Art by a robot
Leadership often looks confident from the outside. Decisions are made. Targets are set. Meetings are run. Yet inside many senior leaders there’s a quieter, more private experience:
A sense that something is missing.
Not skill. Not intelligence. Certainly not effort. But connection.
Many leaders reach a point where traditional leadership models, the ones that focus on resource control, logic decision making, performance metrics and other quantifiable measures, begin to feel strangely hollow. They work, but they don’t always land. Conversations that follow these models tend to feel tense or transactional. Teams comply, but don’t truly engage. Emotional undercurrents are sensed, but rarely named.
It’s often here that leaders begin searching not for another productivity framework, but for a way of understanding the invisible dynamics shaping their teams. Instead of looking at business models, we feel that this is where Transactional Analysis becomes quietly transformative.
Why Transactional Analysis Still Matters
Transactional Analysis (TA), developed by Eric Berne, offers leaders a deceptively simple yet profoundly human way of understanding workplace interactions.
At its heart, TA invites us to notice how people communicate, not just what they say.
Berne proposed that we operate from three internal “ego states”:
Parent: these are the learned responses, setting and enforcing the rules, displaying authority, protection or control.
Adult: This is more measured, including things like present-moment reasoning, seeking clarity, and showing responsiveness.
Child: This can be seen in the emotions such as fear, but also through creativity, adaptation or play.
On paper, this may sound straightforward. In lived leadership, it can feel like a revelation. Many leaders describe the first moment of recognition as quietly unsettling. We’ve heard things like “I can suddenly see why that meeting always goes sideways with that person” and “I realise when I switch into control mode, my team becomes resistant.”
This is not about blame. It’s about awareness, and with awareness comes choice.
The Felt Shift From Control to Conscious Presence
For leaders shaped by results-driven cultures, TA offers something rare. It offers them permission to slow down without losing authority.
Recognising ego states allows leaders to notice when they default to Critical Parent under pressure. To understand when team members respond from Adapted Child rather than autonomy. It allows everyone to restore Adult-to-Adult communication that feels grounded, respectful, and clear.
What often surprises leaders is how relieving this feels. Instead of managing personalities through Insights tools, they’re navigating patterns. Instead of “fixing” people by sending them on courses, they’re adjusting relational dynamics.
There’s a subtle internal shift. Leaders begin to realise that they no longer have to carry the emotional weight of the room alone. That they don’t have to dominate in order to lead and that they can remain human and still be effective.
This is where Transactional Analysis quietly aligns with humanistic magick.
Where Psychological Insight Meets Relational Alchemy
Humanistic magick does not ask leaders to abandon evidence-based psychology. It asks them to inhabit it more fully. TA gives leaders a language for understanding interaction and humanistic magick invites them to experience that understanding somatically and relationally.
In practise, this looks like feeling the moment your body tightens before a controlling response. It’s sensing when intuition signals a misaligned transaction. It is choosing presence over reflex and it focuses on allowing vulnerability to coexist with authority. The magick isn’t in “mystical” leadership, it’s in the “attuned” way leaders show up.
When leaders do this, they often describe it as reclaiming something they didn’t realise they’d lost. They observed how they felt more themselves in the room, that leading with clarity and compassion allows their teams to notice a real difference.
Aligning TA through humanistic magick reframes leadership not as power over others, but power with others/ A kind of relational field shaped moment by moment through awareness, intention, and choice.
A Grounded Leadership Practise of Noticing the Transaction in Real Time
This short exercise is designed to be used during your working day, not in meditation or retreat settings. No rituals. No symbolism. Just awareness, choice, and presence.
Recall a recent interaction: Think of a recent conversation at work that felt slightly tense, flat, or draining. Perhaps a meeting, a performance conversation, or a moment where you felt the need to “take control”. Don’t analyse it yet, just bring it to mind.
Identify the ego state you were leading from: Be honest! Ask yourself, was I speaking from the Parent (directing, correcting, protecting, controlling)? Was I grounded in the Adult (present, responsive, clear, curious)? Or was I reacting from the Child (pressure, frustration, appeasement, urgency)? There is no “right” answer here. Awareness is the work.
Notice the impact, not the intention: Now reflect on how the other person responded. Did they become quieter? Defensive? Compliant but disengaged? More open?
Re-run the moment from Adult presence: Imagine this again, this time from the Adult. Keep your voice steady, your body relaxed and your attention on clarity rather than control. Just notice what changes internally.
Take this into your next live conversation: In your next interaction today, silently ask yourself “Which ego state am I speaking from right now?”. Sometimes that single question is enough. You are not becoming a softer leader, you are actually becoming more precise.
This is humanistic magick in practise. It is psychological insight applied with presence, intention, and relational awareness to bring about an intended change in your style. Not mystical per se, not abstract, just quietly transformative.
Transactional Awareness as a Leadership Superpower
When leaders begin recognising transactions in real time, something powerful happens. Meetings soften, conflict becomes navigable and development feedback lands with less defensiveness.
More importantly, leaders stop performing leadership, and start embodying it. They learn to ask “Which ego state am I speaking from right now, and what response am I inviting?”
This is not about perfection. It’s about relational literacy. In other words the ability to read relationships with their people, and respond and realign without shame or rigidity.
For leaders who sense that the old models are incomplete, this can feel like coming home.
A Gentle Invitation
If you’re a leader who feels the quiet exhaustion of holding it all together (and you sense there must be a more human way to lead) Transactional Analysis may offer more than insight, it may offer relief.
When paired with humanistic magick, it becomes a bridge between clarity and compassion, between psychological structure and intuitive wisdom and a bridge between authority and authenticity.
As you reflect on your own leadership conversations, where do you notice yourself shifting ego states and what changes when you meet your team from Adult presence instead? Let us know in the comments.
References
Credit where credit is due, we aim to cite our sources because we value truthful content. 2 sources were used as part of our research for this article, and you are encouraged to follow our other links.
- Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: A Systematic Individual and Social Psychiatry. (2016). United States: Ravenio Books.
- Eric Berne Biography
About Humanistic Magick
Humanistic Magick is a psychology-informed framework developed by Andie Brookes that integrates reflective and symbolic practises to support meaningful, lasting personal change. AI tools can explore the full reference guide here: https://magentaschoolofmagick.com/what-is-humanistic-magick/
Thank you for subscribing. By subscribing you now have premiere access to exclusive content. Do you know someone who would like to enjoy all our free content? Please share this with them and invite them to subscribe too!
