The Emotional Bank Account

We can all make mistakes from time to time.  But when we do, how can we ensure that there is enough trust built up that those affected can be confident that things will right themselves?  When dealing with employees, clients or suppliers we need to build up enough of a relationship to cover for these eventualities.  But how?

Stephen Covey in 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' uses the metaphor of the Emotional Bank Account to describe "the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship". 

This account begins on a neutral balance. And just as with any bank account, we can make deposits and withdrawals. However, instead of dealing with units of monetary value, we deal with emotional units.

If you make enough deposits with others through courtesy, kindness, honesty and keeping your commitments to them, you build up a reserve.  Others trust in you becomes higher and you can call upon that trust if you need to.  When the trust is high, communication is easy, instant and effective.  When you are kind, honest, caring and friendly to another person, you make deposits on an Emotional Bank Account.

However, if you are unkind, disrespectful, uncaring and mean, you draw from this account. And when we make withdrawals and our balance becomes low or even overdrawn, bitterness, mistrust and discord develops. If we are to salvage the relationship, we must make a conscious effort to make regular deposits.

There are six major deposits we can make to the emotional bank account:

Understanding the individual

One person's mission is another person's minutia.  To make a deposit, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you. 

 

Attending to the seemingly insignificant

Kindnesses and courtesies are so important.  Forms of disrespect make large withdrawals.  In relationships, the things that can seem insignificant to you can count for others.

 

Keeping commitments

Keeping a commitment is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal.  In fact there's probably no larger withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not to come through.

 

Clarifying expectations

The cause of many relationship difficulties is often rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.  Unclear expectations will lead to misunderstanding, disappointment and withdrawals of trust.  Many expectations are implicit and the deposit is to make the expectations clear and explicit in the beginning.  This takes a real investment of time and effort up front, but saves great amounts of time and effort in the long run.  When expectations are not clear and shared, simple misunderstandings become compounded, turning into personality clashes and communication breakdowns.   It does, however, take courage.

 

Showing personal integrity

Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts.  It goes beyond honesty.  Integrity is conforming to the reality of our words - keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.  One way of manifesting integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present.

 

Apologising sincerely when you make a withdrawal

Great deposits come in the sincere words - “I was wrong”, “I showed you no respect”, “I'm sorry”.  It takes a great deal of character strength to apologise.  A person must have a deep sense of security to genuinely apologise.  It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another not to admit it.

 

We don’t need money to make a deposit on the Emotional Bank Account of any relationship, and won’t feel richer if we withdrew from it. Nevertheless, it is so easy to waste and erode the level of trust by being thoughtless and critical.

 

Caroline runs Zeal Coaching and she will be speaking on Motivating your team at the Grow Your Business event on 13^th May.  To subscribe to her newsletter visit www.zealcoaching.com