Touchy Feely? Not for Me.
Stanford’s Interpersonal Dynamics course, affectionately referred to as “Touchy Feely,” has universal appeal: more than 90% of MBA students have taken it in its 55-year history. That’s worth pausing on, especially in the context of other things we accept as ubiquitous — only 68% of Americans consume a full glass of water daily; Google’s share of U.S. search traffic was below 90% last year; and perhaps most memorably, the proportion of adults who wear clothing in private (as opposed to practicing casual nudism) is also below 90%. That’s right — Touchy Feely has wider appeal than clothing. Try that on for size.
In many ways, it’s easy to understand the course’s broad intrigue. For one, its central message of improving interpersonal awareness resonates deeply at the GSB. Moreover, Touchy Feely’s confidentiality requirements beget a sense of mystique, and the legend compounds each time an eager Poets & Quants journalist prints a hackneyed profile of the course’s “iconic” lore. The question that follows is whether Touchy Feely is deserving of its acclaim, and of the emotional investment that generations of students make each year.
Candidly, I did not find it to be. But why rain on others’ parades? Not because the course lacks substance (my biggest takeaways are appended in an exhibit), but because Stanford is a learning-rich environment of endless possibility, and opportunity cost. Thinking deeply about what is right for each of us will only improve our yield from the GSB experience. To that end, allow me to share some insight I wish I’d had before signing up for this 80-hour commitment.
The first thing to remember is that each six-hour session of Touchy Feely is divided into a three-hour lecture and a three-hour “T-Group.” For a sense of the lecture, imagine Dale Carnegie reducing the content of How to Win Friends and Influence People by two-thirds (i.e., Touchy Feely’s ~110-page course reader versus Carnegie’s ~330-page masterpiece on interpersonal dynamics), and insisting he play it out to you over 10 weeks. It was a torturous use of time. We are at Stanford because we can digest and apply new information faster than Touchy Feely permits.
My referendum on T-Group is more balanced. A T-group consists of 12 students who assemble for unprompted discussion about their “here and now” emotions. Naturally, no two T-Groups will be the same, but in general, each T-Group session offers the ability to grow across three primary axes: (i) building self-awareness, (ii) helping others address their interpersonal blind spots, and (iii) forming relationships with new people as a result of the trust built through this reciprocal disclosure. These goals are commendable, lifelong undertakings. To decide whether to address them in Touchy Feely, consider the following:
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1) Building Self-Awareness: How much interpersonal feedback have you received through your life? Try to remember what has been expressed verbally, as well as nonverbally. How often do you think about it? How diverse is the group from which you’ve collected this data? Has their feedback surprised you?
My Experience: For better or worse, my life has encouraged constant self-calibration: direct parents who don’t mince words in their second language; attending a competitive and socially-stratified public school in a diverse town; being a problem child, which culminated with intense self-reflection. It wasn’t all fun, but these experiences left me with a solid sense of my interpersonal footprint before arriving at Stanford.
The GSB has improved my self-awareness, but other courses were more helpful. As one example, Allison Kluger’s “Reputation Management” requires each student to administer a “reputation assessment survey” across family, friends, and colleagues; results are analyzed in a final paper. The exercise can be done in a week, respondents discuss your behavior from past experiences (rather than a contrived “here and now” academic setting), and the exercise is dedicated to you alone.
2) Helping Others: Most of your time will be spent discussing the 11 people around you. Most will be acquaintances rather than close friends. Some will have significant, and even offensive, blind spots. Ask yourself: how motivated am I to help them on their journeys to self-awareness? What’s more: you may disagree with other feedback that is offered to them. Will this motivate or inhibit your desire to participate?
My Experience: I found that while I want to help my friends build self-awareness, I am significantly less interested in taking risks to help acquaintances do the same. What do I mean by this? Telling your best friend that his tendency to interrupt makes you feel unseen won’t put your relationship at risk; however, telling a self-described deep thinker that her lack of eye contact and penchant for big words make her less persuasive might stunt your relationship before it can launch. In these moments, I found myself preserving face instead of providing difficult feedback to people with whom I had no pre-existing relationship, and felt little organic connection to. Put differently, I found myself watching the clock. And if that sounds like a “me problem,” it is. I’m imploring you to ask yourself if you’ll face the same one.
3) Forming Relationships: There are many ways to form new friendships in T-Group, including mutual self-disclosure, expressing concern for others, and forming opinion alliances. While friendships are not the point of the experiment, they can be the residual.
My Experience: T-Group clarified that I seek shared values and interests much more than people who agree with me. And while I value disclosure and vulnerability, I prefer it happen organically as a relationship matures. Too often, T-Group felt like horse-trading trauma.
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I share these experiences to inspire others to look in the mirror before diving headfirst into one of Stanford’s most significant time commitments. Touchy Feely is transformative for many, but at points of universal convergence, it’s helpful to revisit an old adage: reasonable people can disagree.
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My Touchy Feely Takeaways
1) The Course Reader is Valuable.
The OB374 reader is pithy and purposeful. Concepts like “net crossing” (i.e., attempting to surmise another person’s intent) and “expressing a pinch” (i.e., voicing a mild and undeveloped point of conflict before it can fester) do well to highlight interpersonal tendencies that are dangerous, and others that are productive.
2) Influence Can Look Different to Everyone.
Our influence line (i.e., an exercise that forces T-Group participants to rank-order their peers from most to least influential) had a lot of heterogeneity. Some were influenced by messy risk-taking, while others were drawn to tightly-wound insight. Some were influenced by business-like exchanges, while others allowed for humor.
The lesson to me is clear: influence is equal parts empirical and stylistic. Seek out a workplace where your style of influence registers, and where behaviors you find worthy of emulation are well-regarded.
3) Absorb the Nonverbal.
A significant portion of in-class exercises involved nonverbal assembly: we stood next to each other, sampled the presence of others, and tried to make sense of the energy we were feeling from these interactions. Leaning into the exercise produced unexpected friendships. I often put too much emphasis on people’s words — this course helped me take stock of what I draw from others’ physical presence as well.
4) Impression Check Early; Accelerate Repair.
In our final T-Group, one classmate shared that he viewed another as “arrogant” on the basis of something that happened in our first session. This was a hot take — and nearly everyone disagreed — but it produced a powerful takeaway: if you allow folks’ negative first impressions to fester, they may calcify, no matter how contrarian that opinion ends up being over time. Seek out opportunities to impression-check early on in new relationships, and accelerate repair where needed.
Editor: Claire Yun
