02 Sep 2013

In Eric Berne’s famous book, the Games People Play, he suggests three "ego states" – the Parent, Adult, and Child states. Depending on how we learn to manage each state, and the states of others, determines how successful we are in developing positive interactions and relationships.

Child Ego State

Irrespective of chronological age, we can feel like we did as a little child and revert to our ‘Natural Child’ at any time. When we do this we experience four basic emotions: fun and affection; anger; sadness; and fear.

As infants we must learn to adapt these primary colours and develop new tones to help us retain our personal integrity in order to cope with our parents and others. We learn to do as we’re told by our parents, and control our emotions to form an ‘Adapted Child’. As we grow, we learn to lead an autonomous life independent of our parents’ wishes and expectations. Habitual compliant behaviour in adulthood, such as continually apologising and agreeing or always trying to please, is an indicator that people have failed to do this.

Parent Ego State
Parent Ego State contains all the morals and values we’ve learnt from our parents since birth. These set our standards from which we decide what’s right or wrong. And when we judge others against these we slip into our Critical Parent State – we act as a judge by accusing someone, finding them guilty and finally punishing them. Some people judge themselves long into adulthood against these standards; they feel guilty, criticise and punish themselves. But by developing greater emotional intelligence through coaching, we can better understand whose values and moral code we’re really living up to and then whether it’s in our best and others’ interest to continue doing so.
 

Adult Ego State
When people are in their Adult Ego State they take personal responsibility for themselves and allow others to do the same. They don’t need the reassurance of the Child or the authority of the Parent.

Bringing this altogether:
• in our Parent Ego State we can be either nurturing (permission-giving, security-giving) or criticizing (comparing to family traditions and ideals in generally negative ways)
• in our Child Ego State we can slip back into our Natural Child State (which is what we might do when we drink too much)
• in our Adult Ego State we’ve learn to adapt to others.

These subdivisions categorize our patterns of behaviour, feelings, and ways of thinking, which can create positive or counterproductive consequences.
Ideally, in the workplace, we want to develop Adult to Adult interactions. But Child and Parent roles do occur and often people play along….

For example:

Manager: "It’s about time I had that strategy document isn’t it?" (Parent to Child)
Report: "Quit hassling me. I'll do it when I’m ready!" (Child back to Parent)

In this instance both are playing their roles, but it’s a disempowering and frustrating relationship to follow. In the example below, the Report responds Adult to Adult (see also the inset diagram)…

Manager: "It’s about time I had that strategy document isn’t it?" (Parent to Child)
Report: "Yes, it will be on your desk first thing in the morning." (Adult to Adult)

This has caused a 'crossed transaction' – where one person addresses ego states other than that their other person is in – and this can cause discomfort from the Manager who was expecting a Child not Adult reply.

So the conversation might develop into:

Manager: "First thing? Can I really trust you to do that!?" (Parent to Child)
Report: "Absolutely, in fact, it’s nearly done?" (Adult to Adult)

With persistence the Report, by changing his stance, can eventually break the Manager’s Parent to Child dialogue.

Through coaching, we can better understand when we’re slipping into our Child or Parent states at work, why they happen and how to address them.

In our next newsletter we’ll further investigate transactional analysis by looking at Life Positions and some classical Games that occur in the workplace.

Sources:

The Games People Play by Eric Bernie
Counselling for Toads by Robert de Board

 

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Lequin Leadership Development provide executive coaches, business coaches, executive business coaching, coach training courses, coach training, coaching skills for managers, coaching culture programmes, board coaching, outplacement support, executive coach, coach supervision, executive coaching, talent management, change management, change management training, leadership coaching and leadership development.

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