Interpersonal Behaviour and Transactional Analysis

The manager of a public-sector bank branch snaps at a clerk at 10 a.m. By noon the clerk is curt with customers, and two of them complain. How people treat each other at work travels, and it travels both ways.

Words are only part of it. Non-verbal signals carry much of the message: tone of voice, body language, gestures and the emotions people show. A "fine" said with folded arms means something else. Interpersonal behaviour shapes teamwork, leadership, conflict resolution and, over time, the organisation's culture.

Four patterns. Who is talking to whom changes what the interaction needs. Take an auto-parts plant in Pune:

Reciprocal influence. A's behaviour influences B, and B's response in turn influences A. The loop can run up or down. Positive behaviour strengthens morale, motivation and cooperation; negative behaviour weakens them. In the bank branch, the clerk's curt replies make customers sharper, which makes the clerk sharper still.

Don't confuse interpersonal with intrapersonal. Intrapersonal processes happen inside one person: self-talk, one's own feelings and perception. Interpersonal behaviour happens between two or more people.

Where it breaks. The four patterns say who is talking to whom, not how well. A single meeting can move through all four in ten minutes. Reciprocal influence also explains why a bad exchange is hard to stop: each side waits for the other to soften first.

In practice. The quickest way to change a negative loop is to change your own response, since that is the half you control. Match the pattern to the message: give criticism one-to-one, and share a decision that affects everyone one-to-many, so all hear the same words.

For exams. Expect a question matching a pattern to what it needs, such as many-to-one with active listening.

Two salespeople in an electronics showroom argue during a Diwali sale over who should serve a big customer. The same row can end in a clearer split of work, or in months of not speaking. What decides which?

Back to the showroom. The manager hears both sides and splits the floor: one person takes televisions, the other kitchen appliances. The conflict produced role clarity. Ignored, it would have produced two people competing for every customer who walked in.

Six determinants shape how a person behaves toward others:

• Personality: stable traits, such as being reserved or outgoing.
• Perception: how a person reads others' actions. A late reply can look like rudeness or like a busy day.
• Attitudes: settled feelings toward people, the job or the organisation.
• Values: what a person thinks is right and important.
• Emotional intelligence: the ability to recognise and manage one's own and others' emotions.
• Motivation: what a person is trying to achieve in the exchange.

Five skills keep interaction constructive:

• Positive thinking builds resilience and encourages constructive responses.
• Mutual trust promotes transparency and open communication.
• Empathy is understanding others' emotions and perspectives. It differs from sympathy, which is feeling sorry for someone.
• Courtesy maintains respect and professional decorum.
• Avoiding ego clashes supports harmony, cooperation and teamwork.

Don't confuse disagreement about the work with disagreement about each other. Conflict over tasks or methods, kept moderate, can improve decisions. Conflict over personalities rarely helps; it drains trust and attention. The showroom row became useful once it was about the floor, not about who was the better salesperson.

Where it breaks. The skills are easy to list and hard to practise under pressure. "Avoiding ego clashes" can slide into avoiding every disagreement, so problems stay hidden. The determinants also act together: a person with high emotional intelligence may still clash when their values are at stake.

For exams. Learn the six determinants and five skills as lists. A favourite statement to judge: "all conflict is harmful". It is false, because conflict managed constructively brings clarity and new solutions.

More for exams. Four sources of conflicting behaviour are usually named: personality differences, different value systems, conflicts of interest and role ambiguity, where nobody is sure whose job something is. Further helps for good relations are listed too. Improve self-concept by giving work that fits a person's skills and experience. Communicate clearly. Avoid perceptual errors such as stereotyping, the halo effect, selective perception and attribution errors. Build a culture in which top management rewards value-based behaviour.

A team leader asks, "Has the report been sent?" and gets back, "Why are you always checking on me?" A plain question has turned into a quarrel. Transactional analysis explains how.

The Johari window is usually taught alongside TA as a map of self-awareness. Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingham developed it; the name joins their first names. It sorts what is known about a person by two questions: do I know it, and do others know it?

The goal is to enlarge the open area, for better self-awareness, understanding and trust. A new branch manager who interrupts in meetings, without noticing, has it in her blind area. A colleague's honest word moves it into the open.

Ego states. Berne said each person speaks from one of three ego states, each a consistent set of thoughts, feelings and behaviour.

Transactions. A transaction is one message and its reply. In a complementary transaction the reply comes from the ego state the sender addressed, so communication flows. In a crossed transaction the reply comes from an unexpected ego state, causing misunderstanding or conflict. In an ulterior transaction two messages travel at once: an apparent social one and a hidden psychological one.

The team leader asked Adult to Adult. "Yes, at four o'clock" would have been complementary. "Why are you always checking on me?" came from the Child, aimed at a Parent the leader never used: a crossed transaction.

Don't confuse the two models. The Johari window comes from Luft and Ingham, not from Berne; it is taught with TA because both aim at self-awareness. And an ego state is not an age or a family role: a 25-year-old can speak from the Parent, and a grandparent from the Child.

Where it breaks. TA grew out of clinical practice rather than controlled research, so its terms are easier to use than to test. Labelling a colleague's reply "Child" can also become a way of dismissing them.

For exams. Expect: which Johari area shrinks through feedback (blind) and which through self-disclosure (hidden); and naming a transaction from a short dialogue.

Go deeper for practitioners

Finer states. TA writers often split the Parent into a Nurturing Parent and a Critical (or Controlling) Parent, and the Child into a Free (or Natural) Child and an Adapted Child. "Take a break, you look tired" is Nurturing Parent; "This is careless work" is Critical Parent.

A decision. Your plant sends a circular: "All staff must strictly ensure timely submission of overtime forms. Repeated lapses will not be tolerated." Submissions fall further, and the union protests. The circular spoke from the Critical Parent and drew an Adapted or rebellious Child reply. An Adult version gives the fact, the reason and the fix: "Forms after Friday miss the payroll run, so overtime is paid a month late. Here is the new drop box." Which version would you send?

Links. The blind area is the case for upward and peer feedback in performance appraisal. Perception, in the personality chapter of this unit, explains why the same words land differently on different people.

A new manager in a bank's loan section says, "Leave the thinking to me; do as I say." The clerk answers, "Yes sir, whatever you say." The talk runs smoothly. Six months later the clerk has stopped thinking for himself. Smooth is not the same as good.

Each person has three ego states, so a manager can speak from any of three states to any of three in the employee. That gives nine pairs. In the table, the first word is the manager's state and the second is the employee's state that is addressed. The employee answers from that second state, back to the first, so the two lines stay parallel.

Berne also named a part of the Child that does good work: the Little Professor, intuitive and inventive. An Adult manager who addresses it, as in Adult–Child, can draw out ideas. Each person uses all three states but usually has one dominant.

Ulterior transactions, once more. An ulterior transaction involves at least three ego states, because a hidden message rides under the open one. A showroom salesperson says, "This model is better, but it is probably beyond your budget." On the surface, that is Adult to Adult. Underneath, it challenges the customer's Child, who replies, "That is the one I will take." Berne called a three-state version angular and a four-state version duplex.

Don't confuse complementary with healthy. Complementary only says the talk keeps flowing. Parent–Child flows beautifully while the employee shrinks. Crossed transactions block talk, but a block can also be the useful moment when someone refuses an unhealthy pattern.

Where it breaks. The nine-pair scheme is a textbook teaching device for manager and employee. Real conversations shift ego states within a minute, and a person's state is a judgement made from outside, not a measurement.

In practice. Aim for Adult–Adult as the default and keep Parent–Child for real emergencies, such as a fire drill with new staff. When a reply surprises you, ask which state you spoke from. Used this way, TA improves communication, helps managers read the states in play, and supports motivation through complementary transactions and positive strokes.

For exams. Expect "name the transaction" from a short dialogue, and "which of the nine is best" (Adult–Adult). Textbooks usually call crossed and ulterior transactions undesirable at work, though a crossed one can break a bad pattern.

One officer in a district office meets every new idea with "that won't work here". Another keeps rescuing a junior who never learns. Transactional analysis says such habits follow from how people see themselves and others.

TA aims to recognise unhelpful patterns, change behaviour and support personal growth. Four tools describe the patterns: life positions, strokes, games and the script itself.

Life positions are a person's basic stance toward self and others. Thomas Harris's book I'm OK – You're OK made the phrase widely known.

Strokes. A stroke is an act of recognition: a word, a nod, a note. Positive strokes (praise, appreciation) build morale and motivation; negative strokes (criticism, disapproval) may discourage. TA also separates conditional strokes, for what a person does, from unconditional strokes, for who they are. People who get no positive strokes may seek negative ones, since being noticed beats being ignored. Managers should give genuine, specific recognition.

Example. A supervisor in a Nashik packing unit says, "Your line had zero rejects this week, and I noticed you trained the newcomer too." That is a positive, conditional stroke, and it tells the worker exactly what to repeat.

Games. Games are recurring patterns of interaction with hidden motives that lead to predictable, often unhelpful outcomes. Eric Berne described many in Games People Play. In "Yes, but…", a person asks for solutions and then rejects each one: "Yes, but we have no budget." "Yes, but the boss won't agree." The hidden aim is to avoid responsibility, and both sides end up frustrated.

Don't confuse a game with one ulterior transaction. An ulterior transaction is a single exchange with a hidden message. A game is a chain of such exchanges, repeated over time, that ends in the same bad feeling. And in TA a game is not play: nobody enjoys the ending.

Where it breaks. Life positions are a counselling vocabulary, not measured traits; one person can shift position from one setting to another. Naming a colleague's "game" aloud usually makes them defensive rather than aware.

In practice. To stop "Yes, but…", stop supplying answers. Ask, "What would you suggest?" This hands back responsibility. To build an OK–OK climate, make strokes specific and frequent, and criticise the work, not the person.

I'm OK, you're OK.

Mixed strokes. A stroke can carry both signs at once: "You did an excellent job, in spite of your limited experience." The praise is positive, the remark on experience is negative, and the sting can overshadow the praise. Give recognition and correction separately.

A senior clerk keeps finishing a junior's pending files "to help". The junior never learns, the senior complains of overwork, and when the senior finally snaps, the junior feels attacked. Both are playing parts they have played before.

How a script forms. Children absorb what parents say and do, and the stories they hear. A child told never to lie expects honesty from others and later teaches the same. TA holds that a script can be rewritten once an adult notices it, with the Adult state doing the noticing.

The drama triangle. Stephen Karpman described it in 1968, in a paper on fairy tales and script drama. Stories have three roles, and people act them out at work too. Karpman's word for the first role is Persecutor.

A role is legitimate when the facts call for it, and illegitimate when it is a mask used to manipulate.

The senior clerk is an illegitimate Rescuer: the help keeps the junior dependent, and when no thanks come, the Rescuer turns Persecutor.

Games and the triangle. A psychological game has three marks: it repeats, it makes sense on the surface, and at least one transaction is ulterior. Most games run on this triangle. People play for three reasons. First, to get strokes they cannot get openly. Second, to reinforce their life position: an "I'm not OK" person uses a game to prove it. Third, to avoid or control intimacy, because games keep distance and dodge openness and responsibility.

Don't confuse roles with life positions. A life position is a standing belief about yourself and others. A role is a part you play in one scene, and you can switch it within one conversation.

Where it breaks. The triangle is a model from drama, not a measured trait. Used loosely, it labels every helper a Rescuer; yet real help exists. The test is whether the help builds the other person's ability.

In practice. To leave the triangle, move to the Adult. As Rescuer, ask "What would you do?" As Victim, say what you want and one step you can take. As Persecutor, state the concern and the facts, not the person's faults.

For exams. Many Indian syllabi list seven parts under TA: awareness (the Johari window, which is Luft and Ingham's, not Berne's), ego states, analysis of transactions, life script, life positions, strokes and games analysis. The roles are Persecutor, Victim and Rescuer.