How Do I Use Transactional Analysis at Work?
Transactional Analysis is a theory of effective communication. Integrating the model into life through the interpretation of this theory with ELB coaching facilitates development and progress in all areas of our lives.
I have already touched upon how Transactional Analysis can help you decode relationships and make you a more effective coach in my linked article https://fatihelibol.com/en/how-to-become-a-more-effective-coach-with-transactional-analysis/.
In this blog post, I will talk about how to apply TA to your professional life.
The key skills in the business world are communication, leadership and the ability to understand and analyze complex relationships. TA is a very powerful instrument that affects these areas and brings you to the forefront in these spaces. ELB coaching has also been supported by this effective power of TA in building its foundations. TA and coaching are both crucial personal development tools; they help bring order to chaos. In business, it is possible to utilize these tools, to review one’s relationships by using TA, and to navigate through difficult situations through ELB coaching approach. Because by harnessing your own potential, you can be both be your own coach and a master of communication.
What are the benefits of applying TA at work?
Professional life occupies a significant portion of people’s lives. Thus, problems and setbacks in the workplace often have an impact on people’s lives outside of work. A good professional life is an integral component of the path to a fulfilling life. But nobody can overcome the challenges of professional life in their own right.
You will be the one who will strengthen communication in your own professional life, eliminate troubles and resolve conflicting situations. In this process, of course, you surely can and should make the best use of TA. When you utilize TA at work, you will find that your work life flows much more effortlessly.
Let’s have a look at the benefits TA can provide for you.
- Improves communication
If you are able to understand the communication style of the other person, it will be easier for you to figure out the right communication strategy. TA assists you in understanding the communication styles of people you work with, your superiors and subordinates. When you work out their ego state, you will also work out how they communicate. In this way you can communicate with them more clearly, more effectively and more harmoniously, and you can truly connect with them. This will ensure that communication between you improves every day.
- Facilitates conflict management
Conflict is inevitable in business life. Plus, conflicts are good in that they keep us improving. When a conflict is not resolved, it damages the work as well as the relationships. TA is also a valuable instrument to resolve conflicts. Through TA you can manage and understand conflicts with more clarity. This is due to the fact that TA enables you to identify the dissonances that lead to conflict. In this way, it is easier for you to locate the source of the conflict. If you know the origin of a problem, then it is easy to resolve it.
- Develops leadership skills
In a sense, leadership is the ability to manage and mobilize people. People are all different and the leader wants to generate the best possible result with the available human resources. The different skills of everyone on the leader’s team indicate that everyone’s contribution to the core vision will be unique. Moreover, leadership skills are something that not only the leader but also the team members can benefit greatly cultivating. TA also provides an opportunity to get acquainted with team members and colleagues. It serves as a way for you to better assess their communicative needs. What are their needs? What are their expectations? Understanding needs and expectations contributes to the implementation of the right leadership style. As people change, a good leader is one who can adapt his or her leadership skills to suit different people.
- Facilitates collaboration in teamwork
Teams must work in harmony. Lack of harmony or communication within the team hinders the team from meeting its goals. Harmony depends on fostering team communication. Understanding the ego states of the team members with TA, recognizing the games, and thus engaging with the right actions and communication methods will lead to more harmonious, respectful and empathetic relationships and the team will be able to work together towards a common goal. Cooperation within a team leads to success.
- It helps to disrupt the manipulation that can be created through games.
Games are negative relationship dynamics. They create toxic relationships. People who experience such relationship dynamics are not even conscious of the game they participate in. TA makes you aware of the games. In this way, it is possible to transform negative relationship dynamics into positive new forms of engagement and to break free from the manipulation created by this game.
- Improves empathy
In order to empathize, we require an understanding of our own emotional reactions and needs as well as others’. TA presents a very precise theory through which we can come to understand these needs and responses. Thus, acknowledged emotions and needs contribute to the development of empathy and the improvement of human relations.
- Allows you to make better decisions
Making and implementing decisions is often a challenge for the majority of people. The reason for this is that they have not properly analyzed the situation. Every decision, big or small, affects our lives. Decision-making processes in the workplace are the same way. They require objective and rational decisions. Understanding what the TA’s Adult ego state is enables you to manage decision-making processes accurately.
- Supports personal development
We all want to lead a fulfilling life. A fulfilling life is not a one-way street. Your professional life is also an integral part of your fulfilling life. In order to realize your true and full potential, you need to get to know and understand yourself, and remove the obstacles that stand in the way of you reaching your potential. TA enables you to be objective in doing so, to see and manage the points of contact and the flow of ‘strokes’ in life objectively.
Knowing yourself, knowing your environment and learning about communication can transform your life
There is one thing I always mention in ELB coaching: Knowing yourself, knowing your environment and learning about communication can transform your life.
Utilize TA!
Transformation is actually rather simple. It is the same in professional life. Everyone would like to be part of a work environment where there is someone who has analyzed themselves, evaluated the people around them and implemented the right communication strategies. Because the professional environments founded by such people are based on solid relationships and foster a more productive work environment. They enhance business performance and opportunities for collaboration. They solve problems. And TA is the key.
How does TA help workplace processes?
- TA’s ego state definitions uncover the needs, feelings, thoughts and behaviors with which human beings communicate.
- TA schematizes the flow of communication between people. It clarifies how ego states succeed or fail to communicate between people.
- It illustrates how to achieve harmonious relationships between ego states that cannot relate.
- It sheds light on how people can listen to each other better and remain objective and free from judgment.
- It functions as an informant in recognizing the games and eliminating toxic relationships.
How is TA used in ELB Coaching?
TA is a communication theory developed by Dr. Eric Berne. This theory explains what is what, how situations arise and how to get out of negative situations.
Life is a long journey and there is no just one relationship on this journey. The entirety of forms where one individual relates to the other described in the TA do not emerge seperately but together. Sometimes it is even difficult to tell how the individual transitions from one to the other. Life presents everything together, not separately.
As you walk along the path of life, you may sometimes get confused about which stones stand in your way, which ones you can skip over, which ones you can pay attention to and which ones you can disregard, and how to move towards your goal without getting distracted by unnecessary details. You can go side-tracked, you can go the wrong way.
The workplace is the same way. When you don’t know how to walk on the path, when you forget the destination or get distracted by unnecessary details, you can get worn out on the road, you can miss the turn, you can get off the road and waste time on the macadams instead of the main road.
ELB coaching is the art of walking the path.
ELB coaching is the art of walking the path. It helps you figure out how to situate the theory on the very plane of your own life. It presents you with yourself, with what is in you, asks you to look around, visualizes your life changing and transforming with you, and enables you to develop strategies to attain it.
With this coaching technique that will enrich and strengthen your life bonds, you can have a more abundant, productive and successful work life and overcome your problems in a more effortless way.