Page 127 - Deception at work all chapters EBook

68 Deception at Work

DRIVING OFFENCES see that pink elephant. How could I be so
stupid?’ You might get your ass verbally
If you are pulled over by a traffic cop on the kicked but you should escape, simply
way back from a boozy night at the golf because few animals attack if they already
club annual dinner and dance, the worst know they have won.
thing you can do is to get off on the wrong
transactional footing, if you want to avoid If you sit in your car, with a defiant
a night in the slammer. Get out of your expression, or your wife comes out with a
car, nice and quietly, walk slowly towards load of verbals such as ‘Tell the pig who you
the officer in an appeasing way, perhaps are, Stan, and that you play golf with the
gesturing by clasping your hands to your Chief Constable’, you have had it. Getting to
forehead, and make a conciliatory remark the right transactional relationship is the key.
such as, ‘I am so sorry, officer, I just did not

UNEQUAL OR ‘CROSSED’ TRANSACTIONS

Negative emotion – usually fear, anger or anxiety – is generated when one person tries to
impose a transactional role on another that he is not willing to accept. For example, you will
become angry if you treat a colleague on an adult-to-adult basis but he treats you as he would
a child. Such misalignments are referred to as ‘crossed’ transactions, and they always generate
strong emotions. You can totally unbalance people by deliberately crossing a transaction.

THE DOMINEERING BOSS One day, the young investigator went to
a local grocery store, bought two raw eggs
Many years ago a young investigator had a and substituted them in the major’s lunch
boss who was an ex-major in the Colonial box. When he began to peel the first egg, it
Army, rigid, domineering, plain nasty and exploded and dropped in his lap. Foolishly,
with a pencil thin moustache. Everyone was though, he opened the next egg and the
afraid of him. He was the ultimate ‘critical same happened. The major’s investigation
parent’ and they the ‘adaptive children’. quickly identified the person responsible
and rather than being outraged, laughed
Every day the major would bring to work a and thereafter treated the investigator as a
box, packed by his devoted wife, containing Rebellious Child (an equal transaction) and
nicely cut brown bread and two hard-boiled from that time onwards got on well with
eggs. He would sit at his desk, reading The him.
Times, tuck a beautifully clean napkin under
his chin, crack the first egg, peel it and eat it.
He would then eat some brown bread and
crack the next egg.

NEGOTIATION OF TRANSACTIONAL ROLES

Transactional roles are usually negotiated (much like personal space) between the parties at
an unconscious level and are dynamic over the course of a meeting or interview. Most people
are not aware of ego states or how they affect them and thus lose the opportunity to get into
the transactional relationships that lead to the deep truth. Moreover, the opening phases of a
conversation with someone you have never met before usually set the transactional relation-
ship for everything that follows.