Six Major Deposits that Build the Emotional Bank Account
(How to Build Trust in a Relationship)
- Work on understanding the other person.
- What is important to the other person must be as important to you as the other person is to you.
- True understanding of others requires that you listen for understanding not in order to respond.
- Attend to the little things.
- Little kindnesses and courtesies as well as little discourtesies and unkindnesses are important.
- In relationships, the little things are the big things.
- Keeping commitments
- Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal.
- Being unwilling to make any commitments is as much a withdrawal as making them and not keeping them.
- Clarifying expectations
- The cause of almost all relationship difficulties is rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.
- You make deposits when you make expectations clear and explicit in the beginning.
- Showing personal integrity
- Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty. Honesty is telling the truth — in other words, conforming our words to reality.
- Integrity is conforming reality to our words — in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.
- Apologizing sincerely when you make a withdrawal
- Sincere apologies make deposits.
- Repeated apologies interpreted as insincere make withdrawals.
Excerpted from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey