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iQuestions Faculty, Ron Price 
 
 
Question: 
 
What social 'scripting' will help me communicate effectively as a 
supervisor/manager in the workplace? 
 
Answer: 
 
When I work with executives, sooner or later, we end up talking about 
how they can improve their relationships and their communications 
with the people they supervise.  
 
One of the things I share with them that helps in thinking about this is 
a model that was popularized in the 1960s called “transactional 
analysis.” The basis for this model is the understanding that we build 
our social scripts as very, very young children, and they stay with us 
throughout the rest of our lives. 
 
So we first talk about what these scripts look like, and it helps them to 
understand how they come into play in the workplace.  
 
First of all, as children, we have parents who are nurturing parents, so 
we will call that N.P. These are the parents who love us, who cheer 
every time we do something new, who just enjoy being a parent and 
tell us that they appreciate us being a part of the family. 
 
The other script, which is just as important when we are young, is 
what we refer to as the critical parent. This is the disciplinarian, the 
parent who says, “Don’t do this. No. Don’t do that.” 
 
We really need both. The nurturing parent represents love in the 
relationship and the critical parent represents discipline in the 
 
 
relationship—and without that, we don’t grow up to be very healthy 
individuals. 
 
We respond to these in two different ways. The first way that we 
respond as young children is what I call the adaptive child, and that’s 
where we’re saying, “Mommy, Daddy, I want you to approve me,” and 
so we play along with the things that we know will get their praise.  
 
Then the second script that we develop—which, again, is just as 
important, because it helps to establish us in our adulthood—is what I 
would call the rebellious child, and that’s where we say “no” and we 
assert our will. Now, of course, we need the critical parent to discipline 
that. 
 
But when we grow up, our parents want us to have some willpower. 
They don’t want us to just say “yes” to everything that comes along. 
So we need to develop both of these scripts, and we get to know them 
based on both of these scripts, and so we have got all kinds of things 
that are happening as we are growing up. 
 
And incidentally, some parents are better as nurturing parents. Other 
parents are better as critical parents. That’s why it’s good to have two 
parents, because the combination of the two is oftentimes what 
provides for a great experience for a child growing up. 
 
So these social scripts are built into our brain, and they don’t leave, 
just because we have grown up. However, as we get into junior high 
and high school, our social relationships become more and more 
complex, and we begin to develop additional scripts. In the 
transactional analysis model, the healthy scripts that we develop are 
first the mature adult. This is an adult who is objective, who is 
investigative or analytical. It’s the way we look at something without 
being emotionally involved, we just look at the facts, and we make 
smart decisions or smart conclusions, based on looking at those facts. 
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Then there is this part in us that I like to call the playful child. This is 
still the inquisitive, the creative, the fun-loving, the little bit 
mischievous part of us that we call the “child within” when we become 
adults.  
 
This is a pretty simple model to understand. What I try to explain to 
the executives that I’m working with is that as we grow up, it’s 
important, as we supervise, to use these three scripts in the 
workplace. 
 
Again: 
 
 Nurturing parent. That’s good to use in the workplace, to affirm 
your employees.  
 
 Mature adult. To be analytical, to be objective, to be non-
judgmental. That’s a great script to use in the workplace. 
 
 Playful child. To be inquisitive, creative, and fun-loving. That’s 
great in the workplace. 
 
All of these work well in the workplace. 
 
What isn’t so healthy is for us to use the critical parent in the 
workplace. When we say, “George, don’t do it that way,” and we sound 
like George’s mother or father, it is very easy for us to trigger in 
George this script of the adaptive child or the rebellious child. With the 
rebellious child, George pushes back, and we have a relationship 
problem. With the adaptive child, George says, “Whatever you say, 
Dad,” and he is losing initiative and ceases to be a mature adult in the 
way that he does his work.  
 
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So we can see, anytime that we are critical, we are saying, “No, no, 
no, no, no.” Instead, what we need to do, as supervisors, is to use the 
mature adult, saying, “George, let’s look at the facts objectively. Let’s 
identify what has taken place. Let’s identify what was good about it, 
and let’s identify what you could have done better.” 
 
Or we can be a little bit playful with George and say, “You know what, 
George? I know that happened, and I know that you’ve got a good 
heart,” and have a little bit of fun together.  
 
In any case, we should be spending as much time in these three—the 
nurturing parent, the mature adult, and the playful child—and no more 
than 35% of our time in the nurturing parent. 
 
What happens when somebody spends all their time in the nurturing 
parent? You’re actually being too nurturing, and your people don’t feel 
accountable anymore. They think that they can do anything, or they 
don’t understand that the mature adult—where we look objectively at 
the results that are being created, and they are judged based on the 
results, not based on love alone—creates the highest amount of 
performance in the workplace. 
 
I realize this is a relatively simple model, but I tell my executives to 
start listening for these scripts: Do you hear yourself speaking as a 
critical parent? Do you hear your employees responding as rebellious 
children or as adaptive children?  
 
If you hear that happening, you know that you’re losing energy, you’re 
losing effectiveness in the workplace, and you need to work on 
bringing things over into these other scripts. And in doing that, you 
can have a big impact on the quality of your relationships, and the 
value of the communication that takes place. 
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