Integrated Adult

I’ve been reading through my notes from my Transactional Analysis 101 course, to develop my own understanding of how I can get the right balance between Parent, Adult and Child behaviors.  Seems like it might be useful for me to share it with you guys too.  So here goes, let me try to translate it for our context.

I mentioned how it’s good to be in Adult-Adult conversations.  That’s when we need to be in Accounting mode (rather than Discounting that I talked about on Wednesday).  Accounting is:

• realising there is a problem (whether that’s with the work or with our relationship)
• giving it significance, rather than overlooking the importance of the problem
• knowing it can be solved, and that
• people can change and solve problems
• believing that we can act on the options, and doing so, to get to success

So let me take the relationship we each have with our supervisor.  We are in Adult, encouraging their Adult, when we voice a problem, and work through it with them, until we find a solution. 

This could be a problem about a piece of work we are in the midst of.  Perhaps we’ve come up against an obstacle that needs solving.  Phil Swallow (SE) says that he gives metaphorical “points” to people who admit that there is a problem to be solved.  He’d much rather they did that early than try to cover it up and work it out themselves.  If he gets to hear about it later, when it is in crisis, that doesn’t help any of us. 

Or it could be that we have a problem in the relationship with our supervisor.  Perhaps they are not meeting with us as frequently as we need for us to make progress on our work, so we need to admit that that is an issue, and voice it to them, working towards a solution.  Don’t put their busy-ness in the way as an obstacle – that won’t solve anything, especially if you moan about it behind their back but do nothing to rectify it directly with him or her. 

So that’s the Adult-Adult relationship.  But in TA, we talk about the Integrated Adult, which also brings in the positive elements of Parent and Child.

The positive elements of Parent include:

• Structuring: being consistent and fair, being reliable, being assertive
• Nurturing: comforting, compassionate, encouraging, empathic

The negative elements of Parent to be avoided are:

• Criticising: punishing, judgmental, over controlling, inflexible
• Marshmallowing (love that description!): over-protective, smothering, over indulgent

Which seems most like you?  What do you want to do more of or less of?

Then, the positive elements of Child are:

• Co-operative: adaptable, polite, considerate, compromise
• Spontaneous: genuine feelings, creative, energetic, curious, imaginative, intuitive

And the negative elements of Child to be avoided:

• Compliant/resistant: submissive, anxious, withdrawn, rebellious, defiant
• Immature: selfish, over impulsive, egocentric, reckless, inconsiderate

Where do you see yourself here?  Anything you want to do more of or less of?

And remember, you invite these positive behaviors by displaying them yourself.  You can’t change another person, but you can influence their behavior by staying in the positive realm yourself.

I’m really seeing this playing out between Bob and me, and that’s what I think is making us both successful.  I had been thinking that I was too much in Resistant Child (I had some rebellion going on), and I think I felt like I was asking permission for stuff…but now I’ve realised that I was showing some genuine feelings (see spontaneous), and I was in joint problem solving mode (Adult).  And I had a lot of other Accounting going on too, where I was running with a couple of projects and doing the thinking required/talking to others  to move them forward.  So that’s why it’s working so well for us I think – we’re both in the positive.  We’re partnering.

How about you?  Are you partnering with your supervisor by Accounting, Structuring, Nurturing, Co-operating and being Spontaneous?  If not, what are you going to do about that?  Tell us in the comments.