By Angela SP Yap

If you are stuck in a rut in your relationships with family, friends, or colleagues, you might want to give this next idea a spin to see if it changes your perspective.

In the evergreen read, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, author and motivational guru Stephen R Covey writes about the fundamentals of an emotional bank account, a concept he created to assist people in shifting their perspective and enhance relationships at home and at work.

The concept is straightforward. Every relationship we have is thought of as a bank account and each time we interact with that person, we are either depositing into or withdrawing from the reserve of trust in that emotional bank account. Deposits are made through our positive actions – whenever we interact and perform acts of honesty, kindness, or integrity – and a withdrawal is made through negative actions – disrespect, breaking a promise, or ignoring a partner’s problem.

Like a regular bank account, you can only withdraw when your account is ‘in the black’, i.e. you’ve put in more deposits than withdrawals and the account is in surplus. However, if you have not invested time and effort to build a positive emotional bank balance with a person, you’re likely ‘in the red’ and can’t withdraw because of insufficient capital. You will recognise the symptoms – tension, miscommunication, resentment, molehills turning into mountains – and the only way to come back to a healthy balance is to make more deposits.

Little Acts of Goodness

Covey outlines six major ways to make a deposit, which we’ve summarised below:

  • Understanding the individual. Really seeking to understand another person is probably one of the most important deposits you can make and it is the key to every other deposit. Be mindful though that what might be a deposit for you – going for a walk to talk things over, working on a common project – might be perceived as a withdrawal for the other person if it doesn’t touch his or her deep interests or needs. The common denominator is to understand people deeply, the way we want to be understood, and then to treat them in terms of that understanding, without us projecting our intentions onto others.
  • Attending to the little things. Little kindnesses and courtesies are big things in a relationship, whilst small discourtesies, little unkindnesses, little forms of disrespect result in large withdrawals. As with many things in life, the scales are often unbalanced and such is the human condition. It takes more investment to build, and very little to break, trust.
  • Keeping commitments. This is a major deposit and, correspondingly, breaking a promise is a major withdrawal. Life does throw the occasional, unexpected spanner in the works. When it does, either keep the promise anyway or explain the situation thoroughly to the person involved and ask to be released from the promise. In this way, people will continue to trust your word and, in future, will act on your counsel even when you decide to make a withdrawal. You will see evidence of this in people who wield more social influence, which in this instance, counts as social capital. 
  • Clarifying expectations. Unclear expectations lead to misunderstanding, disappointment, and withdrawals of trust. Many expectations are implicit, which is why whenever you come into a new situation, it is necessary to get all expectations out on the table because people will begin to judge each other through those expectations; if they feel that their basic expectations have been violated, the reserve of trust is diminished. Clarifying expectations takes a great deal of courage; the upside is that everyone is able to face these differences head-on and work to arrive at a mutually agreeable set of expectations. Although it may seem easier to ignore this and hope things will work out on their own, this rarely works out in the long run as it becomes a drain on one’s emotional bank account.
  • Showing personal integrity. The lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts. Integrity includes, but goes beyond, honesty. It involves the practice of fairness which dictates that we treat everyone by the same set of principles. As we do so, over time, people will come to trust us. They may not initially appreciate the honest confrontational experience (as many prefer to take the path of least resistance), however, in the long run, one will eventually earn the trust and respect of others if we are consistent.
  • Apologising sincerely when you make a withdrawal. It takes a great deal of strength to apologise quickly and sincerely out of one’s heart rather than out of pity or because one has no other choice. Sincere apologies make deposits; repeated apologies interpreted as insincere are withdrawals. The quality of the relationship reflects this.

Regular deposits will eventually bring about a surplus of goodwill, trust, and respect. You will see this manifest as more meaningful relationships, deeper connections with people, and greater fulfilment and esteem for yourself and others. On the other hand, constant withdrawals with no replenishment in capital, will produce the opposite effect.

Take stock and evaluate where you are in the balance of things: Is your emotional bank account showing a healthy balance? How are you relating with the people closest to you? Are you making deposits and withdrawals that reflect the type of life you want for yourself?

In an organisational context, this applies to businesses big and small. Has the board checked in with their most valued divisions and people? Where is the level of trust in the employer-employee relationship? Does the company, division, or department’s emotional bank balance reflect its optimal state or can it do better?

In The Money

In the Better Every Day podcast, John Mitchell, Culture and Workforce Advisor for Right Networks, draws from personal experience in relating how he applied Covey’s concept of the emotional bank account in his relationship with his son, sparking some a-ha moments which he has since held on to in order to assist other people and organisations in need of greater connecting.

“Back then, I owned my own production company and I was in the 80-hour-week world travelling all the time. I was three or four weeks on the road and barely seeing him (my son)… just enough to see him, feed him, and give him a hug. (One night) I came home and his report card was on the counter and it wasn’t good. I picked up the report card, went to his room, and the first thing that I really said to him in four weeks was, “What is this?”.

“In that moment,” Mitchell said, “we had tension in our relationship.”

“It wasn’t about the report card; it was that I was in the red in our relationship. I hadn’t invested time or energy or love or anything in our relationship and I was withdrawing. That hard conversation has to be had between a father and son, but it can’t be had in a positive way without a positive balance in our relationship account.”

Having figured this out, he has held on to this lesson and applied it to help others raise their emotional quotient in relationships, albeit in more professional settings, in his work as a consultant and coach.

Mitchell stated: “This is true of every relationship we have and what we’re finding out, especially in small businesses, is that when we ask someone to do something for us, paying them is not enough. We have a relationship between people that is constantly needing attention one way or the other and continuing to withdraw is causing serious relationship problems all around us and in our world.”

In today’s context, it is mission-critical that leaders put this idea into action in their organisations. The after-effects of the pandemic are undeniable – sky-high anxiety, brain fog, isolation – but let’s be honest, such deep-rooted dissatisfaction in the corporate world have been going on for quite some time, predating Covid-19. Many people have been burning both ends of the candle in order to stay afloat and it is perhaps, in good measure, that the world was forced to hit the reset button. Feeling emotionally fulfilled is as important as being financially stable.

Call it ‘the great resignation’ or ‘quiet quitting’, but this generation of professionals are looking for more than just monetary reward; they’re in search of meaningful relationships – at home, at work, and at play.

Today’s leaders need to invest differently. They need to invest in creating their reserves of trust. This starts by asking the right questions. It’s never too late to ask, “What am I checking in to my account today?”

Angela SP Yap is a multi-award-winning social entrepreneur, author, and financial columnist. She is Director and Founder of Akasaa, a boutique content development and consulting firm. An ex-strategist with Deloitte and former corporate banker, she has also worked in international development with the UNDP and as an elected governor for Amnesty International Malaysia. Angela holds a BSc (Hons) Economics.