The island of Fuerteventura, day 5 of our holiday, we buy an excursion with my husband to the inaccessible Jandia peninsula. We plan to spend a day on the wide beaches by the Atlantic Ocean, but also visit the mysterious villa of Gustav Winter. As the local car rental companies do not insure driving through this mountainous and rocky terrain, we take a hired jeep with a guide. We climb up a winding road amidst a moonlit grey rocky landscape. From the opposite direction, cars of operators of the same tour pass us. The guide tells the history of the island with a swagger, we admire the beautiful views from behind the windows, it is blissful and relaxing. At some point our driver says to us: I'm going to stop.... and then it began.
To notice and understand the sign of recognition
The driver stopped because the car driving from the opposite direction was also doing so. He also said that: "there is a custom here that we pass information about accidents and obstructions on the road to each other in this way. I will ask him what this is all about".
We stop. A few seconds later there is a big bang. A reversing off-road vehicle had slashed our car all the way through - from the boot to the headlights. The driver looked through the window, saw the other driver's face, then said:
"Oh no! It's Pablo again!"
As we temporarily had our doors locked and none of us could move while we waited for the other driver to stick out of our car, our guide told us that this was the third time Pablo had damaged his car, and locally he is known as the most unlucky driver on the island. A week ago, debris from rocks that had slid down the mountain fell on the roof of his car, as he parked under an overhang that no sensible driver would park under.
Previously, Pablo had hit the dog of a resident of this village, and recently, while pouring adblue liquid from the dispenser into smaller cans, he forgot about it and went to lunch. On his return, the entire 300-square-metre garage hall was flooded with the substance. It took him three days to clean up and the losses he exposed the company to are colossal. It turned out that the owners were employing him for free to work off all the damage he had caused.
After a while, another jeep stopped, whose driver was also a Pole. He saw what had happened and said:
- "Oh no! Pablo drove into you..."
Thanks to the fact that our driver's boss knows Pablo's supervisor, there was no police interference and we were able to continue our tour after an hour. We spent a beautiful day by the ocean. On the way back, I began to think about how the situation could be understood by putting on the glasses of transactional analysis.
Transactional analysis and the sign of recognition
This story shows how the company culture sustains the enforcing of negative recognition marks. That is, how sustaining is the provision of ineffective feedback in addition to negative feedback. It is economically incomprehensible, but psychologically it pays off.
A sign of recognition satisfies our basic need to be recognised by another czł person. They are like psychological fuel for our psyche. This is why there is so much focus on feedback in organisations and child-rearing.
We can energise ourselves and others through positive as well as negative signs of recognition. If we are not receiving positive feedback and positive attention, we would rather turn to negative signs of recognition of us than not receive them at all.
Both positive and negative recognition signs satisfy the so-called stimulus hunger. Eric Berne, the founder of transactional analysis, called needs hungers because he believed that long-term unmet needs even have a physical reflection in our bodies, exactly like long-term malnutrition.
We can give ourselves the sign of recognition, but we can also get it (sometimes by asking for it and sometimes by forcing it) from other people. At work, sometimes it is important for us to praise or reprimand ourselves (and that is enough) and sometimes it is extremely important for us to get attention from someone in the team or a superior.
Organisational transactional analysis: understanding the dynamics of organisational culture
Organisational transactional analysis provides valuable tools for analysing and shaping organisational culture, taking into account the exchange of signs of recognition that underpins everyday interactions. In the context of the Pablo story, AT provides an understanding of how employees' unconscious scripts and messages of organisational culture influence how problems are dealt with.
An organisational culture based on negative signs of recognition, such as criticism or the constant pointing out of mistakes, not only sustains ineffective behaviour, but also reinforces life scripts based on negative beliefs, e.g. 'I am not OK, I have to prove my worth through mistakes'.
AT also allows one to see how processes, such as feedback, conflict resolution or responsibility assignment, can be changed to promote a positive exchange of signs of recognition. Implementing transactional analysis tools in an organisation fosters a working environment in which the signs of recognition are authentic, motivating and support the development of both individuals and the team as a whole.
What signs of recognition do we give and collect?
The positive sign of recognition is given and collected verbally, i.e., through the words we say to ourselves or to someone, from greeting to longer conversations. This is reflected in many management practices: from the culture of greeting each other through a sincere retrospective of the so-called 'retro' in agile teams or well-conducted conversations with employees e.g. one to one.
We can also feed off each other non-verbally through gestures, glances we direct at someone, e.g. a nod, a wave or a touch. Exactly for this reason, in training sessions we talk to managers about the various small gestures they can do for their employees as a token of their appreciation, e.g. chocolate for the whole team, an hour off, an agreement on informal dress code, bringing a harmless dog to work when there is no one to leave it at home with.
The distribution of recognition marks can be unconditional, no one had to do anything to get one, as they relate to who and what we are. The unconditional sign of recognition has two faces: "I like you" and in the negative variety: "I hate you. It is my misfortune in life to have to work with you." While the first type is very nurturing, there is nothing to justify giving the second type recognition signs either in a private or professional relationship.
Conditional recognition marks
We can also give a sign of recognition to others through, for example, conditional recognitions: "You have helped me a lot by sorting out the onboarding process"., "I don't suffer when you interrupt me". or to yourself, e.g. by speaking to yourself with satisfaction (positive conditional verbal cue of recognition) "Well, you really came up with quite a bit." or with irony "Is that all you can afford?" (negative, conditional).
Emotions control our lives, whether we want them to or not. And how do we control them when interacting with people? Find out more about this topic of emotions in the recording of the webinar: With eMOTIONS to the people.
Behaviour and the need to receive recognition signs
Pablo's story is an illustration of a worker who has a strong need to receive signs of recognition. It is likely that as a child he received more conditional and unconditional negative recognition signs and these he learned to accept. Over time, he also learnt to organise situations in such a way as to constantly provide them to himself.
This is, of course, at the unconscious level of confirming one's script. On the other hand, as the saying goes, it's one man for another. There are companies that do not allow such long-lasting negative recognition marks. Surely, if such losses occurred in a European corporation, the employee would have been dismissed long ago and the value of the damages would have been called in court.
Commentary - more than words
However, this story happened on a small island where many businesses are run in the climate of a family business. Perhaps Pablo is related to the owner - in small communities this is often the case - and there are some prohibitions or beliefs in the organisational culture of this small car rental company that, on the one hand, dictate that such an employee should be stopped and, on the other, allow a wave of negative recognition signs to be distributed. Just imagine what comments and remarks awaited Pablo when he drove back to the base.
Summary
This story illustrates why some employees force a distinctive 'package' of recognition marks, why giving positive feedback will not work against them, but also how such employees fit into the organisational culture.
Organisational culture in transactional analysis is understood as something that is built at the interface between processes and organisational structure. Organisational structure is a separate big topic. By processes in an organisation we mean how different events take place, e.g. how decisions are made and communicated, how feedback is given, what employees are praised for, rewarded for, and reprimanded and punished for. How decisions are changed, how mistakes are spoken about by managers and employees, how crisis situations are responded to, how successes are celebrated.
