Trust Accounts

Something MR Covey (2006, p. 130ff) talks about is trust accounts, one of the coolest concepts to come down the pike.

This is actually extrapolated from his father's emotional accounts explained in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. MR says:

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.

We can develop trust accounts the way we develop emotional accounts. We can make trust deposits and withdrawals, and the balance in the account is a measure of the amount of trust in a relationship at any time.

Tiger Woods, for example, spent years building up his trust account. He's made significant withdrawals over the past few weeks, as more and more women come forward alleging all sorts of sexual encounters, with amorous emails from him offered as proof.

Walter Maidoff closed out his trust acount, as did Huckaby by pardoning that guy who allegedly murdered the 4 cops out in Washington State. Arthur Anderson closed its account by hopping into bed with Enron. Kobe Bryant made major withdrawals through his sexual misadventures. O.J. Simpson destroyed his account with the public by his legal entanglements.

Sports referees, or umpires they call them in baseball, generally have pretty robust trust accounts. They are empowered by their various sports leagues to be the determiners of specific situations which can determine who wins and loses a given game and maybe a championship. When a referee does a good job, no one notices, and their accounts continue to be robust. When we have a lot of trust in our account, everyone just trusts us. When the referees make a major mistake, everyone complains about how bad the refs are. When we behave untrustworthily, it's all over the place.

My goal here is to bring out more skilled entrepreneurs. How am I doing? What do you think of this? Any comments?

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