There is a phrase I use in my coaching sessions that tends to stop people mid-sentence.
Emotional leakage.
It is the micro-expression that flashes across your face before you have decided to show it.
The barely-there eye roll.
The sarcastic comment you genuinely thought you were keeping inside.
The stiffening of your posture when your chairman says something you disagree with.
The silence that communicates everything.
You think you are containing it. You are not. Everyone in the room can see it.
I work with senior leaders — CEOs, founders, MDs, VPs — and this is one of the most common patterns I see. Brilliant people, experienced people, who are reacting to their boss, their board, or their chairman in a way that is actively working against them. And usually, they have no idea they are doing it.
Why it happens
This is not a character flaw. It is not weakness. It is not even really about the person in front of you.
It is something that was decided a long time ago, firing in a split second, in the middle of your boardroom.
The framework I use to help leaders manage up more effectively is called the Parent-Adult-Child model (PAC). It comes from Transactional Analysis — a well-established psychological framework — and it is one of the most practical tools I have ever brought into a coaching room.
Parent ego state is the critical or nurturing voice: prescriptive, judgmental, or on the other end, overly rescuing and fixing. It is the part of us that says you should, you must, let me handle that for you.
Adult ego state is the clear, rational, here-and-now thinking. What makes sense in this moment, for the leader I actually am?
Child ego state is where it gets interesting. You can go compliant: shrinking, appeasing, going quiet. Or, far more common in the leaders I work with, you go rebellious. Internally or externally. The internal version is the seething. The external version is the eye roll, the sarcasm, the stubbornness, the refusal to engage.
Every heightened emotional reaction — anything that feels triggered, disproportionate, or difficult to control — is coming from the child ego state. Every single time.
It is not all you
I always make this clear with my clients: this is a transaction between two people.
When a boss, chairman, or board member comes at you from Parent ego state — overly prescriptive, dominating, micromanaging, or conversely jumping in to fix everything before you have had a chance to handle it — they are actively inviting your child ego response. They are pulling it out of you.
If they were leading from Adult ego state — clear, rational, present — you would almost certainly respond from adult too. The reaction is partly theirs to own.
Growing up under a very controlling parent, or conversely being overly rescued and never allowed to fail, creates a strong rebellious child that can stay with us for life. I know this personally. I was brought up by a sergeant major. My rebellious child is alive and well.
So when I tell a client they are operating from Child ego state in the boardroom, I am not pointing the finger. I am showing them something about their own wiring — and giving them a way to work with it.
The moment it lands
I walk clients through the PAC model and then I ask: when you kick against your boss, when you feel that surge of anger or dismissal or irritation — which ego state is that coming from?
They identify it immediately. Child.
Then they usually smile and say: I am being childish, aren’t I.
And I say: no. You are not being childish. This is everyone. We all have three ego states. This is simply the one that fired fastest.
The relief in the room is palpable. Because they have been judging themselves for reacting this way for years. And suddenly it has a name, a framework, and a solution.
Once you see it, you genuinely cannot unsee it. They start noticing it in every interaction. In themselves. In their colleagues. In the way their own team responds to them.
The tool that creates the gap
Between stimulus and response, there is a space. The work is to create that gap.
The sense-check question I give every client is this:
What makes sense in the here and now?
Not what makes sense to the 5-year-old version of you who learned that authority was a threat. What makes sense to the 55-year-old leader you actually are, in this room, in this conversation?
That question does something specific. It pulls you up into adult ego state. And it pulls the other person there too. When you respond from adult, you stop feeding the parent-child dynamic. You break the transaction.
The bigger win
Here is what my clients find most surprising.
By stepping into Adult ego state, they do not just manage themselves better. They inadvertently make their boss a better leader.
Because when you stop responding from Child, you stop inviting the parent behaviour that was triggering you. You shift the entire dynamic of the relationship — quietly, without any conversation about it, without any confrontation. The other person meets you where you are.
That is not just personal development. That is strategic leadership. That is managing up at its most effective.
You become the leader in the room — regardless of your title.
One more thing
Give it a go in your next transaction:
- Identify which ego state you are in and what that invites from the other person.
- Conversely, when you next feel that eye-roll coming on – you know you have someone coming at you from Parent.
What will you do differently?
