Upward Management
Learning outcomes
Recognise the ego states and their impact on the outcomes of conversations.
Intentionally express yourself from an ego state to drive conversations toward adult-to-adult transactions.
Understand what causes you to adopt a non-adult state.
Evaluate your own conversations using transactional analysis.
Frameworks taught in class
Framework 1: The 3 ego states of transactional analysis
Framework 2: Expressing yourself from the adult state
How you can support
Goal check-in
- Ask the learner what goal they set for this module.
- What is their approach to achieve this goal?
- Ask the learner what support they need and who the need it from.
Inspire
- Discuss how you handle interactions with stakeholders that are more senior than you. Ask the learner to use transactional analysis to explain why this strategy helps.
- Share a situation or behaviour – for example, people being late for meetings – makes you slip into the critical or nurturing parent ego state. Share how you discovered this and what you do in these situations. If you’re unfamiliar with these ego states, ask the learner to explain them!
Activate
- Ask the learner to together analyse a recent conversation between the two of you. Which ego states were at play, according to the learner?
- As the manager, do you agree with their analysis or did you observe something different? Discuss how you can apply this analysis to improve your communication in the future.