Coaching Games People Play, Towards Success
Manipulation Games and Success-Oriented Strategies

In the last half of the previous century, T.A. Games theory of Transactional Analysis fame has provided breakthrough insights as to how humans implement precise, repetitious and predictable negative behavioral processes in their relationships.  Eric Berne’s bestselling “Games People Play”[1] first published in 1964 has withstood the test of time and guided generations of therapists and human development experts in understanding the darker side of day-to-day human motivations to engage in negative interactions.

Largely inheriting from a psychological frame of reference and a therapeutic approach, T.A. games theory has historically been focused on precisely recognizing and defining relationship manipulation strategies and a number of practical ways either to stop them or to avoid them.  Stopping at the limit of defining equivalent positive strategies, Berne’s game theory seems to paradoxically define healthy behavior as simply being “game-free".  In T.A., this would be in keeping with the generally accepted understanding that living a good life would be also "script free". 

Interestingly, although one of the later chapters of Eric Berne’s original book on the subject does mention a few “good games”, games which have positive or win-win outcomes, equivalent constructive relational strategies which could be identified as useful games  have never been developed much further by major Transactional Analysis theoreticians or practitioners. It has often been stated, as a matter of fact, that the idea of positive games did not really interest Eric Berne, and that consequently, the concept must be considered as heresty heresy.  It is commonly said that Berne added a short chapter on good games to his landmark book on the subject to please his editor who wished to end the volume on a more positive note. 

If Berne’s game theory explores the darker side of our relational competencies in an extraordinarily creative way, however, why not revisit this approach today to explore in as much detail and with the same precision the equivalent brighter sides of human relational activity?  This article is a coach’s attempt in that direction.

Today, when we adopt a professional coaching perspective, we are more centered on accompanying clients while they design and implement their own personal positive and winning strategies. Coaches proceed by building on their client's intrinsic and existing competencies.  With this perspective, coaches may consider it useful to draw precise theoretical parallels between two categories of identical and opposite structured patterns in human interactions.

• one of which are games which stand on the “darker side” of relationships with predictable lose-lose outcomes, and
• one of which are equivalent, structured and repetitious processes on the “brighter side” of relationships, leading to predictable, positive win-win results.

To imagine this challenge,

• Much in the same way Eric Berne designed his Game formula as a six-step process which ends with a negative personal and relational payoff, 
• it may be possible for coaches to design an equivalent six-step formula to describe positive interactive processes which end with predictable constructive win-win personal and professional results.

In this light, the object of this article is to provide the reader with a few practical thoughts and strategies as to how coaches can use Eric Berne’s game theory to better guide clients in designing equivalent, clearly defined and recognizable positive strategies.  In effect, these could well be the positive, constructive equivalents of negative games.

To understand this approach, consider a first quick example of an interactive process which  is both negative in its game form and positive when implemented as constructive relational conversation. 

First consider the well-known triangular game defined by Eric Berne named “Let’s You and Him Fight”.  The manipulation strategy is initiated by an actor who creates or underlines areas of potential conflict between two other partners already involved in a relationship.  The objective is ultimately to get them to fight.  For the initiator, the object of the game is to get a short term personal gain or payoff from the provoked conflict.   Imagine for example the following family situation:

Son:_”Mom, can I go to the cinema?”
Mom:_”Not if you haven’t finished your homework and cleaned your room”.
(...then...)
Son:_”Dad, can I go to the movies if I mow the lawn tomorrow?”
Dad:_”Ok, son, it’s a deal”.
(then, back to Mom)
Son_”Mom, Dad said I could go if I mow the lawn”.
(Payoff: Mom and dad have a good fight, and son gets to go to the movies.)

_“Now, you’re quoting me this price today, but your company’s sales department mentioned a much lower fee just two days ago.  Can’t you guys ever get your act together?”.

In the triangular game of Lets You and Him Fight, the initiating active actors illustrated by the above son and client  exploit a real or potential communication gap between two other related people.   Each of the initial interactions take place in the absence of one of other related partners, creating ample room for interpreting the absentee’s real position and motivation.  For the initiator of the game, the short-term and apparently positive outcome is often predictable. Just as it is predictable that the longer term negative evolution of the relationships between all the concerned participants will not be sustainable.

Lets You and Him Fight is all too common in environments which display obvious communication gaps between partners.  When parents, managers, associates, couples, or other unsuspecting people and systems fail to ensure excellent communication, the flaw in their relationships leaves ample room for a third party to wedge in and achieve short-term personal goals.

In a completely different context, imagine another person acting as an active go-between in a triangular relationship to help the two other members get closer together and get along in a positive and constructive relationship.  The positive go-between process could be exactly similar to the negative one illustrated by the Lets You and Him Fight game. This positive process could in fact be called “lets you and him get along”. 

This more sustainable game of sorts, is useful and sometimes so productive that it can be perceived as a central operational strategy in a number of professions: Getting two or more related people and systems to develop a more positive or productive relationship is indeed the core business of salespeople (getting their companies and clients to get along and agree to sign a deal), translators and interpreters (bridging meaning between different languages and cultures), marriage counselors (ironing out communication differences between consenting adults), negotiators, ambassadors, emissaries, etc.

Typically, in the exact same way as the key player in Lets You and Him Fight, the active go-between will relate to one present partner what the absent one has said, sometimes adding explanations to their expression and embellishing it.  The object of the go-between is to help make the tier relationship work.  For this active go-between player, the payoff of the more sustainable and positive strategy becomes obvious when the tier relationship builds and strengthens to achieve measurable long term success:  the sale is made, the marriage takes place, the two countries cooperate and become allies, the couple grows together, etc.  Note that the best positive payoff for “lets you and him get along” is a durable win-win partnership for all three of the players involved in the triangular relationship.

Now “lets you and him get along” is a precise win-win process.  It's interactive pattern is equivalent to Lets You and Him Fight.  It mirrors the negative process in all it’s interactive details.  Only the objective of the go-between and the positive payoff for all the players replace the negative game results.  The two processes are practically identical like the two sides of the proverbial coin.  Heads you win with lets you and him get along, and tails you loose with Lets you and Him Fight.  

• Note: It is a wonder that there is so little literature concerning this obvious positive flip-side of the negative manipulative game of Lets You And Him Fight, and so little work to make it become a conscious success strategy when the potential may exist in the same clients. 

Today, we could stumble on some interesting and very practical coaching insights if we stop and make the effort to define all the positive strategies which may exist as complementary processes to negative relational patterns.  Coaches could well consider questioning clients in a way to help them discover or create strategic behavioral bridges between their equivalent negative or manipulation games and positive relational processes.  To delve deeper into the above illustration, some of the questions coaches could well ask themselves are among the following:

Another well-known Transactional Analysis game is Cops and Robbers.  In his description of this negative relationship, Eric Berne underlines that the fundamental objective of a robber is to get caught by the police by increasing risk-taking behavior until the expected outcome is achieved.  Consequently, the ultimate goal of a thief, a rogue, an embezzler, a cheater or a liar is to be stopped by society's structuring forces. The game concerns  two players and therefore two complementary dynamics.  It reveals everyone's tendency to play with limits on the one hand, and everyone's difficulty in enforcing limits on the other.  Consequently respect and reinforcement of limits or boundaries is  the dimension in which the two players in the game meet.

To achieve their end or goal, the villains who partake in the Cops and Robbers drama will relentlessly re-enact a specific pattern of socially unacceptable behavior.  They will progressively take more risks and leave more clues until they finally get caught, limited, controlled or put behind bars.  Indeed, one can perceive that a large majority of robbers do not give up until they succeed in achieving their ultimate goal: prove that limits exist and that they will be implemented by society's law-enforcing systems.

This game is presented here immediately following Lets Him and You Fight to reveal the similarities in the players' need for the structural limits usually enacted by parents in families hierarchical figures in organizations and law enforcement in social systems.  Much like the thief in Cops and Robbers, a child's role is to break rules and test the reality of parental limits.  One can even stipulate that a child's function is to relentlessly test parents to provoke them to play their necessary role, that of implementing healthy limits.  When these limits are clearly set and regularly enforced, the goal has been achieved.  Consequently, the game of cops and robbers can be perceived as fundamentally structuring for society.  Robbers help create social structure.

In organizations, it seems that the need for clearly defined or contracted rules, regulations, minimal structure and control in the form of evaluations and measures are necessary to ensure good system health.  When systems lack these fundamental structuring functions, employees will enact behaviors to provoke and even oblige managers to grow and assume their necessary law and order function.

To be effective, rules and regulations also need to be modeled by the people who are to enforce them.  As a consequence, it could be construed that all people who regularly test limits within a system are fundamentally provoking these ensembles to establish clear operating principles and ensure that they are properly implemented and enforced by all.  This  healthy strategy to provoke families and other collective systems such as corporations to establish and model well designed and implemented limits, rules and regulations is common to both Cops and Robbers and to Lets You and Him Fight game players.

It is interesting to note that the two players of the game of cops and robbers can be perceived as enacting two dimensions of the same issue.  These two dimensions are so intimately related that they are often played by the same person.  Bad cops, embezzellng financial experts, pyromaniac firemen, and ethically questionable lawyers and priests are all too common an occurrence in society to pretend that the apparently opposite roles are enacted by very different types of people.  Indeed, the best sleuths to hire to weed out professional hackers are professional hackers.

The consequence of this awareness in coaching may be very important. One conclusive strategy when coaching clients who demonstrate an excellent capacity to navigate in the Cops and Robbers process is to always be conscious that they are experts in implementing both sides of the same game.  Indeed, excellent cops have the capacity to become very professional robbers, and very good robbers are intrinsically structured to become highly competent police officers.   As a consequence, coaching people to translate their built-in natural skills to apply them to socially constructive ends may be a powerful way to help transform antisocial rebels into a highly succesful and socially respected citizens.

A second well-known triangular game kin to Lets You And Him Fight is called Courtroom.  It is also played between three actors, and it seems to often unfold in the same personal and professional environments as Lets You And Him Fight. 

In this negative process, two partners who do not get along find a third party and draw them into their game by asking them to be their referee.  This is done by asking them to play the role of a judge and have him or her state who is right and who is wrong in the originally negative and competitive relationship. 

Should the judge or referee formulate a choice by stating that either of the two  original partners is right, the other competitor will initiate a sequel or start another game to get back at the first, or  to prove that the judgment was unfair.  The game can then continue on and on within a number of probable subsequent and equivalent Courtroom situations. The object of the game is to draw the judge into the conflict and make her or him incompetent.

In other cases, a very similar but much more solution-oriented relational process takes place when two people, groups or organizations who cannot settle their differences commonly agree to seek the help of a counselor or a mediator.  In this process, however, both partners are aware that they are equally responsible to find a successful outcome to their ailing relationship or partnership.  They are not so much looking for a selective validation of their competitive differences as in Courtroom but rather hoping to find a common solution which would help them continue their partnership on more positive grounds.

Notice again that both Courtroom and "mediation"   are  two strikingly similar processes.  The parties in conflict agree that they disagree, and agree to find a third party, whether he or she be a judge or a counselor.  The two processes also fuel the relationship and keep it going.  The two processes differ only in their predictable outcome or payoff,

• the Courtroom game settles for a negative payoff which will often fuel a sequel, to continue a negative and competitive relationship.
• the positive process characterized by a search for a counselor’s or mediator’s help aims for a more positive and constructive common objective. The relationship will also continue, but this time on a constructive or win-win ground.
  

Notice that numerous coaching situations may have clients seeking a coach to take the role of the third party, oftentimes as a mediator, sometimes as a judge, and oftentimes again, the very fine line between the two may turn out to be very hazy.  Indeed, the sudden crossover from a positive mediation process to a Courtroom game and back may be difficult to perceive for all the concerned actors.

A clear understanding of the strikingly similar patterns of the two processes could often help professional coaches gently accompany clients from a potential Courtroom game to start considering a more positive and co-constructive mediation process.

to continue on our demonstation, consider another very well known T.A. game titled NYGYSOB, short for Now I’ve Got You Son Of a Bitch.  A NYGYSOB player will generally:

• Ask an unsuspecting game partner one or a series of apparently innocent, closed or leading questions 
• These questions are tailored to have the unsuspecting  partner adopt a well-defined position,
• The better to righteously corner them, and prove them wrong. 

Consider the following light example: A discussion is initiated to clarify what someone had previously said, only to insist on the unacceptable nature of contradictory information.  The following dialogue can illustrate such a situation between a Father and daughter:

Father: _”There is something I don’t quite understand.  Yesterday you said you were not involved with Michael, and today I hear you have known him for a long time and that you have seen him on a regular basis.  Can you explain?”
The daughter answers with a lengthy explanation to underline the difference between being involved, knowing Michael for a long time in the past and not being involved today, etc.
Father: _”Now this is not clear to me at all.  I have a problem with believing what you say because you are so full of contradictions.  I can’t really trust what you tell me anymore”.

A longer process can be composed of several apparently innocent steps to set the stage before unveiling a more aggressive stance. Consider following professional example based on a series of opening questions.  :

Paul: _”Aren’t you the person in charge of our client deliveries,”
Jim: _“Yes, I am.”
P: _“And you were present last week, during the explanation of our promotional program for our key accounts?”
J: _“Yes, yes, I was.”
P: _“And you have been informed about our risk policy concerning out of state deliveries?”
J: _“Yes…why.. what are you leading to?”
P: _“Then why did you accept that account XYZ benefit from the promotional program, and even go so far as deliver them a truckload of products, when we all know that this client is considered much too risky for us today?”

The above example gives a more precise illustration of the gradual cornering process typical to NIGYSOB situations.  In this process, a series of apparently innocent questions are put to an unsuspecting person, while preparing for a grand slam.  The payoff of the game may look socially positive for Paul who won a few competitive points by putting Jim down.  The result of the game adds up to a lose-lose sum on the longer term, however, when both the relationship between the players and their professional results deteriorate. 

This professional illustration of  the negative outcome of NIGYSOB games underlines their fundamentally destructive result. 

It is very useful for coaches to extract the step by step unfolding of NIGYSOB and consider how the exact same process is also regularly implemented in other professional situations to achieve a much more positive and constructive win-win payoff.  Example:

Salesperson: _”Are you considering a larger and more powerful model, or a medium one for just occasional use.”
Client: _”I definitely need a powerful model that will resist intense work.”
Sales: _”And is design and comfort important, or are you just focused on output?”
Client: _”No, design is not important, but I’m willing to pay the price for some comfort.  And safety is important for me;”
Sales: _”OK, I see.  And are you going to use it in a defined location, or is mobility an important criteria for you?”
…etc.
Sales: _”Well, considering all your previous answers, the model we have which really fits your needs to a tee is in the $200 to $225 price range and we have one available right away, should you be ready to make your decision”.

Note that in this sales-client conversation, a very structured step-by step contract oriented closed-question process gradually leads the client to clearly discovering and defining precise personal needs.  This type of transactional process helps clarify client needs so precisely that it may often close the sale with an immediate purchase.  When this process is led with real concern for the client, it will generally be perceived by all interacting partners and by any observing onlookers as a undeniably win-win relationship.  Consequently, an excellent win-win contracting process happens to be practically identical to the NIGYSOB process described just above.

Indeed, should the exact same conversation be led by a salesperson with a hidden agenda to strategically corner clients into buying products they don’t really need, it would be defined as a sales version of the NIGYSOB game.  Consequently, it appears that a positive win-win contract-defining process is a constructive mirror image of one of the most well-known cornering game T.A. has ever inventoried.

Awareness of this parallel between negative NIGYSOB playing and positive relational contracting is of the utmost importance in all relationships and could be a cornerstone  for personal and professional coaching.  Indeed, this awareness is particularly useful in coaching, consulting and all other professions which position client contracts and agreements as tone of the key competencies in their professional skill set.

Consider for example a situation in which a given coach would choose not to follow a given client to cover some new emerging need because that need was not provided for in the initial contract. 

• When is that coach's response to be considered a positive safeguard for all the people concerned and
• when can it be perceived as a cornering strategy keeping clients from usefully adapting the direction of their coaching process? 

The answer often lies both in the perceived medium or long-term outcome and in the immediate payoff felt by either of the contracting parties.

The fact is : both the positive step-by step contract definition process and the negative step-by-step cornering process can be perceived as two very similar if not identical strategies.  They are often so intimately intertwined that at the outcome of the same relational interaction, it is not too uncommon to find that :

• One of the partners feels cornered, with a negative payoff related to a game process

• The other partner is convinced that a very positive and constructive contract clarification has just been brought to a conclusion.

A deeper awareness of how contract clarification and NIGOSOB are intimately related could help coaches and their clients avoid sliding from the first, focused on longer term positive results to the second, focused on achieving more personal immediate comfort, satisfaction or gains.  Knowing that unaware partners in a relationship can suddenly and unknowingly flip from the positive side of a contracting process to the negative game side of a relational arm-wrestling strategy at a pin’s drop could probably help keep personal and professional relationships on a durable long-term win-win track.

Another lesser-known T.A. game model is the K-Formula invented by Stephen Karpman who also authored the popular Drama Triangle with its Persecutor, Savior and Victim roles.  The K-Formula as a game model is mentioned here because it applies to numerous negative relational situations which rest on poorly defined and unbalanced initial agreements and contracts. 

The model clearly illustrates how predictable interactions that follow a vague, warped or open contract may lead to expected negative payoffs for all the parties involved in the process.  According to the K-formula, should any contract be competitive, incomplete, defensive, vague, offer loopholes, try to corner, or leave room for interpretation, they will permit games. situations and a negative payoff  The K-Formula presents poor contracts and agreements as an easy introduction to almost all gamy situations

To conclude, the K-Formula can be considered an important model to introduce the need for good coaching contracts. Although it is a game model, it clearly introduces the necesity of positive win-win contracting. It is tremendously constructive as it actually seems to orient all relationship partners to a specific positive solution.  The moral of the K-formula is: to avoid the possibility of gamy situations from the start, learn how to establish good contracts focused on measurable outcomes.

To continue illustrating the implicit positive side of well-defined T.A. games, consider the following example of a coaching dialogue, where a client comes to her own insights and practical conclusions:

Jane was telling her coach she wanted to stop using her husband as an excuse to avoid developing her own personal potential.  She had noticed that in numerous situations where she was starting to implement really motivating breakthrough strategies which would help her grow and achieve spectacular results, she would hold back for fear of creating a distortion in her relationship with her husband.  She would then internally blame him for her lack of courage to grow in her own professional field.

This situation may well be illustrated by the game of  If It Weren’t for Him, or a possible projected variation of Wooden Leg.  These are two related and inventoried T.A. games which rest on passivity strategies.  Explaining the game to Jane or having her analyze it would probably help develop her awareness, and several coaching strategies focused on Jane and her deeper motivation could probably help her find her own solutions.

Consider also quickly helping Jane flip the game energy into it’s positive potential with a few powerful coaching questions or equivalent comments:

• _”How may your husband also be using you in the same way, to avoid achieving his own deepest motivations?  Is there an unspoken agreement between you?"
• _”If you are both using each other not to grow, how can you also both use each other to support each other’s potential achievements?  How could you establish a spoken agreement?"
  
• _”What are the completely complementary dimensions of your two apparently separate professional projects, which you could perceive as needing to be developed simultaneously and together?”

Those questions are not centered on the game nor on its solution.  The are focused at helping Jane recognize and act on the underlying process, in its positive dimension.  The coaching strategy is focused on a perceived pattern linking Jane to her husband.  In that pattern, they are linked with hindering energy. Simply redirecting that energy to a positive or supportive win-win outcome, using the same pattern can offer Jane and her husband a very successful alternative.

Notice indeed that in the above situation and in Jane’s perception, the existence of If It Weren’t For Him suggests that there is a strong relationship between her growth motivation and that of her husband.  In much the same was as she will not grow because she wants to stay with her husband, she will grow if they both find a way to do it with together, designing a process for allowing each other's support. 

Should the coach or the client perceive the systemic nature of the situation between the two, it is highly probable that they will perceive that Jane’s husband also has a corresponding or complementary strategy.  If Jane and her husband adopt a larger process view of what is first presented as a negative game, they will perceive that both can either be each other’s excuse for inaction or each other’s support for co-development.

A coaching strategy focused on directing a given client’s energy on solutions rests on the frame of reference that all relational processes including apparently negative T.A. games can be perceived as both positive or negative relational patterns.  In nature, all patterns are neither positive nor negative, they are both. 

This paradigm is based on the coaching frame of reference that intrinsically, all interactive processes are like two sides of the same coin.  They carry the same energy which can be used to hinder and to facilitate relationships towrds their successful outcomes.

To continue ou exploration of highly positive relational patterns, consider another popular T.A. game that has come to be world renowned: Yes, But.  Typically, within the unproductive two-way relationship characterized by this game,

• One first partner painstakingly offers creative solutions to the second party’s problem while
• The second party brushes them away as inappropriate or impossible to implement with a similarly creative succession of “yes, but…” responses.

When perceiving that clients are responding with Yes, But answers, a first coaching strategy is obviously to stop proposing solutions.  The coach can instead choose to proceed with questioning strategies.  Coaches can rest assured that their clients will often be just as creative finding numerous personal answers to their apparently no-exit situations when they offer clients a very simple  “yes, and…?”.

Indeed, it can easily be construed that the sterile Yes, But gamy interaction is so close to the much more solution oriented "yes, and" interactive process that switching from one to the other just barely needs the creation of new mental synapses.

This last comment underlines the possibility that coaching can often consist in carefully listening to client metal processes and then using the exact same client processes to help the them come to different and much more construcive outcomes.  In as much as T.A. game theory has inventoried quite a large number of sterile interactive patterns, a good knowledge of these can help coaches easily redirect client energy down very similar mental avenues to totally different and much more productive outcomes.  This strategic coaching approach can often be quite a time saver when it comes to helping clients subtly modify their success patterns.

An obviously supportive attitude  by giving communication partners and coaching clients  positive feedback on their way of being or doing is also internationally considered a very useful and constructive strategy. 

As a more informational relational strategy, precisely documented positive feedback on someone's behavior, action or results is considered more operational and conducive to learning.  Interestingly, this type of documented positive feedback rests on exactly the same type of feedback process as the game of Blemish.  This game rests on a strategy by which one critical player immediately finds and comments on any fault that can be detected in another person's presentation, production, behavior or communication.

Coaching clients to develop their own positive or constructive perception of any apparently negative situation, partner or project can often help redirect clients to change frames of reference and perceive options and solutions where they previously only saw problems and limits.  Very simple and positively oriented questions can often do the trick:

• Can you underline all that is really positive in that person's attitude?
• How is this person very useful in your life today?
• How can this situation actually be a God-given opportunity for you to learn and develop in ways you have never considered before?
• Describe five really positive criteria you can perceive on the brighter side of this apparently negative assignment.
• Etc.

For some naturally demanding and critical people, spontaneously implementing such positive reactions when facing life and work challenges needs some practice.  The underlying key to success in this learning process is recognizing that finding and expressing positive feedback requires exactly the same mental competencies or synapses as playing Blemish, which specializes in singling out and voicing very precise perceived faults and limits.  Changing habits using the same mental avenues may be a momentary challenge, but is only a matter of practice.

It is a fact, however, that even if playing "brilliant" is a natural strategy for a large number of professional coaches, most are not consciouly aware that they are merely using the same mental patterns as the game of Blemish, with a win-win outcome.

Consider also the game of Dictionary often played by  the same type of critical-minded players.  The game of Dictionary takes place when a person selects or picks on another party's words and subtly redefines them to modify the intent of the original communication.  This is generally done to get an edge on the initial party.  Example:

_"You say that I'm late, but it all depends on what one considers as late.  It is generally accepted that when a deadline is set, you can give or take a couple of days, and you are still on time."

Playing Dictionary could be considered as an intellectual or creative way of playing Stupid, as a defensive strategy ("Gee, I didn't really understand what you said in the same way as you"). It consists in creatively redefining another person's simple words in order to take them for a ride, to avoid being confronted, to avoid being cornered or again to avoid having to admit that one is at fault.

The positive equivalent of playing Dictionary consists in taking time to clarify what a partner in communication is really trying to say.  Testing the meaning of words one against another to really understand the essence of another person's thoughts and feelings is a very useful and powerful listening strategy which often permits the creation of a new common understanding.

The main difference between a game of Dictionary and a more earnest clarification process lies in the profound win-win concern the clarifying partner is demonstrating, intently focused on understanding the essence of what is being expressed. 

As a word-clarifying strategy, coaches often pick on a key client word and just repeat it with a questioning tone of voice to prod clients to further deepen their understanding of what they are stating.  This tactic can be perceived as a strikingly identical process to Dictionary.  The "clarification" positive game is another excellent example of the constructive use of the acute attention one gives to the meaning of words, to foster better communication.  It is the equivalent of the more competitive game of Dictionary.

Clarification as a positive game pattern is central to coaching tactics when the latter is in the process of co-designing a workable contract with a client.  In some cases, the fine line between "Clarification" and Dictionary may also be crossed, when a begining coach picks on client words for the sole reason that he or she doesn't know how to proceed with more pertinent questions.

We have alluded to the game of Stupid in the example just above.  The game of Stupid  rests on a process by which a player assumes an underdog position, pretends incompetency or not to know what to do so as to avoid taking responsibility.   The result is that the partner in the relationship ends up picking up the tab or carrying the proverbial monkey.

Now it so happens that delegation is also the art of letting others do what they have to do, and never picking up their tab or accepting to take their "monkey" on one's own shoulders.  Although it may be difficult for some people, one of the best ways not to offer help or solve another person's problem in their place is to simply say that you don't know.

Client_"How do you think I should go about doing this?"
Coach_"Gee, good question.  I don't really know...  How would you go about it?"

The above example illustrates that the preferred coach tactic to provoke clients to solve their own problems is to adopt an equivalent stance to that of the client, quite symmetrical, and very simply say you don't know any more than they do.  In effect, the tactic of playing Stupid can often be perceived as a very similar process as the art of delegation. The win-win coaching process also creating the space for a client to find their own solutions also mirrors the game of Stupid to a tee.

To be sure, playing Stupid, or in it's more positive form, the art of delegating is a real challenge for those of us who have answers to everything and want to illustrate to the world that we can cope, be strong, and have the last word.  This may be the reason why so many leaders who have long struggled to get to their positions with power-oriented strategies are so often in great difficulty when they need to change their attitudes and behaviors to make room for delegation.

Again, really playing Stupid is an excellent strategy to get away without having to assume any personal or professional responsibilities.  One plays Stupid to have others excuse them for not living up to their commitments, such as when stating _"Gee, I'm so sorry, I forgot all about this again." 

Note however that the exact same "underdog" communication process can be used to avoid picking up someone else's responsibilities, thereby giving them the chance to develop, grow and gradually empower themselves.  Delegation as a positive game is a very effective communication process for those coaches who want to avoid proposing clients options or solutions they can find for themselves.

[1] Berne, Eric, Games People Play, Ballantine Books, 1976, Toronto.

Copyright 2008.  www.metasysteme.eu  Alain Cardon