Enjoy this good article that quickly describes Stanford Business School's most popular class called "Interpersonal Dynamics", but affectionately referred to as "Touchy-Feely." Stanford believes that getting along with others is a key leadership skill.
Sounds alot like an EQ class to me! Interested in an EQ class? My EQ class is being held at the Boston Center for Adult Education on August 4th and 11th, 2004, 5:30 - 7:30 p.m. at 5 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA. Another session being held at the same location and time on December 1 and 8th.
Now click to read the article.
From Business 2.0 June 2004 issue:
Feeling Your Way to the Top
In one of Stanford Business School's most popular classes, the central question isn't how to make a buck. It's how can we all get along.
As they enter the working world this month, more than a few Stanford B-school graduates will swear you can boost your career by criticizing the boss. Fresh out of a course nicknamed Touchy-Feely, they also firmly believe that you should divulge your weaknesses to employees and own up to your mistakes. Sound like ivory-tower fantasies that won’t cut it in the real world? Then perhaps you should stop watching The Apprentice and click over to Dr. Phil. After all, research consistently shows that a trait shared by most top execs is the ability to sense others’ needs. No wonder the overwhelming majority of today’s newest MBAs want better training in getting along with their peers, as was reported in a study by Educational Benchmarking and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
Enter the 38-year-old course officially known as Interpersonal Dynamics. Touch-Feely, which as influenced the careers of Stanford alumni like Sun’s Scott McNealy and Hewlett-Packard’s Ann Livermore, is one of the school’s most popular classes. “It’s about learning how to create productive professional relationships,” says Carole Robin, a business consultant who has taught the course for the past two years. They key to the class is its free-form, three-hour-long “T-groups,” in which students talk openly about their interactions. They get a better understanding of how to treat others and gain insight into their own behavior.
Fortunately, you needn’t go back to school to get in touch with your sensitive side. Take the following Touchy-Feely lessons and apply them to your very own T-group – otherwise known as the office
Listen to what they’re saying about you. “It takes two to know one” is Touchy-Feely speak for watching the reactions of others to better understand yourself. Course alum and former Egreetings CEO Tony Levitan recalled that lesson when he decided to sanitize the greeting-card site for a potential partnership with Hallmark. After his staff nearly mutinied, he realized the error of his unilateral decision-making process. “They vehemently told me how wrong I was,” Levitan says. “It was a public flogging.” He quickly reversed his move.
Know when you’ll snap. Touchy-Feely instructors want students to be emotional, but only so long as they can rein themselves in. “If you become cognizant of when you start to freak out, then you have a better chance of intercepting it,” says Sun CEO McNealy, who took Touchy-Feely some 25 years ago and still recalls its teachings. “The people who can’t figure themselves out end up making illogical decisions.”
Give away secrets. It pays to tell a newcomer some of your faults. Such “situational openness” lets people know what rubs you wrong before you do it. “I’m 51, and there’s a guy I’m supervising who’s 26,” says Craig Schuler, a Lockheed strategic planner and Touchy-Feely group facilitator. “I want him to know how I think and where I get stuck. That lets him better understand who he’s working with.”
Dig for the whole story. According to a class text, encouraging employees to speak candidly doesn’t mean they always will. That point wasn’t lost on Jon Huggett, a 1985 graduate who applied the Touchy-Feely precepts when he ran a $75 million contact-lens company. When he was faced with eliminating an underperforming manager, Huggett says, the move “didn’t sit well with my gut.” So he had a few heart-to-hearts with the employee – and discovered someone with lots of good ideas and an appalling lack of confidence. Fueled with a steady stream of reassurance, the manager eventually because a top performer.
Skillfully win over superiors. What if the boss isn’t into group hugs? “You might not be able to say, ‘We have the same goals, but the way you’re communicating isn’t working to your advantage,’” says 2003 grad Michael Wertheim. “That can come off has psychobabble.” Instead, get a superior to admit his faults by offering carefully packaged criticism. Convey that there’s a hurdle – say, his inability to meet deadlines – to improving company performance. You’ll soon have a better working relationship and a boss who’s less of a Neanderthal than you thought.
Here's an article from a Stanford alum that took the course. A good look "inside" touchy-feely.