🧩 Models & personality profiles
Personality & conflict models
Profile models applied to negotiation: DISC (W. M. Marston), Big Five (Costa & McCrae), Process Communication (T. Kahler), Thomas-Kilmann (TKI), social styles (Merrill & Reid).
Full detail in the “Origin & history” section below.
Author of the library
Negotiation lecturer at KEDGE Business School
A rare threefold background serving negotiation: teaching, commercial justice and audit, backed by experience as a company director in Bordeaux.
Transactional Analysis (TA) is a model of personality and communication founded by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, which describes three "ego states", Parent, Adult, Child, from which each person sends and receives messages. In negotiation, it offers an immediate reading grid of exchanges ("transactions") and a steering objective: keep the dialogue as much as possible Adult-to-Adult, factual and responsible, rather than sliding into Parent-Child transactions that block agreement. Spotting the ego state that is speaking and the one being called on makes it possible to defuse power plays, guilt-tripping or submission. It is a tool of relational regulation more than of content: it does not say what to obtain, but how to stay clear-headed and cooperative under tension.
At a glance
Vigilance: low (3.5/10) · Preparation required: 7/10
Indicative profile: it situates the “Models & personality profiles” family as the Models & personality profiles school practises it, not this technique taken in isolation. Techniques from the same family and school therefore share the same profile. NEGOCOACH editorial rating out of 10, non-experimental · the higher the “relational risk” value, the more costly the technique is to the relationship.
NEGOCOACH assessment
Tactical potential 6.7/10 (effectiveness, impact, discretion) and vigilance low (relational and ethical risk): two distinct readings, deliberately never merged into a single score that would reward risk. NEGOCOACH editorial rating calibrated from the “Models & personality profiles” family and the “Models & personality profiles” school. Each criterion is rated out of 10; click to understand what it measures.
How far the technique can carry the negotiation in the intended direction when it is well executed.
Strength of the effect produced on the counterpart's perceptions, emotions and decisions.
How hard it is for the other party to notice the technique is being used. A high value = very discreet.
The information, analysis and rehearsal required upfront to use it effectively.
Potential cost to the relationship and to trust if the technique is spotted, refused or fails. A high value = riskier.
Moral acceptability: fairness, transparency and respect for the counterpart's autonomy. A high value = more defensible.
Documented school
The school this technique stems from is documented by recognised work and established practice, without experimental consensus. This indicator qualifies the school, not this technique taken in isolation.
Indicative NEGOCOACH editorial rating, for teaching purposes. For “Relational risk”, a high value signals a cost to the relationship, not a quality.
Eric Berne (1910-1970), an American psychiatrist, founder of Transactional Analysis in the late 1950s. He presented the model in 1957 to the American Group Psychotherapy Association (article "Transactional Analysis: A New and Effective Method of Group Therapy") then systematised it in the foundational work "Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy" (1961). The general public discovered it with "Games People Play" (1964). TA was later extended by authors such as Thomas Harris ("I'm OK, You're OK", 1967) and the life-positions school.
TA posits that the personality is organised into three ego states: the Parent (norms, judgements, protection, inherited from authority figures), the Adult (rational processing of the here-and-now, facts, options) and the Child (emotions, desires, spontaneity or submission/rebellion). Every unit of exchange is a "transaction": a stimulus sent from one ego state and a response sent from another. Transactions are complementary (the vectors are parallel, the exchange can continue), crossed (the vectors clash, communication breaks down) or ulterior/double-bottomed (a social message masks a psychological message). Operationally, negotiating "in TA" consists in diagnosing in real time the state from which the counterpart is speaking, the state they are trying to activate in oneself, and deliberately choosing to respond from the Adult in order to bring the exchange back to an Adult-Adult plane.
Application by context
Faced with a client who threatens ("Your competitors are much cheaper, you're overcharging!", a Critical Parent calling on the submissive Child), the seller responds as an Adult with facts and an open question to bring the exchange back to rational ground rather than justifying himself or counter-attacking.
The buyer who feels the rebellious Child rising within him ("They take me for a fool") deliberately reframes himself as an Adult to compare total costs and service levels, avoiding a breakdown of the relationship with a strategic supplier.
In a negotiation with staff representatives, the HR director replaces the normative Parent register ("Management has decided, that's how it is") with Adult questioning about real constraints and needs, which unblocks a dialogue that had been frozen until then.
In crisis management or a hostage-taking, the negotiator recognises the frightened or rebellious Child state of the counterpart, welcomes the emotion without denying it, then gradually invites them towards the Adult by asking concrete questions about their demands.
During a debate, an official avoids responding to a Parent-Child provocation with a symmetrical counter-attack and adopts a factual Adult tone, depriving the opponent of the emotional escalation he was trying to trigger.
Faced with a seller emotionally attached to his property (Child / protective Parent), the agent acknowledges the emotional attachment before bringing the discussion back to market comparables as an Adult, separating the emotional value from the objective price.
In an international negotiation, the negotiator takes care not to interpret an indirect communication style as a hostile crossed transaction, and adapts his Adult state to the relational register valued by the other party's culture.
During the division of an inheritance, a brother stops responding as a hurt Child to a sister's Parent reproaches ("You've always been the favourite") and proposes to list together, as Adults, the assets and the criteria for division.
Counter-techniques
Negotiation is also played on defence. Here is how to recognise this technique when it is used against you, and turn it around.
The signals that give it away
The counters that defuse it
Turn it into an advantage
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Strengths: a simple, memorable grid that is immediately applicable under tension; powerful for understanding why a negotiation "goes off the rails" emotionally when the substance would be negotiable; centred on self-regulation (one only controls one's own state); complementary to any content method (principled negotiation, BATNA, etc.). Weaknesses: a descriptive and scarcely scientifically falsifiable model, with a status that is more clinical and educational than experimental; risk of over-simplification (labelling the other "in Child" in a condescending way); the vocabulary (Parent/Adult/Child) may seem reductive or infantilising if poorly explained; the "all Adult" objective may neglect the legitimate relational value of emotion and empathy (the Child state and the nurturing Parent).
Particularly useful in negotiations with a strong emotional charge or a lasting relational dimension (labour, family, internal conflicts, long-term client relationship), when the exchange gets bogged down in reproaches, justification or escalation without progressing on substance, or when one feels an impulsive reaction rising within oneself. Less central in purely technical, one-off and impersonal transactions where the relational stake is low.
Business · Regaining control as an Adult in the face of a reproach, A representative scenario: during a contract renewal, the buyer opens with "Frankly, your service has deteriorated, you should be ashamed of this price", a Critical Parent stimulus aimed at activating the salesperson's submissive Child (who would justify himself) or rebellious Child (who would counter-attack). The salesperson, trained in TA, does not take the bait: he responds as an Adult, "On which specific points have you noticed a decline? Let's look at the indicators of the last six months together." This Adult-Adult response deliberately crosses the Parent-Child transaction without aggression, forces the buyer back to the facts, and turns an indictment into joint problem-solving.
Everyday life · Defusing an inheritance division, A representative scenario: at the point of dividing the family house, a sister blurts out "You've always been the favourite, you want to grab everything again" (accusatory Parent + hurt Child). The brother feels his own hurt-Child reaction rising. Rather than responding "And you never did anything for our parents" (symmetrical escalation), he responds as an Adult: "I understand that this division stirs up a lot of things. I suggest we list all the assets and agree on criteria before allocating anything." By refusing the psychological game and returning to the Adult, he avoids the family breakdown and opens a concrete procedure.
Recognising it: spot when you are being "hooked", a tone of reproach, of lecturing or of threat (Critical Parent) tries to make you react as a submissive Child (justification, apologies) or a rebellious one (aggression); flattery or a complaint may try to activate your rescuer Parent. Defending yourself: do not take the emotional bait, pause, breathe, then respond as an Adult with a fact or an open question, which "crosses" and neutralises the manoeuvre. Calmly name the process if necessary ("Let's stick to the data"). Refuse to enter into repetitive "psychological games" (the victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle) by systematically returning to the contract and the facts.
TA is a heuristic model derived from clinical practice, with a limited empirical basis and hard to falsify; it must not be presented as an exact science of behaviour. Ethically, it aims at authenticity and autonomy ("OK-OK" relationships), not manipulation: diverting the grid to infantilise the other, exploit their life positions or orchestrate psychological games is a perversion of it. The negotiator is neither a therapist nor an analyst: publicly categorising someone else's psychic state is intrusive and counterproductive. Finally, the ideal of "all Adult" must not serve to disqualify legitimate emotions or claims by wrongly filing them under the "Child".
Life positions and "I'm OK, You're OK" (Thomas Harris); the theory of psychological games and Karpman's drama triangle (Victim-Persecutor-Rescuer); the notion of "strokes" (signs of recognition); active listening and reformulation (Rogers); emotional intelligence (Goleman); NVC / nonviolent communication (Rosenberg); the person/problem separation of principled negotiation (Fisher & Ury); NLP for relational calibration.
Quick exercise
Answer in your head, then reveal the solution. Memory is built through active recall.
Frequently asked questions
Transactional Analysis (TA) is a model of personality and communication founded by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, which describes three "ego states", Parent, Adult, Child, from which each person sends and receives messages. In negotiation, it offers an immediate reading grid of exchanges ("transactions") and a steering objective: keep the dialogue as much as possible Adult-to-Adult, factual and responsible, rather than sliding into Parent-Child transactions that block agreement. Spotting the ego state that is speaking and the one being called on makes it possible to defuse power plays, guilt-tripping or submission. It is a tool of relational regulation more than of content: it does not say what to obtain, but how to stay clear-headed and cooperative under tension.
Yes. Used in good faith it stays within a fair negotiation: it structures the exchange without deceiving the other party. Being transparent about your intentions strengthens the long-term relationship.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts. The right reflex: slow down and reformulate.
NEGOCOACH does not assess the experimental validation of this technique in isolation. What we document is the grounding of its source school (Models & personality profiles): documented school. Full detail is in the "At a glance" section of this page.
Practise with AI
Copy, paste into your assistant, replace the [brackets]. Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, Perplexity.
Build your plan before the meeting
You are an expert negotiation coach. Help me prepare to use the "Transactional Analysis" technique in the following situation: [describe your situation]. Give me: the conditions for success, a 3-step script, my counterpart's likely objections and how to answer them.
Rehearse against an AI counterpart
Play the role of my counterpart in a negotiation. I am going to test the "Transactional Analysis" technique. React realistically and with resistance, do not give in too quickly, then at the end analyse my performance and suggest 3 concrete improvements.
Analyse a past negotiation
Here is how my negotiation went: [paste the exchanges]. Analyse whether the "Transactional Analysis" technique was used well, what worked, the mistakes made, and spell out precisely what I could have done better.
References
Founding works of the 🧩 Models & personality profiles school this technique belongs to.
Emotions of Normal People (origine du DISC)
BookW. M. Marston · 1928
Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Big Five)
Ouvrage de référenceP. Costa & R. McCrae · 1992
Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument
OutilK. Thomas & R. Kilmann · 1974
The Process Communication Model
OuvrageT. Kahler · 1982
Profile models applied to negotiation: DISC (W. M. Marston), Big Five (Costa & McCrae), Process Communication (T. Kahler), Thomas-Kilmann (TKI), social styles (Merrill & Reid).
On video
Videos to picture Transactional Analysis and anchor it through examples.
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Technique map
Every technique sits within a network: what it draws on, what it combines with, where it applies, and how to defend against it.
Spot its signals, neutralise it and turn it around with the defensive playbook on this page.
See the counter-techniquesTransactional Analysis (TA) is a model of personality and communication founded by the psychiatrist Eric Berne, which describes three "ego states", Parent, Adult, Child, from which each person sends and receives messages. In negotiation, it offers an immediate reading grid of exchanges ("transactions") and a steering objective: keep the dialogue as much as possible Adult-to-Adult, factual and responsible, rather than sliding into Parent-Child transactions that block agreement. Spotting the ego state that is speaking and the one being called on makes it possible to defuse power plays, guilt-tripping or submission. It is a tool of relational regulation more than of content: it does not say what to obtain, but how to stay clear-headed and cooperative under tension.
Name the manoeuvre: said out loud, a technique loses most of its power.
Reacting emotionally instead of coming back to the facts.
Our programmes turn theory into a concrete advantage.