The Leader as Father Figure
Transactional analysis and leadership
- Briefly, transactional analysis shows us that we relate to each other in one of 3 ways:
- Parent to child - telling others what to do, talking down to them.
- Child to parent - being submissive, throwing temper tantrums, flaunting authority.
- Adult to adult - relating as equals, reason dominating emotion.
- We're not as ''grown up'' as we think, our emotions often get the better of us and we revert to either Parent or Child mode in our relationships.
- Any time you lose your temper, sulk, lash out at someone, tell people off, get revenge, you are operating in either Parent or Child mode - or a bit of both.
- Nuturing, coaching, sympathizing with people, if done in a paternalistic way, is also a form of Parent-Child way of relating to people.
- In some ways the emotional intelligence movement is about trying to get us to behave in a more Adult way more of the time.
- Traditional top-down leadership based on the authority of position fosters a Parent-Child mode of relating to subordinates. However much both sides might try to relate in an Adult-Adult manner, the reality of their power differential intrudes and one side or the other lapses into Parent or Child mode - especially common under pressure.
- A conception of leadership that is not based on positional power is more conducive to an Adult-Adult mode of relating to others.
- On this view, anyone can lead by advocating new directions, regardless of position in the hierarchy. An Adult-Adult relationship helps to keep emotional distortions at bay.
- Ironically, true leadership is harder for managers to display simply because it is hard, in practice, to separate genuine influence from authority.
- When your manager tries to persuade you to do something, is he/she genuinely trying to persuade you or are you politely being told to do it? The latter is not really leadership, but managerial decision making.
When you think of leadership do you have a particular ideal in mind? What is your image of the ideal leader?
Do you think its possible for management to shed its negative image and be reinvented for the 21st century and, even better, finally differentiated from leadership? See article that tries to show how this is possible: Leadership and Management Reinvented. Do you think women might be better leaders than men or vice versa? See Are Women Better Leaders than Men? and Is Leadership Feminine?