Konjekturales Denken

Management Style and Parent - Ego I

Do your employees get quiet when you walk into the conference room? Do they rush past your office with a file-folder or laptop shielding their face from your view? You may be a graduate of the Attila the Hun School of Management; iron fisted, no nonsense, and incredibly difficult to work for.

But don't despair; it's a little known fact that Mr. Rogers once spent a semester on the prestigious Hun campus, and look at what a nice guy he turned out to be. Granted, nice guys don't always finish first in business, but they may not always be the most productive over the long haul, either.

The reality is that your personality style may influence your management style, and if you tend to be heavy-handed, critical, and inflexible with your staff or subordinates, you may be leading and managing from what Transactional Analysis theory calls the Parent Ego state.

Transactional Analysis recognizes three Ego states; Parent, Adult, and Child. The Parent Ego operates and functions as either a critical parent or nurturing parent, or, if you will, as Attila the Hun or Mr. Rogers.

The Parent Ego unconsciously mimics criticisms, prejudices, demands, and beliefs learned as a child from parents, or other significant authority figures. So the critical Parent would manage employees and lead projects with high doses of authoritative demands, rigid guidelines, and inflexible judgments in personnel evaluation.

The reason employees rush past the office of this woman or man with nothing but office products to defend them is authority is the only management tool this leader knows how to wield. Collaboration, reflective listening, and shared-decision making are words and phrases not found in their management vocabulary.

Planning and decision-making are all centered in the manager, with little input sought from staff or team members. Guidelines are fixed and announced without input, and little deviation is tolerated. These limits to flexibility may limit mistakes and losses in the short run, but they will hinder the personal growth necessary to build an ongoing, winning team.

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