{"id":10573,"date":"2018-03-01T18:07:50","date_gmt":"2018-03-01T18:07:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandler.dsstaging2.com\/case-study\/beware-of-critical-parent\/"},"modified":"2023-07-17T21:01:11","modified_gmt":"2023-07-17T21:01:11","slug":"beware-of-critical-parent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/beware-of-critical-parent\/","title":{"rendered":"Managers: Beware of the &#8220;Critical Parent&#8221; This Quarter"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>In the start of the second quarter, many manager discussions with underperforming salespeople are about to backfire \u2013 because they will begin with messages like:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\r\n<li>Bill, it\u2019s time for you to start thinking about how you\u2019re going to hit your numbers.<\/li>\r\n<li>I warned you about this, Bill. You\u2019re way behind where you ought to be \u2013 you don\u2019t want to run out of time.<\/li>\r\n<li>Bill, how many times have I told you to do A, B, or C?<\/li>\r\n<li>(And so on.)<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>In such messages, the manager is communicating from what Transactional Analysis (TA) would call the \u201cCritical Parent\u201d ego state. When David Sandler developed the Sandler Selling System, he used TA as his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandler.com\/tools\/human-relations-grid\/\">human-relations training model<\/a> to back up his reasoning for why buyers and sellers \u2013 and salespeople and sales managers \u2013 act the way they do. TA assumes that humans operate out of three ego states.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\r\n<li><strong>The Parent ego state<\/strong>\u00a0contains unedited recordings of what you saw our mother, father, and other authority figures do and what we heard them say during our first six years of life. Sometimes, Parent messages were critical, judgmental, and\/or prejudicial. Sometimes they were more nurturing.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The Adult ego<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>state<\/strong>\u00a0acts much like a computer, processing data supplied by the other two ego states, as well as data it collects. The Adult is logical, rational, and analytical. Like\u00a0<em>Star Trek\u2019s<\/em>\u00a0Mr. Spock, the Adult solves problems and reckons probability.<\/li>\r\n<li><strong>The Child ego state<\/strong>\u00a0is where many of our decisions originate \u2013 not just buying decisions, but all kinds of decisions. The Child is that little six-year-old in us who, feeling a particular emotion at a particular time, says, \u201cI want this,\u201d and \u201cI want to do that.\u201d Or perhaps: \u201cI don\u2019t want this,\u201d and \u201cI don\u2019t want to do that.\u201d<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Most managers go into massive \u201ccritical parent\u201d mode when they realize, too late, that a salesperson has a lot of ground to make up the remainder of the year. They say things like, \u201cYou need to sort yourself out and get back on track&#8230;\u201d and they think it\u2019s going to work! The truth is it\u00a0<em>never<\/em>\u00a0works\u2026 although a salesperson sometimes produces good results in spite of what the manager says.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The end of the first quarter is the perfect time for managers to put TA into practice as a productivity tool. TA works because it helps us use our Nurturing Parent and Adult ego states to connect with each other. Here\u2019s how that might sound:<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><em>Stroke:\u00a0<\/em>(Validation that Bill will recognize as authentic):<em>\u00a0\u201c<\/em>Bill, I can tell that you\u2019re going for it 100% and really giving the job your all every single day here, and I really admire that.\u201d (Nurturing Parent)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>(Bill says something along the lines of): \u201cThanks, I appreciate you saying that.\u201d<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><em>Check that Bill\u2019s OK:\u00a0<\/em>\u201cI hope you don\u2019t mind me giving you some feedback?\u201d (Adult)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>(Bill says he\u2019s fine with that.)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><em>Set an up-front contract for the discussion:\u00a0<\/em>\u201cGreat. I wanted to ask how you\u2019d feel about spending maybe fifteen minutes together talking about what you\u2019d like to achieve by the end of the year\u2026 then going through your pipeline so we can figure out what the highest priorities should be for you over the next month, so you can have a strong start to Q2. Would that make sense?\u201d (Adult)<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>A conversation that opens in this way sets the salesperson up for success, generates better information, and allows the manager to serve as a positive example for the individual salesperson and for the team. As you close out Q1, consider looking for ways to co-create solutions with a salesperson \u2013 by operating exclusively from the Nurturing Parent and Adult ego states.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sandler.com\/blog\/category\/management-leadership\"><strong>Learn more about communicating with your sales team with these blog posts!<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the start of the second quarter, many manager discussions with underperforming salespeople are about to backfire \u2013 because they will begin with messages like: Bill, it\u2019s time for you to start thinking about how you\u2019re going to hit your numbers. I warned you about this, Bill. You\u2019re way behind where you ought to be&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":10574,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1120],"tags":[1077,1033,1035],"class_list":["post-10573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-communication","tag-leadership","tag-management"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Managers: Beware of the &quot;Critical Parent&quot; This Quarter | Sandler Training<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the start of the second quarter, many manager discussions with underperforming salespeople are about to backfire \u2013 because they will begin with messages like:\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sandler.com\/blog\/beware-of-critical-parent\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Managers: Beware of the &quot;Critical Parent&quot; 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