Hi again {{first_name|dear reader}}!
This week we’re talking about one of the most helpful concepts I’ve encountered when it comes to being a better leader. I turn to this idea basically every week at work - including last week, which inspired me to write this post.
I was in a meeting with my team in which I was sharing some vision and strategy for how I wanted us to approach new work together. I had worked hard on prepping all of this…but it was not being received well. Part of what I was sharing was a shift from our previous plans, and the whiplash was frustrating for some of my teammates.
I understood the frustration. Looking back, I could have framed what I was presenting in a more intentional way.
But I was also frustrated myself. I felt like my team was asking me to come up with vision, and to be as clear and directive as I could be. I had worked hard to do that, and yet they were still not thrilled. I felt indignant. What more do you want from me?? I did what you asked for and you still aren’t grateful!
It wasn’t until I was debriefing with our COO Sara that I realized I had done what I often do when I feel like “it’s all on me”:
I Heroed myself.
In the late 1960s, an psychiatrist named Stephen Karpman1 made the observation that whenever there is drama or tension in the room, it is almost always because people are stepping into one (or more) of these three roles:
Hero (saving the Victim from the Villain)
Victim (persecuted by the Villain, rescued by the Hero)
Villain (attacking the Victim, blamed by the Hero)
This Drama Triangle forms when someone steps into one of these roles. The only way they can play that role is if others play another role on the triangle, so they “cast” other people into those roles.
They then chase each other around the triangle because once you’re on it, you usually feel like you’re in multiple roles at once. For example, in that meeting I put myself in the Hero position: saving my team - those poor Victims! - from a lack of vision and clarity. And when they were basically like “we don’t actually need saving here” I felt like the Victim: but you did this to me!
These three positions are only roles - they do not define the actual identity of the person speaking. Sometimes it is actually necessary to be the hero in a situation and solve something, and sometimes people are truly victims. The Drama Triangle is what happens when people manufacture those roles for themselves. That role creation distorts reality unproductively and diverts attention to the inherent or imagined drama that exists between these three roles.
And yes it definitely shows up at home too. Over the past couple weeks my wife Amalia and I have been planning our family vacation in December. Well - *I* have planning it. I was doing a ton of research, thinking through all the options, reaching out to people and places. It was too much, and I felt resentful.
Why is this all on me?? (Victim)
I feel like if I try to ask my wife to help me with it, that would stress her out. (Villain)
Okay I will just get it done and figure it out. (Hero)
And then I realized: wait. She did not ask me to do this. I assigned myself this project, and I cast myself in all of these dramatic roles. When I brought up this realization to her she was like…yeah dude. Maybe you don’t have to do that? She said that she just doesn’t really feel like thinking about all of it and doing the planning right now. And as soon as she said that I realized that’s actually exactly how I feel too, I just wasn’t admitting it to myself. I took a big sigh…and stepped off the Triangle.
So how can we choose roles that are productive rather than dramatic? We can shift from
Hero → Coach
Villain → Challenger
Victim → Creator
(this image from theprofitrecipe.com uses the original terminology from Karpman - I like the newer language from the Conscious Leadership Group)
In debriefing with Sara, when we realized we had put ourselves on the Drama Triangle in that meeting, Sara asked “how can we try to avoid this in the future?” We have various code words we use with each other for other scenarios2 and I suggested we add a code word to the list: if one of us feels like things are getting dramatic, we’ll DM to the other: Triangle?
That felt profound to me last week so I wanted to share it here in case it is helpful! Next time you feel that tightening in your chest, the gritting of teeth, even a general sense of unease in a relationship, ask yourself…
Triangle?
1 Karpman was an actor before he went into psychiatry - and his knowledge of how dramatic roles function with each other on stage informed his conception of the Drama Triangle.
2 One of them is “blueberries”