Your organisation is probably in parent-child mode - and this will explain a lot

You might be leading a team.
You might be leading a function.
You might be leading an organisation.

Understanding the parent-child dynamic at work is the key to unlocking the culture, behaviour and performance shifts you’re looking for.

 

Ever wondered why nice, bright people do weird or unhelpful things at work? It may be due to a parent-child dynamic in the organisation.

To show you what I mean, come with me to a meeting I attended in 2018. The manager, let's call her Sarah, is explaining a new project. Her tone is decisive, her mannerisms are firm.

"This is the plan. OK, let's talk about the detail."

The vibe in the room is awkward. This is a project people have concerns about. She knows that so she’s not risking asking for input.

I can see her team members nod and take notes. She asks if people feel clear. They say yes. They ask her for a few more details about how she’s like it doing. They discuss deadlines and resources and everyone leaves with a clear plan.

Now come with me to the coffee machine afterwards where the team are giving their real input!

 

“I can’t believe they’re making us do this - again!”

“Typical. It’s going to cause huge problems with customers but they just don’t get it.”

“Well, I’m sorry - I’m not doing it.”

“I have to do it. I can’t afford to lose this job and it’s not worth fighting the system.”

 

Suddenly we realise Sarah is at one of the nearby tables. She has overheard pretty much everything.

Later, Sarah and I have a debrief.

“They are so childish!” she says in total exasperation.

“The CEO says this project has to happen for this company to stay in the black and for us all to keep our jobs. Why can’t they just literally get on with the job they are paid to do?”

 

Back the truck up - how did we get here?!

Ok, what’s going on? They have got caught in a parent-child dynamic.

The more Sarah acts like a parent, the more her team respond in child-like ways. The more the team act in child-like ways, the more Sarah feels she has no choice but to take the parent role.

Next question - whose fault is it?

We have all been Sarah. We have all been those team members!

The legacy of the industrial era is steeped in parent-child dynamics (and no criticism here - command and control was a massive improvement on what came before).

We are all contributors to this dynamic and we are all capable of changing it.

I’m going to explain this dynamic and then help you think about how to find the off ramp to a healthier adult-to-adult dynamic.

 

A brief and over-simplified explanation of Transactional Analysis (TA)

Transactional Analysis (TA), developed by Dr. Eric Berne in the 1950s, is a powerful psychological tool that helps us understand human interactions and relationships. TA posits that our personality is structured into three "ego states": Parent, Adult, and Child. These states influence how we communicate and interact with others.

 

Parent: This ego state mirrors the behaviours and attitudes we observed in authority figures during our childhood. This stage can be nurturing or controlling.

Child: This reflects our internal responses and emotions from childhood. At work, this state typically manifests as compliance/dependence or resistance/rebellion.

 

As you can see - these two states act as an often unhealthy opposite pairing. You treat me like a child - I’ll behave like one!

 

Adult: This state operates on logic, reason, and objective analysis. It’s grounded in the present and focuses on problem-solving.

 

This state acts in a usually more healthy matching pairing. You treat me like an adult - I’ll act like one and treat you the same.

In the workplace, these ego states manifest in our daily interactions, shaping the dynamics between employees and employers.

 

 

Parent-Child vs Adult-Adult Interactions

The thing about these roles and states is that they are in reciprocity with each other. Operating in one state is an invitation for the other to respond from the opposing state.

 

Parent-Child interactions

So when we show up in one of these parent state styles:

1. Authoritarian / controlling parent state: A manager giving orders without seeking input or criticising work

2. Nurturing parent state: A manager taking problems away from their team or overly protecting them from challenging situations.

 

...we invite one of these child state styles:

1. Compliant / dependent child state: Employees relying heavily on their manager for guidance and decisions and / or conforming without question. Lack of personal responsibility. Blaming upwards.

2. Rebellious / resistant child state: I typically see employees dragging their heels in knowledge worker environments and finding ways to passively resist or undermine a person or project.

 

It’s like an invitation to a dance. You stretch out your hand and offer a salsa, and you’ll get a salsa back.

Instead, we want to invite people to an adult-adult dance.

 

Adult-Adult interactions

1. Transparency: Both parties willing to share data, hopes and concerns openly rather than withholding information, spinning a situation or forcing their own agenda.

2. Shared responsibility: Everyone clear about what is theirs to shoulder, taking the initiative and proactively working towards a shared goal.

3. Collaborative decision-making: Managers and employees engaging in discussions, valuing each other's contribution and perspective and listening/responding thoughtfully.

4. Boundaries and acceptance: Work is messy, no one party has fully control. We cannot ‘make’ anyone else do anything, but we can set appropriate boundaries.

 

Thinking beyond individual relationships - and getting into organisational culture

I want to elevate your thinking above just the leader/team level but to the whole organisation/employee dynamic.

Everything about the way collaboration is set up in your organisation speaks to the type of dynamic you are fostering - either parent/child or adult/adult. The norms around how you meet and collaborate are reinforcing one or the other.

You might be wanting an adult-to-adult dynamic as an organisation but the way in which you meet and collaborate may be inviting people to a parent-child dance.

Back to my story. It might not have escaped you that Sarah herself is in a parent-child dynamic. “My CEO says this has to happen”. We reproduce the dynamics we experience most. The whole system is reinforcing itself.

Until we find the off-ramp.

 

How do we switch from a parent-child vibe to an adult-adult vibe?

What does the off-ramp look like?

Ultimately Adult-To-Adult dynamic are modelled, not taught. They are baked into every interaction and they have to be changed in every interaction.

Here are some of the ways you can shift those interactions every day.

 

Open up more information. Share links, share meeting notes, share decisions.

 

Show your working. "Here's my thinking, these are some of the assumptions I've made, here's what I considered but discarded."

Open up your thinking for interogation.

 

Stick to neutral facts. Don’t spin, don’t sell, don’t sugarcoat, don't skim, don't dramatise. No heros, ho villains. All easier said than done. Expose the truth and encourage people to interrogate it together.

Get clean on decision making. Whose call is it? Who gets a vote? Who is consulted? Who need to 'ok' it. Clean up those contracts around who can decide what. Letting messy power structures play out is an invitation to parent-child. Adult to adult doesn't mean every decision is made by committee. The opposite. It means we are grown up enough to design the best decision making approach we can and to own it transparently.

Build up your bank of adult-to-adult questions: What do we think of this? Who owns what here? What do you need next? What's our best next step?

High autonomy, high accountability, high support.

Good things come in threes.

Resist the rescue. You’ll notice that there are some major parallels with the drama triangle and I talk extensively here about how to get out of the nurturing parent AKA rescuer role. Nurturing parent state is still parent state.

 

Default to problem solving mode. Get out of blame, why and WTF? and shift the focus to problem understanding and problem solving.

 

Humour and naming it. “Am I doing that thing again where I take responsibility something and then I tell you exactly how I want you to do it?!”

 

HOW you transformation collaboration will dictate the flavour of shift you make

And one final thought. When I work with organisations on transforming collaboration, I emphasise that the WAY in which we shift collaboration norms sets the tone for the dynamic we are trying to create. You are literally demonstrating and modelling the dynamic with the intervention. So use this opportunity to give people an adult-to-adult experience of their own, which they can copy and reproduce.

 

That why when I do this kind of work, I help companies:

- Do proper discovery to truly see the problem through everyone’s eyes

- Make changes transparently, working out loud at every stage

- Iterate and experiment, responding to what we learn as we go

- Own but not dictate the new norms

- Find the sweet spot between bringing consistency to ways of working and encouraging flexibility and adaptation