‘Childish’ Behaviour
Posted on | November 17, 2009 | 3 Comments
I have a confession to make. A few days ago, I behaved in a way that I’m not proud to admit but i’m going to use it to make an important point about communication. I could have de-personalised the experience and talked about a mythical friend of mine but decided it is more important to draw personal conclusions than to spare my blushes. So here goes.
On a recent Sunday night I booked a course online. Not just any course but one with excellent presenters. To be honest, I expected it to be fully booked and I would have been fine with that. It wasn’t, so I went ahead and booked and began anticipating being away for a week amongst a small group with a chance to explore an area that has always been a passion of mine -crime fiction.
On the Monday morning I got a call from the administrator – “sorry but we can’t allocate you a place”. There was a perfectly good reason – and the message was delivered in an acceptable way BUT the message wasn’t what I wanted to hear and I heard myself say “I’m sorry to hear that, too and I never want to do business with you again.” Now where did that come from?
I’m not proud of my reaction and would love the chance to react in a better way but thinking it over I realise that I reacted exactly as a small child might do when refused a sweet in a supermarket and I realised what was happening.
Several years ago I first came across Transactional Analysis (TA) through books like I’m OK, you’re OK and my reaction was certainly one that could be seen as I’m ‘OK but you aren’t’ but actually it was the other way round – a sort of victim’s cry – I’m not OK. Now I’m not a TA expert and if you are you may wish to look away now. From my recollection, TA also proposes that we operate in three modes Parent, Adult and Child. Business transactions should, as far as possible, work on an Adult to Adult level though sales messages often try to excite the child within us. In this case I was operating instinctively out of my child mode thus potentially skewing the transaction completely. However, the interesting thing was the reaction to my outburst.
It is very easy when faced with a ‘child’ reaction to pair it with a ‘parent’ type of response. That can be a nurturing parent where we try to mollify or a strict parent where we ’slap down’ the child. It is also tempting to react in the same vein and insert two children into the conversation. The person on the other end of my response did neither of those things. She simply acted in an adult mode – asking if I wanted my money back or to wait in case someone dropped out and a place became available. It drew me back into adult mode, too, got us back on track and I’m now on a waiting list with fingers crossed. Whilst their web systems did not lead to customer satisfaction, their human ‘systems’ did.
Looking back on another recent set of interractions, I can see that one person in my network has been operating from a parent position and trying to put me at a disadvantage by doing so. That has spurred me to take action effectively to win back control of the relationship by distancing from it.
Over the next week, I’d like to ask you to watch how your conversations (transactions in TA terms) develop. When transactions are good – Adult to adult or parent to child in either way – then things get done.
When transactions are skewed – like the adult to child response I’ve described -there are choices. The adult could move to parent or to child and the whole thing could deteriorate into an argument (or a strop) or the adult can stay there until the child returns to adult and a result is achieved.
Which outcome works best for you?
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3 Responses to “‘Childish’ Behaviour”
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December 18th, 2009 @ 7:59 pm
Interesting reading. I have just read your blog to get some understanding of words; positioning; thoughts. It would neither of like to be managed by a “parent”. Distancing oneself may be the right decision. But who knows…..
May 14th, 2010 @ 7:17 pm
Hi Andy, a useful and very honest story. For me it comes down to being aware of my emotions and understanding that I don’t have to hook into someone else’s anger or pain.
Eckart Tolle says we have ‘pain bodies’ which try to lock into other peoples’ pain bodies to feed. According to that, your pain body reacted when she cancelled course and tried to engage hers. She, on the other hand, didn’t bring her pain body out to play with yours.. a decision which, in turn, supported you to gain consciousness about your actions.
Now and then it happens to me, too. It could be something as simple as someone in a car being aggressive towards me – and out of the box comes the pain body, desperate to engage with the other person.
Awareness of it dissolves it quicker next time it comes up at the same time as increasing your awareness of it which in turn… etc.
It’s great that you blogged about it – that’s part of raising your awareness of it.
June 20th, 2010 @ 7:43 pm
Andy
Just seen this. I find this very interesting. I’d be tempted to guess the customer service lady was trained in the Sandler process; it’s firmly based in TA…