In a workplace your communication is everything and if you know ‘How’ to communicate well with different kinds of people, then you are the KING of the corporate. Knowing about Transactional analysis (TA) will help you improve yourself and your communication skills, and you can become The King.
Transactional Analysis (TA) is a theory developed by Dr. Eric Berne. His definition of TA is “a theory of personality and a systematic psychotherapy for personal growth and change”. He recognized that people can interact from one of the three ego states
- Parent
- Adult
- Child
An ego state is a “consistent pattern of feeling and experience directly related to a corresponding consistent pattern of behavior”.The parent’s is a set of strong beliefs which one emphasis, the adult’s is that of logic and rationality, and the child’s is a language of emotions.
In communication there is a sender -the one who initiates the conversation and a listener -the one who respond to the sender. Understanding the above three states will help you communicate in a more productive way and you can avoid conflict at workplace.
There are some rules for these communications. The first being: As long as your transactions are complimentary, communications can continue smoothly. The next rule is that, crossed transactions results in break in communication and there will be a need to shift ego states for smooth communication. The third rule being: the outcomes of transaction are determined at the psychological level rather than social levels.
Now How can TA help you in corporate world? The answer is here
Using transactional analysis, we can effectively identify the ego states we are expecting to communicate with. This identification helps us in shifting to other ego states when people from different ego state communicates and make sure that our communications are appropriate. We can also try to shift the other person’s ego state by acknowledging their current ego state by using complimentary transactions and thereafter leading them to a different ego state with appropriate communication.
