Intended for:
This free icebreaker helps to start a training session off on a positive note. It is useful to highlight how we all benefit from positive feedback and challenges participants to consider how often they provide it themselves.
The icebreaker is particularly useful in training sessions such as; Great Leadership Skills, Assertiveness Skills, Building Relationships, Emotional Intelligence and Leading Effective Teams.
Training course contents:
A set of instructions for the icebreaker, ‘Bank on It’ can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of this page. Alternatively, you can follow the instructions below.
Explain the concept of the ‘Emotional Bank Account’ as follows…
“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. It’s the feeling of safeness you have with another human being.
If I make deposits into an Emotional Bank Account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust toward me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level will compensate for it.”
When you are sure that participants understand the concept of the emotional bank account, ask them to introduce themselves to the rest of the group by stating their name and providing two examples from this working week that demonstrate how they have paid into the ’emotional bank account’ they have with another person i.e. two positive actions they have made that someone else would have appreciated and logged.
This will start your training session off on a high and also introduced the topic of the emotional bank account and how it is important that we demonstrate positive actions to others.
Objectives:
This icebreaker is useful for encouraging positive thinking as well as highlighting the need to work with others and provide positive feedback.
