relationships in a different way. It's not about being with the right person but learning to create the right relationship. Thought provoking and potentially life changing if you take the advice on board. It's never too late to change.

In these days of Instagram perfection, surface impressions are the norm. This book teaches you how to have the confidence to build more than superficial relationships, be this in personal and professional life. How to resolve conflicts and difference of opinions and still go forward. A must for any age going in the workplace or a serious relationship.

A really good and practical step by step guide to improving, beginning or developing relationships in your life. The chapters are just long enough to be projects and the tasks are challenging but simple in the approach. I found benefit from the book.

Some interesting ideas. Carole Robin and David Bradford taught at Stanford where their course, Interpersonal Dynamics, was taken by hundreds of students of all subjects as much for personal development as for business development. They say that their students have given feedback many years after taking the course that the skills they learnt had stood them in good stead for every aspect of their lives. Personally I was not so drawn to their ideas but nevertheless I found it thought provoking and therefore very instructive. So even though one may not accept their theories it is worth reading.

Sadly, I had to give up on this book. I do understand that advance reader copies of books may not be perfect in layout or may not be the final copy as far as proof reading goes but as a ‘born proof reader’ I found myself taking in none of this book and simply proof reading and boy does it need proof reading. Virtually every page has multiple spelling mistakes, many typos and some that I can only presume are the writers’ shorthand as they are repeated time after time. I always, when I read a book, make a note of the errors and if authors or publishers are interested, I forward them on. About twenty pages into this book, I realised that I had no idea of the content of the book as I had simply proof read and corrected it, so I gave up.

If there is a better copy available, I would be happy to read and review it.

I always find that I like to start a new year off with a good amount of non-fiction, self-help and books that can change your life - the new year, new me etc. I found this book to have good content, I enjoyed the author correlating what they were saying to their only life/relationships. I think some of the content was too heavy and did make me skim-read over, sometimes the simpler the better as a better way of getting the message across. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC. Overall, 2.5-3 stars for me as I did skim-read over some parts.

Connect is an interesting guide to improving relationships - whether that be in a work or personal context. Carole Robin and David Bradford have, between them, an impressive seventy-five years of teaching this stuff to Stanford University MBA candidates, so they should have some idea what they're talking about.

They basically describe six hallmarks of "exceptional" relationships (sadly, I'm not sure I have any relationships which fully qualify, though I have elements of them), which are basically around being able to be yourself, being able to be vulnerable, trusting the other person enough to self-disclose, being honest, dealing with conflict effectively, and being committed to each other's growth and development.

I was interested in the focus on self-disclosure and expressing feelings honestly, as I'm aware this is something I'm not so good at. I was also particularly interested in the section on giving and receiving feedback, which is a significant part of my job role.

While I'm not sure I will remember or implement all of the guidance here (sometimes it sounds really hard to get it right), there are definitely some parts which will stick with me, like the very helpful image of "staying on your own side of the net"!

The case studies, followed throughout the book, are particularly useful, enabling the reader to better understand the ideas via "real life" situations which don't, of course, always go according to the theory. And the authors practise what they preach by describing challenges in their own long-term relationship as friends and colleagues, and how these were addressed.

'Connect' confounded my expectations that the content would focus on things like being as solicitous towards friends and family as possible. Actually, it focuses primarily on the points when relationships reach conflicts. How to identify and address a smaller conflict before it builds up to a more difficult one; how to manage those more difficult conflicts; and how to come away feeling stronger together after addressing a conflict in a relationship.

What is particularly helpful about the book is its inclusion of fictional and real accounts of conversations between people that are characterised by conflict. This allowed a "deep dive" into the book's advice and removed any sense of abstractedness. The authors themselves were candid in sharing their own mistakes and learning moments over the years.

I really hope I retain the important points raised in this book. I certainly learned new things, or at least, things I hadn't actively considered before. For example, whenever you're in a heated exchange, don't "go over the net" in ascribing intentions and beliefs to the other person; you can never know what's in their head. Stick to your own feelings, and how the person's behaviour has affected you, regardless of their intent.

I plan to be more mindful of my choice of words and thinking patterns whenever I find myself in that kind of situation in future. However, I chose not to engage more fully with the book, which at the end of each chapter suggests reaching out to someone in your life who you'd like to deepen your connection with and discuss what you've learned. I'd rather my learning come out organically, and also, in a pandemic where I am cut off from my close friends and family, it can be harder to have those kinds of conversations online, and it's telling that the stories in the book all take place in person.

That leads me onto my main negative point about the book - with the pandemic, it feels less relevant. The authors/publisher have had ample time to thread in something about how to negotiate and strengthen relationships during this stressful, constraining, and isolating time. But there's no mention of the pandemic at all. I get that they want to future-proof the book, but also, Covid-19 is going to change some things forever. At the very least, I would've loved to see a final additional chapter containing the authors' reflections on how to adapt their advice to living and loving in this bitter time.

(With thanks to Penguin and NetGalley for this ebook in exchange for an honest review)

Written by the masters of a landmark Stanford University course on interpersonal skills I had high hopes for this book, but I'm afraid for me this might be an example of how very effective courses don't always translate into great books. The advice on how to build exceptional relationships is good, capturing modern insights on the importance of developing a growth mindset, the power of vulnerability and how to approach conflict. However, I didn't find the book that enjoyable to read as pages were filled with examples of dialogue demonstrating good and bad approaches, and there were attempts to quantify feelings in percentage terms that just didn't work for me. I can see how the book would be suited to business students, or left-brained thinkers, who might connect better with the book's logical approach.