A Model for Cutting Down on Gossip and Drama at Work

Theory

In 1972, Dr. Stephen Karpman published a paper titled “Fairy Tales and Script Drama Analysis.” His doc-speak-laden paper lays out a surprisingly simple and useful framework to help us untangle interpersonal conflict, now known as “The Drama Triangle.” Not long after, another psychologist, Dr. Murray Brown, coined the phrase “Triangulation” to describe how stressed two-person systems often become three-person systems.

Hopefully, I’ve established that it’s called a triangle because three people are involved. But why a drama triangle? Also simple: the three (or more) people involved unconsciously begin playing one of three dramatic roles: The Victim, The Rescuer, or The Prosecutor. Why do they do this, you ask? We try to alleviate our unpleasant feelings when something isn’t going our way. To do so, we oversimplify the world, create a “story in our head,” and begin to act that story out as if it were a fairy tale.

One important note is that these roles are situational, and people can switch roles inside a situation or relationship. People aren’t “rescuers” every morning they wake up the way they may be an ISTJ on the Myers-Briggs, but they can take on the role of a rescuer inside of one meeting, a Victim in another, and none of these roles in other situations.

In my experience, many founders tend to take on the “the rescuer” role more than others (also referred to as “the hero.”) Rescuers’ primary activity is “fixing” other people’s problems and ignoring or avoiding their unpleasant feelings and problems. One fascinating nuance of Rescuers is that their efforts to “help” often end up doing more harm than good. They hope to help but make you a victim when they micromanage.

Prosecutors are all about dishing out blame and finding fault in others. Prosecutors are often motivated by nasty stuff like feeling superior (”I’m not to blame, you are”) and diverting attention (”He failed… don’t look at my project”).

If Rescuers fix and Prosecutors blame, Victims complain. Karpman wasn’t using the word “victim” to describe people who had legitimate grievances as a result of being harmed by other people. These folks act like a victim, an important distinction. They feel disempowered; someone did something to them.

Practice

The first step to getting out of Drama Triangles is to noticing them and how abundant they are. So what do these look like in real life?

One of my favorite triangles goes something like this.

A CEO comes to a session upset that “the engineers” have been spending time “refactoring the site” and other phrases that all translate to “stuff I believe is a waste of time.” The CEO is the classic Prosecutor here. When the CEO brought this up with the head of engineering, they, playing the Victim, said, “We’re waiting for Product to finish another spec, so we didn’t have anything to do.” And instead of admitting they need to redesign the R&D teams to better work together, the CEO switches roles to that of The Rescuer by leaving the meeting, opening up a product spec, plowing through two hours over an extra coffee that night, and finishing the spec without talking to the product team.

Here are a few more fun ones:

• Victim: Managers claiming, “Nobody wants to work anymore!”
• Prosecutor: Sales blaming marketing for “bad leads” and marketing blaming sales for “not being able to convert good leads.”
• Rescuer: The CTO comes to the CEO with a beef with the CPO, so the CEO says, “I’ll talk to her about it and make sure it doesn’t happen again.” If you’ve ever said, “I’ll just do this myself,” you’re in “Rescuer” mode.

Once you notice the roles you and others take on, and I promise you will, you’ll be able to move out of habitual unconscious reactions into a more resourceful mindset where you can choose how you want to respond.

Karpman’s Drama Triangle is now such a popular concept in management and psychotherapy that it’s spawned many “solutions” to the drama triangle that suggest how to shift out of the chaos of drama into a frankly, “less shit,” way of being and working with people. Despite having a bruiser of a website (930px of white space anyone?), author David Emerald’s book, The Power of TED, offers an alternative triangle. Instead of rescuing, coach—help them come up with their own solution. Instead of prosecuting, challenge—encourage them to understand the consequences. Finally, instead of being a victim, create solutions—do your best to solve the problem and take responsibility for your part.