Surface Ripples

The "Emotional Bank Account"

One of the most interesting concepts that was introduced to me earlier on in my career was that of the “emotional bank account”.

The emotional bank account is another person’s feelings towards you or the organisation for which you work. That person could be your child, your partner, your friends. You get the drift?

Just as with a real bank account, you can make withdrawals and place deposits in the emotional bank account. The difference is that the value of emotional deposits tends to be perceived as far less than the value of emotional withdrawals.

This means that we need to work far harder at making emotional deposits. To coin a phrase, “Trust lost is difficult to regain”. It doesn’t take much to lose someone’s trust me they a child your partner a friend or a customer.

This may seem very harsh, but the flipside is that, if you gain someone’s trust and work hard to maintain it, they are likely to be a lot more forgiving. It is only when we continually betray that trust or make more emotional withdrawals than deposits that our reputation as a person, employee or business suffers. One has only to look at certain individuals or organisations to see the truth in this.

It's a hard fact of life, but we have little choice other than to keep our promises and do as we say we will if we are to be trusted, well thought of and recommended by others. It doesn’t take much to make an emotional withdrawal and it’s often what we might describe as “the little things”: 

• Breaking a promise
• Not calling back when we say we will
• Not turning up on time for a meeting

More often than not it’s the “accumulation of little things” that is enough to break someone’s trust in us.

How often do we catch ourselves thinking “I could’ve done better” or “I shouldn’t have done/said that”?

If we as leaders are not constantly checking the levels of our deposits versus our withdrawals, the results are only too obvious.

I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  For strategic questions that you should be asking yourself, follow me at @wkm610.

Labels: Career, Customer Care, Leadership, Selling, Strategy, Teamwork

posted by William Martin @ 11:58