Growing Your Trust Account

As you work on behaving in ways that build trust, one helpful way to visualize and quantify your efforts is by thinking in terms of "Trust Accounts." These are similar to the "Emotional Bank Accounts" my father introduced in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. By behaving in ways that build trust, you make deposits. By behaving in ways that destroy trust, you make withdrawals. The "balance" in the account reflects the amount of trust in the relationship at any given time.

One of the greatest benefits of the Trust Account metaphor is that it gives you a language to talk about trust. It's also valuable because it helps you become aware of several important realities:

Each Trust Account is unique. There is a great deal of difference in the account I have with my three-year-old daughter and the one that I have with my nineteen-year-old son. While my three-year-old trusts me implicitly, my nineteen-year-old constantly reminds me of the words of Mark Twain: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years!" Recognizing uniqueness can help you build each account more effectively.

All deposits and withdrawals are not created equal. Often the little things can be disproportionately large. When Hurricane Katrina hit the southeastern coast of the U.S., one of my associates sent a brief e-mail of concern to a client who had to evacuate her island home. He said that he hoped she was doing well, that she was in his prayers, and that he would talk to her when she was able to return. She later said,

"That was the only e-mail I got that expressed concern from anyone outside of my family, and it meant a lot to me. Thank you."

On the other hand, little things such as forgetting a family member's birthday (or worse, your own wedding anniversary!), not saying "thank you," or failing to attend to other small courtesies or customs can create huge withdrawals, particularly with some people, or with most people in some cultures around the world.

What constitutes a "deposit" to one person may not to another. I may think it's a deposit to take you and your partner out to dinner. But to you, it may be a withdrawal. Maybe you don't like to eat out with business associates, or you're on a diet, or you really want to spend the evening at home, but you feel obligated because you don't want to offend me.

Or I may think it's a deposit to publicly acknowledge you for some positive thing you did. But to you, it may be a withdrawal-even a huge withdrawal-because you wanted your deed to remain anonymous. Always remember: It's important to know what constitutes a deposit to a person when you're trying to build trust.

Withdrawals are typically larger than deposits. As Warren Buffett has said, "It takes twenty years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it." In general, withdrawals can have 10, 20, or even 100 times more impact than deposits, but there are some withdrawals that are so significant that they completely wipe out the account in one stroke.

I once heard the analogy that trust is like a big bucket that gets filled with water (making deposits) one drop at a time, and some withdrawals (the massive ones) are like "kicking the bucket"-in other words, because of a single action, you simply don't have anything left.

The important thing to remember here is that it's not smart to kick the bucket! You're going to make mistakes-everybody does-but try not to make the ones that completely destroy trust, and work hard to build trust and to restore whatever trust has been lost.

 Continued in "Growing Your Trust Account (Part 2)"

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An excerpt from my book, The Speed of Trust. Copyright (C) 2006 by CoveyLink, LLC.  Reprinted by permission of Free Press, a divison of Simon and Schuster, Inc.  To read my previous post, "Developing Self-Confidence Through Personal Committment," click here.

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