On playgrounds

Using Transactional Analysis to connect better with people, nurture relationships and effectively manage group dynamics.

Ever notice the playground mentality in the workplace? Who knew that our childhood playground would serve as a microcosm for our future workplace?

Reminiscent of playground dynamics where kids can’t solve challenges amongst themselves, and, feeling threatened or overwhelmed, they go to the nearest figure of authority for help. This can be a bigger kid, a sibling, an adult in the park, a parent. Mirrored in the workplace as other team members, a more senior staff member or a manager; even before the individual tries to solve it on their own. I’ll tell my manager and you’ll be sorry. My manager is going to spank yours. You get the picture.

Transactional Analysis looks at how we interact (transact) with other people, especially those close to us. It’s based on these three principles:

1. Each person has three ego states: Adult, Parent, Child.
2. We all have interaction (transaction) with other people, and with ourselves.
3. In any interaction (transaction), we are (un-)consciously activating our ego states.

I wrote (un-)consciously above because it is a practice. It’s deliberate practice to recognise the patterns and context free from bias. It’s deliberate practice to adjust yourself to the situation, and not only help yourself, but help others re-assert their Adult ego states.

Below I outline the three different interaction (transaction) modes and the practical learning outcomes from my TWDFL playbook.

1. Complementary transaction: this happens when the sender of the message gets the intended response from the receiver. This can happen even when the Ego states are crossed.
2. Ulterior transaction: this is when the words seem to be coming from one ego state, but in reality the words or behaviours are coming from another.
3. Crossed transaction: this occurs when the sender of the message doesn’t get the expected response from the receiver, e.g they address one ego state (Adult) and gets a response from another ego state (Child).

Practice #1. Using TA to identify team and org challenges. Once upon a time, an escalation happened in my workplace. This thing, that could have been resolved in a 1:1 adult-to-adult ego state dialogue, found its way up the management chain around the globe, got pinged around and boomerang’d back and landed in my Inbox. With it, came a request from my then-manager to “have a word” with the perceived culprit.

A day or so later, I sat with my then-manager and explained to him that based on my assessment of the situation, I believed that we unfortunately have a culture (pattern, habit) of escalation in our organisation.

I told him that a culture of escalation is usually a symptom of a leadership and organisation problem that is accompanied by other symptoms like…

A culture of learned helplessness. Learned helplessness is a state where a person believes they are unable to control or change a situation, and they no longer try to change the circumstances, even when opportunities present themselves and even when they’re enabled.

The good news: whatever we learn, we can unlearn.

A culture of fear. People can be frozen in fear. Fear of retribution. Not feeling safe to speak up. Not feeling safe to have dialogues with colleagues. Not feeling like someone’s got my back.

Own your definition of safety, practice conjuring it at will, and you learn fearlessness.

My dialogue with my then-manager was fluid and productive. We ended up taking account of the patterns around us in the workplace, owning our contributions to both the healthy and unhealthy outcomes, and listing the measures we would take to change the patterns, starting with ourselves. I can’t change others, I can only change myself.

Practice #2. Using TA to help team members help themselves when caught in a crossed transaction. A team member came to me after a couple of incidents with a colleague. Classic case of crossed transaction where they spoke in the Adult ego state to recap a work schedule and the response from their colleague was an unexpected “Yes, Boss” and “Yes, Mom”.

They were peers, and his response, when she was simply recapping the summary of the conversation, was unexpected.

In our 1:1 session, we practiced role-playing the ego states, and we came up with sample phrases to reassert the Adult ego states for when crossed transactions with colleagues happen. We practiced staying in the Adult ego state, while helping their colleague transition out of the Child ego state.

I’m not your mother, nor am I your boss. I’m just bringing everyone to the same page.

Practice #3. It’s okay to not “adult” all the time, and there are ways to transition together between complementary transactions. One interaction (transaction) mode in TA is the complementary transaction.

Designers transitioning together from creative children mode to adult mode during our biweekly Experience Clinic was an eye-opening moment for me. One minute we were in our carefree, creative Child ego states, and almost imperceptibly, we switch seamlessly into Adult ego states as the Experience Clinic started and we went through the agenda items.

Conversation, relationship, culture. We have history and chemistry.

There is beauty there, and I savour these moments with the team.

Still Practice #3. Ulterior transactions is another. Sometimes I have a bad day and all I want to is sulk on the sofa and eat ice cream. My handsome-and-talented husband allows me this Sulky Child mode, and even indulges me in it by speaking in his sympathetic Nurturing Parent ego state.

Vice versa when he gets the man flu. There is something about the male gender where they get the flu and think they are dying. “I’m so pitiful,” he’d moan from under the blankets, as I bring tea, biscuits, soup.

Flirting is another example of ulterior transactions. My handsome-and-talented husband and I flirt outrageously with one another. Turn on your DND mode while presenting things on a screen to an audience, people!

That’s it from me today. If you want to read up on TA, the ego states, the transactions and the conflicts that arise when the ego states are crossed, Natali Morad has written a concise article on it.