#23) What Is the Emotional Bank Account?

Hello and welcome back to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham.

Today we're going to turn to the 7 Habits and talk about the Emotional Bank Account. This is a concept that Stephen Covey created to represent how safe people feel around us.

Let me explain how this works.

Deposits and Withdrawals

Deposits into this bank account consists of kindness, little things, courtesy, keeping commitments, honesty, listening, apologies, and so on. The more we do these to a person, the more they will like us.

Withdrawals include: disrespect, breaking promises, overreacting, giving orders, threatening, ignoring, and so on. These are things that make people want to stay away from us.

To have good relations with others, it's best to build up the deposits so that they outweigh the withdrawals. If our deposits in a particular account result in a high balance, then our friend trusts us. He will rely on us, and will in turn help us with our needs. We can even make mistakes and our friend will forgive us because our account is so high.

On the other hand, if we make too many withdrawals, we can have a negative balance, and our friend will not trust us. He will not rely on us, and he is likely to avoid us as much as possible. When it comes to our time of need, that friend will probably not be there for us.

Six Important Deposits

Stephen Covey suggests six ways we can build up an account.

#1) Understand the Individual -- if us show understanding, they are more likely to respond to us.

#2) Attend to the Little Things -- birthdays, flowers, and small courtesies can go a long way.

#3) Keep Commitments -- if we follow through, our friends can count on us for future requests.

#4) Clarify Expectations -- sometimes it just helps to stop, discuss, and clarify what is expected of each other.

#5) Show Integrity -- being more than honest, we can show that we really walk the walk and gain people's trust.

#6) Apologize After a Withdrawal -- we can always get back some of our withdrawal by apologizing.

Two Stories

Okay. Now that we've gone through the basic concepts, let me tell you a couple of stories.

This first story is about my friend at work. We'll call him "Len."

So, he was in this meeting and he was trying to get people to listen to him, and they wouldn't listen to him. So, he blew up. He had a meltdown. And he ended up being sent to anger management.

They still didn't listen to him.

And then at some later time, I went to a meeting and I blew up. This time it was totally my fault, but what was different was that everyone seemed to forgive me instantly. It was because I had already built up this relationship with most everyone in the room. And they just wrote it off as me having a bad day.

And so, this is just an example of how having a high Emotional Bank Account with people can work to your advantage.

And then there was Tom. We'll call him "Tom." He came to work with us. He was a new hire. He was a strong worker, and at the same time, I was a team lead. I was giving instructions on how to build this new pricing system. 

And everything was going well until Tom and some other guys stopped cooperating. They stopped -- they would go home early when I asked them stay a couple more hours to get this urgent task done. 

And so, I pulled Tom into a conference room, and I was asking him, "What's up?" And he totally went all out on me. He was talking about how I was an unprofessional person, how I didn't deserve to be a team lead, and that he just didn't trust me. He didn't like the way I did things. He didn't like how I was surfing the internet every now and then.

So, we sat in there for an hour, just going at it. I couldn't understand why he wanted to be so insubordinate.

But then when it looked like we wouldn't be able to work things out, I said, "Well, stop. Let's take a step back. I'm going to listen and we're going to work this out."

And then as I really listened to him this time, I realized two things. 

#1) I had not really been building up deposits in our Emotional Bank Account.

#2) I came to realize that all he wanted was for me to do my fair share of the work.

Since I was delegating -- I guess I wasn't giving enough to myself. So, he felt that I was just taking advantage of people.

And I said, "Okay." I committed right there to give myself more work and that was enough. Just that one small deposit into the Bank Account started a great friendship -- a great working relationship. We did lots of good things and we're still friends.

Closing

Lastly, Covey takes a moment to talk about love. It could be either romantic or friendship. 

He says that if you sincerely love someone, then you will naturally make deposits into this Emotional Bank Account.

Another way to look at it is that if you sincerely want to work with someone in good faith -- if you believe that you're going to cooperate, that you're going to work together, then you will want to make deposits into these Emotional Bank Accounts so that you can get good results, so that become friends and have respect for each other.

I have shared two stories where it actually worked in my life. I wouldn't say that I'm perfect. I've messed up some friendships, as I'm sure we all do. But I've seen that this Emotional Bank Account is a key element in just making everything work.

Final Challenge

So, for the next couple of weeks (I'll be back three weeks from now), I'd like for you to consider your own Emotional Bank Account with all of your friends and associates. How can you increase deposits? How can you avoid withdrawals? See if you can figure out how to become better friends with these people.

Well, that's all I have for today. Thank you for watching, and remember, we can "Always Be Better."