Kev Kennedy's Blog

Choosing how to respond

I’ve been in a couple of conflict situations in the last few months with some people who have been acting childishly. Now, I admit I can sometimes be like that, but these were extreme tantrums and strops, including huffy sighs and slamming doors.

What do you do in a circumstance like that? My default responses are:

• grind my teeth and think bad thoughts about them
• be aggressively sarcastic
• moan about them behind their backs (or on my blog!)

In short, my responses are childish too. But in a recent seminar I heard a guy talking about transactional analysis which describes how we relate to people as Parents, Adults or Children (P, A or C). If someone relates to us childishly we can respond in kind (like I frequently do) or as a 'parent', who can be authoritarian or overly caring, or as an adult, i.e. an objective and calm person committed to a rational outcome.

Maybe, he suggested, if I’m confronted by people behaving childishly, I need to take a step back and consciously decide to respond as an adult. Unfortunately that probably means I have some growing up to do myself, first.
 

Created on Mon 9th March 2009 14:32