Relationship Building

Epic Mentors e-Magazine NZ

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING: Understanding how to build and maintain healthy professional and personal relationships with others is imperative to our success and fulfilment in life. I have found an excerpt to share with you on the subject, from a popular book that I'm sure you will have heard of before...It's well worth a read.

THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE
(excerpt from the popular best-seller book by Stephen R. Covey)

"We all know what a financial bank account is. We make deposits into it and build up a reserve from which we can make withdrawals when we need to. An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that's been built up in a relationship" 

Six major deposits

1. Understanding the individual:
Really seeking to understand another individual is probably one of the most important deposits you can make and it is the key to every other deposit. You simply don't know what constitutes a deposit to another person until you understand that individual. What might be a deposit for you - might NOT be perceived as a deposit at all.

2.Attending to the little things:
The little kindnesses and courtesies are so important. Little forms of disrespect make large withdrawals. 

3. Keeping commitments
Keeping a commitment or a promise is a major deposit: breaking one is a major withdrawal. In fact, there's probably not a more massive withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not come through.

4.Clarifying expectations:
Imagine the difficulty you might encounter if you and your boss had different assumptions regarding whose role it was to create you job description

5.Showing personal integrity:
Personal integrity generates trust and is the basis of many different kinds of deposits. Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts.

6. Apologising sincerely when you make a withdrawal:
When we make a withdrawal from the emotional bank account, we need to apologise and we need to do it sincerely. It takes a great deal of character strength to apologise quickly out of one's heart rather than out of pity.