Henry Cloud

Modern leadership is often contrasted with healthy relationships. Leaders, we are told, have to be a lonely and isolated genius, like Steve Jobs. However, in truth, no one can lead without relying on other people. Getting things done requires healthy relationships, and most key advances just cannot be made without others’ influence. In this book, leadership psychologist Henry Cloud examines how to best take advantage of others’ help by identifying mutually beneficial show more relationships.

Cloud’s main idea is that relationships of respect and growth yield the most productive results. Key insights have only happened because other people have become involved in another person’s life. Other people can inspire us to do things that we simply can’t achieve in isolation. This trait is grounded in the neuroscience of how mirror neurons act in our brains.

Although this book is written primarily for the workplace, this central idea has contains a very religious, spiritual core. Not only does this work reference Cloud’s Christianity multiple times, but also it contains common insights of religion, that no one is an island and that humans do better in loving, respectful relationships. This motif goes against the grain that selfish jerks end up first. Indeed, Cloud speaks directly against such a premise in his conclusion and contends that these jerks could have had greater impact with better relationships.

This book still faces a few limits. He consistently uses the term “corner four relationships” to describe the healthiest, most generative relationships. This concept clearly refers to a chart in the book, but I was not able to view this graphic because I listened to an audiobook. This repeated abstraction is, well, a little too abstract for me. I wish he would have just coined a more descriptive phrase for it that wouldn’t be so vague and distracting.

Further, Cloud never discusses the area of difficult choices. He presumes that relationships should always come first. How do we tell if someone is, say, taking advantage of us? How do we psychologically balance our need for subjective trust with an objective evaluation? These and other confusing areas are simply not addressed in this text. That’s unfortunate because the values of any principles are most clearly seen in the required trade offs.

This book’s audience focuses on organizational leaders and those aspiring to grow. The message can encompass a wide variety of organizations and leaders. The book broadly addresses businesses, non-profits, educators, and family leaders. In particular, mentors can benefit from Cloud’s focus on cultivating synergistic relationships, and their mentees can benefit from figuring out how to make their other relationships yield more fruit. Throughout, he consistently reminds us that individual success always rests on the shoulders of other people, and the greatest leaders bring out the best in other individuals, not just their own greatness. show less

Many of us have boundary issues in our lives - some more than others, and some in different areas than others. But if you have any sort of issue with guilt, anger, overwhelm, or other negative emotions, it may be because you are not placing the proper boundaries in your life. Everyone should read this book, because I believe everyone can get some use out of it.

I think it really is a good read, but if you do have issues setting boundaries in your life, it is absolutely essential. It is very show more biblically based, so some may have an issue with that. But if you are able to get past that (or embrace that depending on how you are inclined), there is so much in this book that you can take away. The power of an emphatic but loving "no" is one tool that everyone deserves to be able to use in their life. show less

I'm surprised to be giving this a full five stars, seeing as Dr. Cloud is an evangelical Christian - and writes like one! - and I'm agnostic/atheist. But it earns the full five stars. What he says about boundaries (and the way to sanity) is something pretty much everyone in the modern world needs to hear in some form. If you can deal with a bit of Christianity without it driving you totally nuts (and, really, it's not all that strong, doesn't sound like a Bible study or anything), then I'd show more highly recommend this book. show less

I think this is one of those books that is going to take me a while to see if I actually liked it or not, depending on how well I remember its lessons, and how useful it is to implement them. It took me two months to get through a 223-page book, not a good sign in and of itself.

There feels like a lot good here, emphasizing not punishment, but boundaries with consequences. We don't need to yell at our kids, we don't need to make them feel bad. Kids are responsible for their own fun. Kids are show more NOT responsible for their parents' feelings, etc. Parents are responsible for setting boundaries and sticking to them. It is better not to have a boundary at all than to have a wishy-washy one that sometimes has consequences and sometimes doesn't.

At times I felt it was a bit too harsh. For example, I think assumptions that entitlement is always bad sets one up for a life to be made a doormat. Claims that someone feels they have earned what their boss has, or being "envious of the upper class" is someone being a classist themselves. Why do they only call it class warfare when we fight back? I also didn't like their referral too frequently to "real life" as if the life of young people is somehow fake. They also seem to make some harsh assumptions that childhood always ends the day they turn 18. While many lessons are universal there was no reference to homeschooling and seemed to assume your kids go to public school. show less