What am I ignoring?

I teach the tools of Developmental Transactional Analysis to managers and trainers, consultants and coaches, health professionals and youth workers.

What is Developmental Transactional Analysis (DTA) you may ask?

Well, you know sometimes we can get ourselves into situations when we think – “Blimey! I’ve been here before!” Or, “How did I let him say that to me?” Or, “Why did I just say yes – when I really don’t want to join that committee, or take on that responsibility?!”

DTA gives us a set of tools to work out what is going on for us, and what might be going on for others, and how to avoid awkward, or even damaging, repetitive situations that leave you feeling low, or stupid, or angry.

Take the following example.

Janine is the manager of a very busy team in a local authority. She came to me saying that she could not understand why a couple of members of her team were being so difficult. They were giving her the bare minimum of effort that they could get away with and were so grudging all the time!

“They are so negative! I have got so fed up with them I just ignore them most of the time. They are not worth the effort.” Jane and Michael are much more helpful, so of course I am working more closely with them. They are much easier to be with!”

As Janine’s coach, now was the time to share with her the TA concept of Discounting. “Nothing to do with getting money off!” I said, and went on to describe what Discounting is all about.

This TA concept is very useful when leading and managing people as well as being a very helpful model when faced with a problem.

We can discount ourselves, other people and a situation (we may not even be aware we have a problem), so this is a very useful concept to highlight our self-limiting beliefs, our sometimes faulty views about others and our blocking out of a piece of information which is stopping us from solving a problem.

From a leadership point of view, having an understanding about discounting is important not just from a personal standpoint, but also because developing others is a responsibility of leadership. To be able to spot the discounts when coaching team members enables the coachee to achieve their full potential – and ensures the success of the leader as a coach.

Discounting is interesting because we are not aware we are doing it! We ignore a piece of information which if we bought it into our awareness, we would solve the problem, reach a resolution etc. And while this sounds weird, we do it to maintain our frame of reference, our way of looking at the world, and our place in it.

It is an intra-psychic process, but the language people use will tell us that they could be discounting. Phrases like “I always get left out” or “I can’t” or “the youth of today are lazy” indicate discounts through grandiosity - exaggeration of an aspect of reality. They indicate that feelings or abilities are being diminished, and therefore discounted.

Janine was discounting the feelings and abilities of her “difficult” staff members by ignoring them, giving her attention to others and in the way she described them to me!

Accounting for others, recognising their feelings and abilities and vocalising your recognition enables people to be comfortable around you, and to fulfil their potential.

So I ask you, what are you discounting about yourself? Or about other people?