If Being Transactional Is Bad, What's the Alternative?

Being transactional sounds bad. You don’t want to be accused of it. It means that you give only when you get to take something in return.

And yet “give and take” sounds good, so what’s the deal? What’s the ideal about deal-making? When, if ever, is it OK to be transactional?

Business is transactional, fees exchanged for goods and services, keeping track of the transactions, who owes what to whom.

Family, partnership, friendship, and “fellowship” (tribal, religious, or spiritual) are supposed to be less transactional and grounded more in love, common cause, spirit, and romance. After a meal together, friends fight over who gets to pay the bill and resolve the fight by saying, “Hey, who’s counting?”

The difference between business and these other kinds of relationships has much to do with future engagement prospects. At one extreme, a temp or gig worker is compensated without likely future engagement. At the other extreme, people who are married for life assume that what they give to each other now will be more than compensated in the long run.

In business, it’s keeping track and paying back. In friendship it’s don’t be awkward, pay it forward. Don’t get awkward about who pays the restaurant check. Trust that the other person will pay next time. Give, and you shall receive. Keep it loose.

Loose but still transactional. In the back of their minds, friends do a little monitoring. They like feeling useful to each other, but they notice if they start to feel used. Feeling used is a transactional deal-breaker.

What, then, if anything, is the alternative to being transactional? Here, I’ll argue that the popularly promoted alternative is, more often than not, hyper-transactional. It’s extolling the virtues of being non-transactional to gain more in transactions.

The supposed alternative to transactionalism treats love, faith, kindness, and charity as the ideal, surrendering into a selfless state of giving and expecting nothing in return. It’s arguing that if we all could do that , there would be enough for everyone, a win-win beyond the hassle of transactional exchange and yet perfectly safe and free because as you give freely, so shall you receive.

These qualities appeal to a dream that lives in all of us, an idealized state where we are safe and free. We no longer have to worry about being provided for and can, therefore, give freely of ourselves.

To advocate this state beyond transactionalism is the ideal promoted by all the loftier ideologies, from libertarianism to communism, Christianity to Buddhism. It’s the utopia where we can relax and retire into oneness, sharing and giving, kindness and charity to all—no more of the taxing scrutiny and due diligence demanded by transactionalism.

The golden rule is the common thread running through most such systems. It, too, implies this alternative to transactionalism. To do unto others as you would have them do unto you, is, at core an argument for accommodating others.

In the give-and-take of life, err on the side of giving, or since it’s a rule, simply give. After all, no matter your preferences, you would like them accommodated. That’s what we would want done unto us, so that’s what we should do unto others. This golden-rule ideal is how being transactional gets its broad-brush bad reputation.

By advocating this state beyond transactionalism, do we make it more possible? Does encouraging people to be more kind, loving, generous, and selfless help us get beyond transactionalism? Perhaps it nudges people toward the looser transactions of family, partnership, friendship, and “fellowship” instead of cold business transactionalism. Alas, quite often, it’s a nudge to let one’s guard down, giving more and expecting less in return.

Many’s the organization that calls itself a “family” as a way to exploit more from its members and employees. Many’s the suitor who extols the virtues of love to get their prospect to surrender. Many’s the tough negotiator who acts hurt at the immorality of a rival’s “unkind” counteroffer. Kindness, love, generosity, and selflessness can become a currency for black-market transactionalism, a “who’s counting?” unaccountability that softens people into giving up tangibles in exchange for feeling less guilty.

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Indeed, the uber-romantic anti-transactional may be the most transactional negotiator of all, playing fast and loose with these idealized moral currencies to cook the books in their favor.

The takeaway? Think twice about those transaction-transcending ideals.

On the receiving end, be wary of people and institutions encouraging you to surrender into family fellowship, love, kindness, trust, generosity, and the golden rule (by accommodating them). Be wary, too, of your temptation to surrender to such virtues. It takes real work to negotiate give and take—far more work than surrendering into these supposed virtues. “Just trusting” can be a lazy way to give up too much in the long run.

And on the delivery end, if you aim to be, not merely appear, honorable, remember that sometimes our desire to appear virtuous exceeds and undermines our ability to be. Anti-transactional talk can be a smokescreen hiding transactional behavior. We can talk as though we’re more giving than we will be and, in the process, hurt people. For example, the suitor who, to feel chivalrous, declares undying love may feel more honorable while being less honorable. When advocating non-transactional virtues such as kindness, we often try to feel like we’re being kind regardless of whether we are. We can trust our lip-service kindness over the conscientiousness necessary to be kind.