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PART III

The Public Victory

The Relationship Bank Account

The Stuff That Life Is Made Of

One of my favorite quotes, which, by the way, always makes me feel guilty, is “On their deathbed nobody has ever wished they had spent more time at the office.” I’ve often asked myself, “What do they wish they had spent more time doing?” I think the answer might be “Spent more time with the people they love.” You see, it’s all about relationships, the stuff that life is made of.

What’s it like to be in a relationship with you? If you had to rate how well you’re doing in your most important relationships, how would you score?

How are your relationships with:

Your friends?

Your siblings?

Your parents or guardian?

Your girlfriend or boyfriend?

Your teachers?

Maybe you’re doing pretty well. Maybe not. Either way, this chapter is designed to help you improve these key relationships. But before we go there, let’s quickly review where we’ve just come from.

In the Private Victory, we learned about the personal bank account and Habits 1, 2, and 3. In the Public Victory section, we’ll learn about the relationship bank account and Habits 4, 5, and 6. As we’ve already discussed, the key to mastering relationships is first mastering yourself, at least to some degree. You don’t have to be perfect; you just need to be making progress.

Why is success with self so important to success with others? It’s because the most important ingredient in any relationship is what you are. As the essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson put it, “Who you are speaks so loudly I can’t hear what you’re saying.” If you’re struggling in your relationships, you probably don’t have to look any further than yourself for the answer.

The Private Victory will help you become independent so that you can say, “I am responsible for myself and I can create my own destiny.” This is a huge accomplishment. The Public Victory will help you become interdependent, that is, help you learn to work cooperatively with others, so that you can say, “I am a team player and I have power and influence with people.” This is an even greater accomplishment. The long and short of it is, your ability to get along with others will largely determine how successful you are in your career and your level of personal happiness.

Now back to talking about relationships. Here’s a practical way to think about them. I call it the relationship bank account (RBA). In an earlier chapter we spoke about your personal bank account (PBA), which represents the amount of trust and confidence you have in yourself. Similarly, the RBA represents the amount of trust and confidence you have in each of your relationships.

The RBA is very much like a checking account at a bank. You can make deposits and improve the relationship, or take withdrawals and weaken it. A strong and healthy relationship is always the result of steady deposits made over a long period.

Although there are similarities, the RBA is different from a financial account in three ways, as a colleague of mine, Judy Henrichs, once pointed out to me: 1. Unlike a bank where you may have only one or two accounts, you have an RBA with everyone you meet. Suppose you come across a new kid in the neighborhood. If you smile and say hello, you’ve just opened an account with him. If you ignore him, you’ve just opened an account as well, although a negative one. There’s no getting around it.

1. Unlike a checking account, once you open an RBA with another person, you can never close it. That’s why you can run into a friend you haven’t seen in years and pick up right where you left off. Not a dollar is lost. It’s also why people hang on to grudges for years.

2. In a checking account, ten dollars is ten dollars. In an RBA, deposits tend to evaporate and withdrawals tend to turn to stone. This means that you need to continually make small deposits into your most important relationships just to keep them in the positive.

So how can you build a rich relationship or repair a broken one? It’s simple. One deposit at a time. It’s the same way you’d eat an elephant if you had to. One bite at a time. There is no quick fix. If my relationship with you is $5,000 in the hole, I’ll need to make $5,001 worth of deposits to get it back in the positive.

I once asked a group of teens, “What is the most powerful deposit someone has made into your RBA?” These are some of their responses: • “The steady stream of deposits my family makes that strengthen me.”

• “When a friend, teacher, loved one, or employer takes the time to say ‘You look nice’ or ‘Great job.’ A few words go a long way.” • “My friends made me a banner on my birthday.”

• “Bragging about me to others.”

• “When I have made mistakes, they forgive, forget, and help and love.” • “My friend told me, after I read some poems I wrote, that I was brilliant and I should write a book. It was hard to share some of those in the first place.” • “My mother called from California, as well as both of my sisters, to wish me a happy birthday, before I left for school.” • “My brother would always take me to hockey games with his friends.”

• “Little things.”

• “I have four really good friends, and just being together as friends and knowing that we’re all doing good and are happy keeps me going.” • “Whenever Chris says ‘Hi, how are you, Ryan?’ it makes me feel so uplifted the way he does it.” • “I had a friend who told me he believed I was very sincere and always myself. It meant a lot that someone would recognize that.” As you can see, there are many kinds of deposits, but here are six that seem to work every time. Of course, with every deposit, there is an opposite withdrawal.

DEPOSITS

Keep promises

WITH DRAWALS

Break promises

DEPOSITS

Do small acts of kindness

WITH DRAWALS

Keep to yourself

DEPOSITS

Be loyal

WITH DRAWALS

Gossip and break confidences

DEPOSITS

Listen

WITH DRAWALS

Don’t listen

DEPOSITS

Say you’re sorry

WITH DRAWALS

Be arrogant

DEPOSITS

Set clear expectations

WITH DRAWALS

Set false expectations

KEEPING PROMISES

“Sean, I don’t want to ask you again. There are trash bags in the trunk of my car from the party the other night. Please throw them away.” “Okay, Dad.”

As a carefree teenager, I somehow forgot to empty the trash bags in Dad’s Ford, as I said I would, because I had a hot date that Saturday afternoon. I had asked my dad if I could use the Ford, but he said no because it wasn’t his car. It was a loaner that his friend at the dealership had arranged for. But I took it anyway because he was busy and I was sure he wouldn’t notice.

My date and I had a wonderful time. On the way home, however, I rammed into the back of a car doing thirty. No one was seriously hurt, but both cars were practically ruined. I’ll never forget the most miserable phone call of my life.

“Dad.”

“What?”

“I had an accident.”

“YOU WHAT? ARE YOU OK?

“I got into a wreck. No one’s hurt.”

“IN WHICH CAR?”

“Your car.”

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” By this time I was holding the phone six inches away. And it still hurt.

I had the car towed to the Ford dealership to see if they could salvage it. Since it was Saturday, they told me they wouldn’t be able to work on it until Monday. On Monday my dad received a call from the repair shop. The manager said that when his people opened the trunk to repair the car, the smell of rotting garbage (the garbage I forgot to empty) was so disgusting that they refused to work on the car. If you thought my dad was mad before, you should have seen him then.

For the next several weeks I lived in the dog house. It wasn’t the crash he was so mad about. He was angry because I had broken two promises: “I won’t take your car, Dad,” and “Don’t worry, Dad. I’ll take the trash out of the trunk.” It was a huge withdrawal, and it took me a long time to rebuild my RBA with my dad again.

Keeping small commitments and promises is vital to building trust. You must do what you say you’re going to do. If you tell your mom you’re going to be home at 11:00 or that you will do the dishes tonight, then do it and make a deposit. Give out promises sparingly, and then do everything you can to keep them. If you find you can’t keep a commitment for some reason (it happens), then let the other person know why. “Little sister, I’m really sorry I can’t come to your play tonight. I didn’t realize I had a debate meet. But I’ll be there tomorrow.” If you’re genuine and try to keep your promises, people will understand when something interferes.

If your RBA with your parents is low, try building it by keeping your commitments, because when your parents trust you, everything goes so much better. But I don’t need to tell you what you already know.

• DO SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS

Have you ever had a day where everything is going wrong and you feel totally depressed … and then suddenly, out of nowhere, someone says something nice to you and it turns your whole day around? Sometimes the smallest things—a hello, a kind note, a smile, a compliment, a hug—can make such a big difference. If you want to build friendships, try doing the little things, because in relationships the little things are the big things. As Mark Twain put it, “I can live three months on a good compliment.” A friend of mine, Renon, once told me about a $1,000 deposit her brother made into her RBA: When I was in ninth grade, my big brother can warm three Hans, who was a junior in high school, seemed to me to be the epitome of popularity. He was winter months. good in sports and dated a lot. Our house was always filled with his cool friends, guys I dreamed would someday think of me as more than just “Hans’s dumb little kid sister.” Hans asked Rebecca Knight, the most popular girl in the school, to go with him to the junior prom. She accepted. He rented the tux, bought the flowers, and, along with the rest of his popular crowd, hired a limo and made reservations at a fancy restaurant. Then, disaster struck. On the afternoon of the prom, Rebecca came down with a terrible strain of flu. Hans was without a date, and it was too late to ask another girl.

There were a number of ways Hans could have reacted, including getting angry, feeling sorry for himself, blaming Rebecca, even choosing to believe that she really wasn’t sick and just didn’t want to go with him, in which case he would have had to believe that he was a loser. But Hans chose not only to be proactive but to give someone else the night of her life.

He asked me— me! his little sister!— to go with him to his junior prom.

Can you imagine my ecstasy? Mom and I flew about the house getting me ready. But when the limo pulled up with all of his friends, I almost chickened out. What would they think? But Hans just grinned, gave me his arm, and proudly escorted me out to the car like I was the queen of the ball. He didn’t warn me not to act like a kid; he didn’t apologize to the others; he ignored the fact that I was dressed in a simple short-skirted piano-recital dress while all of the other girls were in elegant formals.

I was bedazzled at the dance. Of course, I spilled punch on my dress. I’m sure Hans bribed every one of his friends to dance at least one dance with me, because I never sat out once. Some of them even pretended to fight over who got to dance with me. I had the greatest time. And so did Hans. While the guys were dancing with me, he was dancing with their dates! The truth is, everyone was wonderful to me the whole night, and I think part of the reason was because Hans chose to be proud of me. It was the dream night of my life, and I think every girl in the school fell in love with my brother, who was cool enough, kind enough, and self-confident enough to take his little sister to his junior prom.

If, as the Japanese saying goes, “one kind word can warm three winter months,” think how many winter months were warmed by this single act of kindness.

You don’t have to look far to find opportunities for small acts of kindness. A young man named Lee, who was taught about the RBA, related this: I am the junior class president at my school. I decided to try the small kindness deposit I learned about by putting a simple note in the boxes of the student body officers I didn’t know well. I told them that I appreciated the work they did. They took me about five minutes to write up.

The next day one of the girls I had written a note to came up to me and abruptly gave me a big hug. She thanked me for the note, and handed me a letter and a candy bar. The note said she had had a terrible day. She had a great deal of stress and was very depressed. My small note had turned her whole day around, helping her to happily accomplish the things that had caused her so much grief. The strange thing was that I had hardly known her when I gave her the note, and I was sure that she didn’t like me anyway because she never really paid any attention to me. What a surprise! I couldn’t believe how much a simple note meant to her.

Small acts of kindness don’t always have to be one on one. You can also join with others to make a deposit. I remember reading about a deposit the kids at Joliet Township Central High School near Chicago made in the life of an unsuspecting teenage girl named Lori when they crowned her homecoming queen.

You see, unlike most of the students, Lori was special ed and made her way around the school in a motorized wheelchair. Because of cerebral palsy, her words were often difficult to understand and her movements awkward.

After being nominated for homecoming queen by students in Business Professionals of America, Lori made the first cut when students narrowed the slate to ten. At a pep assembly soon after, it was announced that she had won. The entire student body of twenty-five hundred started chanting, “Lori! Lori!” A day later, she was still receiving visitors at her home and roses by the dozen.

When asked how long she intended to wear her crown, Lori answered, “Forever.” Follow the golden rule and treat others as you would want them to treat you. Think about what a deposit means to someone else, not what you would want as a deposit. A nice gift may be a deposit for you, but a listening ear may be a deposit for another person.

If you ever have something nice to say, don’t let that thought just rot, say it. As Ken Blanchard wrote in his book The One Minute Manager, “Unexpressed good thoughts aren’t worth squat!” Don’t wait until people are dead to give them flowers.