This important book distils the essence of developmental Transactional Analysis (TA) frameworks that are most useful to bring alive professional coaching competencies. Karen Pratt offers clear outlines of TA frameworks as well as describing how they are applied in coaching, with snippets of coaching conversations as illustrations of the theory in practice.
Pratt highlights key TA frameworks in enough detail to be easily grasped but with a focus on application in coaching and other developmental conversations. A TA approach powerfully guides coaches in their listening and questioning. TA is not used as a coaching ‘technique’ – it offers psychological understanding of human beings and the meaning they make of who they are in the world. Such awareness is key for both professionals and clients in meaningful partnerships for development.
Transactional Analysis Coaching will be key reading for professionals working within present-centered contracts for change – coaches, trainers, facilitators, supervisors, teachers, mentors and managers – seeking to understand how TA can impact their development. It will be of great interest to coaches in training and will provide a useful resource for clients in their ongoing development.
Part 1: Transactional Analysis Key Concepts
1. Contracting
2. Life Positions
3. Ego states
4. OK-OK Communication Model
5. Transactions
6. Script and the Autonomy Cycle
7. Permission Wheel
8. Human psychological hungers and Strokes
9. Psychological games, Drama and Winners Triangles
10. Discounting and Steps to Success
11. Working Styles
12. Doors of Contact
13. Cycle of Development
14. Competence Curve
15. Symbiosis in systems
Part 2: Transactional Analysis approaches
16. Transactional designers and cultivators
17. Learning Imagoes
18. TA as …philosophy? thinking framework? tools for coaching?
Part 3: Application of Transactional Analysis in Coaching
19. Contracting in action
20. Setting the focus for coaching - the Permission Wheel in action
21. The Stroking Profile
22. Listening at the level of the ‘who’
23. Challenging script through powerful questioning and observation
24. Inviting autonomy through the Steps to Success
25. Sharing responsibility and power in the coaching relationship
26. Using ego states - Adult to Adult language
27. The use of power in leadership - challenging the status quo
28. Coaching within diversity
29. Living TA, not doing TA - the Mindful Adult
30. Supervision
Biography
Karen Pratt is a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst (TSTA) specialising in the educational field. She is Chair of the South African Transactional Analysis Association and Co-Chair of the Professional Standards Committee of the International Board of Certification. Her current interest is in how the qualities of mindfulness, non-duality and presence are essential for transformational work.
"There are few books which bridge the gap between Transactional Analysis (TA) and coaching in a way that shows how these two approaches to human development are complementary and mutually enriching. This book, one of its kind, does just that. It shows how coaching can be a form of applied TA, and it shows how TA can explain what makes coaching work – and how coaches can use TA models and approaches to raise the standard of their practice.
From a TA perspective, the author introduces a model and then indicates how models are interrelated, for example the positions of the Drama Triangle are related to ego states and also to the I’m OK, You’re OK framework. She brings in recent developments of the original theories, such as the Mindful Adult, the Permission Wheel, the Use of Power and Working with Diversity. All these are related to the practice of coaching.
From a coaching perspective, the author shows how a coach would hear these models in a coaching session, and gives examples of how a coach could usefully respond. She also shows how a coach could introduce a TA concept to a client and invite the client to self-analyse or to co-create their coaching process based on the model. As TA is the analysis of what happens between two (or more) people, the coach themself will be able to use the material to reflect on their sessions, and to plan their own further development.
This book is a welcome and refreshing addition to a tried and tested school of psychology, and to the emerging understanding of how to help people change." — Colin Brett PCC, TSTA(O), MA, MSc, MA, MAPPCP Director, Coaching Development Ltd.
