In our quest to improve upon how we communicate socially – especially on the internet, it’s beneficial to get to the root of the human transaction.

In his best-selling book, I’m OK, You’re OK, Thomas A. Harris discusses Eric Berne’s thoughts on optimizing our social interactions, stating that the unit of social intercourse is called a transaction.

If two or more people encounter each other … sooner or later one of them will speak, or give some other indication of acknowledging the presence of the other. This is called the transactional stimulus. The other person will then say or do something which is in some way related to the stimulus, and that is called the transactional response.

There are key factors that can assist us in our attempts to ensure that there aren’t any discrepancies between the person responding and the person stimulating. Here are a few:

Listen. Whether we are communicating with our brother, client, vendor, or competitor, we should focus first on what they have to say without concentrating on a response while they are still talking. Otherwise we miss the stimulus.

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