"The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" deals with the issue of forming effective, interdependent relationships with people around you. Your ability to be effective and successful depends on being able to form good quality relationships. The 7 Habits has 6 recommendations to help you improve your relationships with people.
One of the great ideas in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” is the idea of the emotional bank account. This is a metaphor to help you understand that your relationships are a balance between withdrawals – acts such as discourtesy, unkindness, fickle behavior – and deposits – acts that strengthen your relationships. Your objective should be to always maintain a positive balance. Just like in a real bank account, you then have reserves of goodwill from the other person to call on in tough time, and you are not paying the price of careless management of your relationships.
Here are 7 ways that you can make positive deposits in the emotional bank accounts of people around you:
Understanding the Individual
When you really understand someone, you know what is important to them so you can make sure you are doing the things that matter to them in a way that they like. Understanding the other person is also the key to all the other deposits – unless you understand someone you won’t be able to do the right things.
Looking after the little things
Small details are important, particularly in relationships where you have a lot of contact with the other person. Small acts of unkindness, rudeness, lack of caring can very quickly add up to a major irritation and will empty your emotional bank account overnight.
Make sure that you take care of the small details that matter to the other person.
Keeping promises
If you make a promise, stick to it. Keeping that promise will be a major deposit, breaking it will be a major withdrawal. What’s worse, if you break promises, the level of trust of the other person will drop rapidly and you will find it hard to re-build trust. You will stay ‘in the red for a long time’
Be clear about what is expected
One thing that humans do not like is uncertainty. When there are two of you to consider, uncertainty can lead to conflict – if your boss thinks you ought to be doing one thing and you think you ought to be doing another the results are potentially disastrous for both of you.
When you start something new – like a new task, moving to a new house or entering a new phase in a relationship, you should take time to clarify expectations with the other person.
Be a person of integrity
This means more than just being honest, it means being someone whose actions, words and inner thoughts are in harmony. One of the great tests for integrity in the field of relationships is what you say about people when they aren’t there. Do you gossip about them in order to curry favour with someone else? If you do, you’ll become known as a person who can’t be trusted…
Apologize sincerely when you make a mistake
If you are someone who is at all insecure, this can be very difficult to do. However if you learn to apologize sincerely and genuinely when you do make a withdrawal, you will be able to create a new deposit with the other person that may even outweigh the withdrawal. The key is sincerity which must come from inner strength of character.
Unconditional love
Your love for the other person should be unconditional and not dependent on their behaviour. This can often be very difficult. If you have children you use conditional promises when they are young as a means of encouraging them to behave as you would like them to. As they mature, it can be very hard to avoid making your love conditional on them living up to your expectations. If your children are to be fully self-actualized adults, you need to be able to do this.
To form strong, positive, healthy relationships with people you need to make sure that you are putting more into the relationship than you are taking out. This is the idea behind the emotional bank account. In this article, you’ve learned 7 different ways to make positive deposits into the emotional bank accounts of others. You should use them all at the appropriate time. Which of the different ways do you need to work on most of all?
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Kevin John has spent many years helping businesses owners, aspiring business owners, and private individuals to develop the understanding and skills needed to achieve the success that they want.
