“I’m OK — You’re OK”: A Leadership Position, Not a Personality Trait
Recently, I was digging through old memories and landed on a mentoring session with one of my former CTOs.
At that time, a decade ago, I was a passionate team leader — dedicated, intense, sharp, cynical, and uncompromising.
A high-performing asshole.
During one of our 1:1s, my CTO drew simple statements on the whiteboard:
I’m OK, you’re not OK ← “Mirek, it’s your default.”
I’m not OK, you’re OK
I’m not OK, you’re not OK
I’m OK, you’re OK ← “If you want to lead well, this is where you need to be.”
This framework originates from Transactional Analysis, introduced by Eric Berne in the 1950s and later popularized by Thomas Harris in "I’m OK — You’re OK" (1967).
It was designed to make interpersonal psychology usable in normal life, not locked inside therapy or academia.
The core idea is easy to grasp:
The stance you hold toward yourself and toward others shapes how you lead.
Not as a permanent identity.
Not as a personality label.
But in every conversation, in every moment of pressure.
Why It Matters
Leaders live in conversations:
feedback sessions, escalations, code reviews, planning meetings, 1:1s.
If your internal position is:
I’m OK — You’re not OK, you’ll lean into control, correction, and “let me fix you.”
I’m not OK — You’re OK, you’ll avoid hard conversations, and standards will quietly slide.
I’m not OK — You’re not OK, cynicism becomes the organizational climate.
Only I’m OK — You’re OK sustains:
trust
psychological safety
growth
accountability without humiliation
And this is not just feel-good leadership theory.
Multiple studies, including one from Google’s Project Aristotle, have shown that teams with psychological safety — where people believe they won’t be punished for speaking up — learn faster and perform better.
Intrinsic motivation comes from autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Leaders should focus on removing barriers and creating psychological safety rather than “motivating” through pressure (read more: Leadership Misconceptions).
The stance behind those dynamics looks a lot like:
I’m OK — You’re OK.
Not soft.
Not permissive.
Just grounded and respectful.
But Here’s the Tension
Engineering leadership constantly tempts us into the other three positions:
Someone ships sloppy code that is away from our standards
→ “I’m OK — they’re not.”You inherit a team of senior engineers and feel inexperienced
→ “I’m not OK — they’re OK.”You work in a messy organization with chronic misalignment
→ “No one’s OK.”
These are emotional reflexes, not character flaws.
Which is why this model is not about being endlessly positive. It’s about choosing where you want to operate from — especially when things are hard.
I’m OK — You’re OK doesn’t deny the existence of problems.
It simply treats problems as shared and solvable.
It’s the difference between:
“Who caused this?”
and
“How did our system allow this to happen?”
Same situation.
Very different organization.
A Necessary Note on Criticism
Transactional Analysis has been criticized in academic psychology for oversimplification. The life-position model is not a clinically precise theory of identity or personality.
It won’t tell you what to do in every situation.
But that’s not the point.
It is simple enough to remember when you need it.
You don’t recall a 300-page leadership book in the middle of an on-call incident or a tense planning review.
But you do remember to check your stance:
Am I relating to them as OK?
Am I relating to myself as OK?
That’s the work.
For the New Leader
You don’t need to master this.
Just start noticing the moment you slip into:
Superiority: fixing, lecturing, proving.
Inferiority: deferring, shrinking, apologizing for existing.
Collapse: “This place will never change.”
Then ask:
What would shift if I chose: “I’m OK — You’re OK” right now?
Often:
The conversation becomes about the work, not the person.
Feedback becomes guidance, not attack.
Standards become shared, not imposed.
Progress becomes possible.
Small shift in posture.
Large shift in outcome.
Endnote
You don’t need to “train” your team in this.
Just practice it where it matters most:
in code reviews
in incident postmortems
in roadmap discussions
in performance conversations
People feel the stance long before they understand it.
And eventually — they meet you there.
I’m OK.
You’re OK.
Let’s build from there.