A friend of mine who works in the food industry was recently asked to go on a reality tv show featuring various local chefs. He was not interested, saying that under stress, he tends to 'snap' at people - when its his own staff, they tend to accept this as part of his communication style but with strangers and cameras, he thought that might play out differently. When I asked him why his staff appears to be so accepting, he said that it's all about the balance in the 'trust account'. He explained that in the day to day managing of people, you have lots of opportunities to provide each of your employees with positive feedback. Each bit of praise serves as a deposit in their trust account. If you have made a few deposits and then one day, under stress, you snap at one of your team, it's a withdrawal but the balance is still positive. I thought this was an interesting way of looking at communication - both in the workplace and our personal lives. We know that 'to err is human' - but we should always be striving to make more deposits than withdrawals in the trust accounts of thsoe around us. So - the question for all of you is: what have you deposited today?

#trustaccount #feedback #stress #communicationstyle