The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Discover the Key to Successful Relationships at Work, Home and Play.
Half of Stephen Covey’s book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” deals with the habits you need to succeed in working co-operatively with other people. One of the most important concepts he talks about in this part of the book is the “Emotional Bank Account”. If you clearly understand this concept and apply it in your life, it can lead to tremendous improvements in your relationships with other people.
As human beings, one of our great strengths is to be able to work together cooperatively to achieve mutual benefits. This has led to all the great achievements. Sometimes it seems as if just one individual is responsible but even the great geniuses have achieved their success by “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”.
The challenge that we all face in our day to day existence is to maintain relationships of mutual trust, respect and affection with a wide variety of people. Stephen Covey in the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” introduces the concept of the emotional bank account as a tool to help maintain relationships. I believe that this is one of the most powerful concepts in the second half of the 7 Habits, if you learn it and apply, it will transform all your relationships for the better!
The Emotional Bank Account
You are no doubt familiar with a bank account – you put money in, keep there for a while until you make withdrawal. You know that if your account is in the black, it has a positive balance and it is healthy. If you take out more money than you put in your account goes into the red, the balance is negative and your bank penalises you. If you don’t do something about a negative balance the long term consequences are a complete break down in relationships with your bank, maybe ending up in court.
The emotional bank account is very similar. You have a separate emotional bank account with each individual that you want to form strong relationships and you can make deposits into and withdrawals from this account. Deposits are things like acts of kindness, courtesy, putting the other person first, showing respect, honesty, and keeping commitments. Withdrawals are the opposite. To maintain a good healthy account with this person, you need to make more deposits than you do withdrawals.
You might think that this idea is simple, but that is its power. It’s very easy to recognise when you are strengthening your relationship and when you are weakening it. The emotional bank account gives you the ability to build relationships that you can call on in times of need, relationships that are strong enough to withstand unintentional withdrawals. You can also use it to understand why yours and other relationships are not as good as they should be.
One aspect of the emotional bank account that you need to be aware of is the frequency of deposits that you need to make. This will depend on the nature of the relationship. You can pick up with an old friend despite not having seen them for years. Yet, things can go horribly wrong with your spouse in a short space of time. The closer the relationship you have with someone, the more likely you are to make intentional or accidental withdrawals and the more often you need to make deposits into the bank account to keep it in the black!
Sometimes you may need to make a lot of deposits without much return in the short term. For example teenage children go through a very difficult stage in their lives where they transition from child to adult. At this stage you may need to make a lot of deposits to maintain your relationship and to ensure that you have a good relationship with the adult that emerges from the cocoon of childhood.
The emotional bank account is one of the most powerful concepts that Stephen Covey introduces in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. By drawing a powerful analogy with financial bank accounts, he gives us a framework that can help you to build strong, positive relationships at home, at work and at play. When you are with people you want to build a relationship with, ensure that you always strive to maintain a positive balance!
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