We've been talking about transactional analysis, which I use to help leaders, coaches and consultants to develop and to lead their people. We've been talking about ego states, transactions and ways that people maintain their own stories instead of being in the here and now. We've talked a little bit about what racket feelings are, but now I want to talk about how you recognize racket feelings.

Rackets and Racket Feelings Sometimes people show feelings and you think, is this real or not? Probably you've got a gut reaction that leads you to this thought. Perhaps when you see someone get hurt and they laugh, you find it a bit strange. Or instead of showing a scared feeling someone gets angry, or people who should be angry start to cry. You wonder, what's going on here? You might be witnessing the expression of a racket feeling.

We just talked about the five ways people maintain their own stories. , Let’s talk about redefinition first.   Redefinition is when you distort your perception of reality to fit your own reality and your own story. For example, if I ask you a question “when” question and you answer with a “Who” response that’s a redefinition. For instance, I ask, “What time is it?” And you say, “Paul's not here yet.” That's a redefinition in its simplest form.

We've talked about ego states, we've talked about transactions, and we just talked about the five ways people keep their own reality going so that they're not able to solve their problems in the here and now. We talked about the first way, which was redefinition, and now we're going to talk about the second way, which is called symbiosis. There are functional and dysfunctional types of symbiosis, so let's start with the definition. Symbiosis is when two or more people act as if they have less than three ego states each.

One of the things we've been talking about in this series of videos is how people interact and communicate effectively. What happens if people don't communicate effectively? What happens if people are more invested in wanting to keep their own reality and story than in actually being really in touch and changing? Within transactional analysis we distinguish five ways people keep their own reality going without getting into real contact and really changing.

We talked about Structuring Parent, Nurturing Parent, Adult, Rebellious Child, Adapted Child and Free Child. So, what are the effects on communication when you transact from those different ego states?

How do you know where someone is coming from in terms of ego states? • Behavioural diagnosis: words, tone, gestures, posture, facial expressions. (frequency count) • Social diagnosis: From what ego state are you relating to the other? What does that say about the others’ ego state? • Historical diagnosis: What were you like as a child? How did your parents behave? • Phenomenological diagnosis: Re-experience of past with connected thinking, feeling, behaviour you had then and there. To be absolutely sure where someone is coming from in terms of ego states you need at least three checks.

Using Free Child as a style of communication in business is infectious and will get you going in an agile and innovative way.

When we talk about communication within transactional analysis, we actually analyze: from what ego state are you transacting? Each ego state has a different effect.

I decided to go back to basics now after the summer and back to basics for me is really individual coaching and executive coaching. I coach a lot of leaders, usually men over forty, who are at a crossroads in their career and their life. Sometimes they've gone up the ladder and they've developed patterns of behaviour that have brought them to that point but now they want a break through. Or they want to go to a different level but they don't know how to do it. The other reason that people come to Executive Coaching is personally, they've become successful in their career and then they realize that they don't really have a personal life anymore because they're always busy working. They want to get that balance back.

I do a lot of systemic work where I help large scale change to happen and I do a lot of work on teams, but I also do a lot of work in executive coaching. And one of the things in executive coaching is helping people to change their stories. We can't change events because events are always in the past. But we can help people change the stories around the events. It's the interpretation of events that often hurts.

As an organizational consultant I work at a systemic level. As a coach I work at team level but I also work at individual level. I do a lot of executive coaching and to do that well, I use a model called transactional analysis. One of the transactional analysis concepts is called ego states, the patterns of thinking and feeling linked to patterns of behaviour that all of us have stored in our archive, either programmed by Parents or learned in early childhood or associated with the here and now competencies we have. We call that Parent Adult Child ego states.

The model I use for executive coaching is called transactional analysis. TA was developed in the 1950s by a guy called Eric Berne and has been flourishing ever since, because it's very practical and easy to explain to your clients as well. It gives models with which you can recognize behavioural patterns and help people change them. And that's our job as executive coaches.

I had a discussion yesterday with some of the best executive coaches in the Netherlands and we were talking about themes that were coming up in this Corona crisis and what it means for our profession. As we were sharing, I was thinking, well actually maybe we're in a space where none of us really knows what's going to happen to our profession and maybe that's going to become our profession. To be a guide in the unknown, to look into the abyss and to guide people through it or across it or under it or over it.

One of the things that is preoccupying me at the moment is the difference in how countries react to Covid19. I've worked all over the world so I see these differences very clearly. I compared my agenda from May last year to this year - last year I was in 10 different countries in four weeks. And that used to define my life. At the moment I'm not physically travelling, although I am travelling in my mind and through the camera with people in other countries. Cultural scripting and cultures have been a fascination of mine for a very long time because I think that apart from your personal life story, you also have a cultural life story and that actually determines how we react to Covid19.

One of the reasons that I'm really fascinated is because I'm looking at the resurgence cultural scripting. A cultural script is the pattern that cultures repeat when times are rough. All of us have in us not only a personal script, which is based on our personal history, but also a cultural script, which is based on the societal norms and ways of doing things.

One of the things I'm really fascinated by in this time is the response to Covid19, not at an individual level but more at a business level and at a society level, Now we talked about what is cultural script. We talked about the elements of it and now I want to talk about the functions of cultural scripting. Why do we keep this cultural scripting going?

I'd like to talk to you about the development of autocratic systems. I've been getting a lot of questions about this because in the world today post-Covid-mania we're seeing that some systems are becoming more democratic and more refocused. They're embracing this change of paradigm from individual responsibility to collective responsibility. And in other countries we're seeing that they're developing more autocratically, they're enforcing rules and in some cases, military rule. What is it that makes a paradigm shift possible in some countries and not in others?

I've been talking about my ideas about coaching and consultancy and the development of systems and leadership. I'm really fascinated in this Corona time about the development of autocratic systems. Will we be able to hold on to this change of paradigm from individual responsibility to collective responsibility? Unfortunately you see a split. Either people go back to the normal, or they create something different. You see a re-establishment of democracy or a re-establishment of autocracy.

One of the things that fascinates me at the moment is how are we going to take care of re-entry after Corona, or even during Corona. Here in Holland, we've been through a period of infection and we're actually expecting a second wave of infection, but in the meantime, we’re slowly reopening businesses, restaurants and theatres in a very controlled manner.