Avoiding Rescue, looking after yourself

Individuals who work closely with other people supporting and helping them, often over time start to experience the feeling of helping in more of a negative light. Initially we have lots enthusiasm and we experience a great deal of pleasure from helping people, however this can slowly change as we start to experience personal frustration at apparently having to work against the odds. As we take on a greater sense responsibility, a growing sense of helplessness around help that we give is common. When people experience undesirable personal emotions, they often take what they feel themselves and project the same feelings onto the people they see around them.

Psychological Projection is a defence mechanism that the brain uses to defend itself from undesirable emotions. It works by denying what we as individuals feel, projecting our feelings and thoughts onto what we perceive people around us are thinking and feeling. The purpose of this is to protect their own feelings around situations we feel we don’t have influence over. Often this can result in us feeling helpless, loosing motivation or perhaps seeing others as wrong.

When individuals start to see other people as more and more helpless, unmotivated or perhaps wrong, they take on an ever-greater burden of personal responsibility, caring, helping. They respond in an ever increasing spiral. As the burden continues to increase, they start to expect less and less effort from the people coming to see them.

As Rescuer I come to the Rescue others so that…

Rescuers come with a Cape to save the day, but what drives the Rescuer to do this on repeat as part of a script? In the 1960’s Psychologist Dr. Stephen Karpman working with clients came to understand that rescuers tend to focus their energy onto others as a tactic to ignore their own anxiety, issues and needs. Focusing outwards on a steady supply of victims who they have projected their own feelings and thoughts onto so they don’t need to look at themselves. The rescuer is fixing and helping the helpless victims in every situation they see fit, even rescuing people who don’t need rescuing at all. For a time, this is a successful strategy, however as new feelings about their situation are layered on top the burden of responsibility that is becoming increasingly large, it overwhelms.

As a Coach I work with others so that…

I find it fascinating to understand why we coach, why we have that drive to work with others. Talking with Agile Coaches and Scrum Masters over the years, I have heard so many similar stories that have driven us to do what we do. We love to work with others, we love to support, Coach, and take people forwards. The back stories and journeys behind each Coach are fascinating and also surprisingly similar. Do you know what has driven you to do what you do now?

I think there is a fine line that we tread between working with others with good intent and crossing over to a place of rescue.

Servant Leadership?

I think we probably need to be more careful with the term Servant Leadership, to serve others without being a servant adds a certain level of mental strain. Perhaps the term Servant Leadership isn’t the best way to describe how a Scrum Master acts, as it starts to set Scrum Masters up in a one down position which can then lead to Drama. Perhaps sense of equality would be better, a place where people in a team are equal and working together as adults?

Avoiding Rescue

I think that anyone working with other people be it coaching, mentoring, leading has a duty of care to first look after themselves. Therapists have the concept of supervision, for every 8 hours of time with clients they spend one hour working with another therapist on themselves.

• Put on your own oxygen mask on before helping others with theirs. To avoid rescue you first need to see yourself as ok, find a coach or therapist to work with you.
• Work in a way that involves mutual consent, do only the things you want to do and also expect that of others
• Put in less or equal to the other person; only help up to 50% of the effort.

There are decades of thinking and research that has taken place to understand how people are affected by each other and their past experiences. The Agile and Scrum Community and Modern Leadership has a much deeper understanding of individuals and interactions; however, this is often from more modern management books. I have been surprised by the depth of explanation and understanding by stepping outside of scrum, agile and modern leadership literature and dipping into Psychology and learning about Transactional Analysis, Drama Triangles, Ego States and other work that was conducted last century.

Perhaps People in Agile and Scrum Community should be taking more inspiration from academic work done over the past 50 years and look more and look at the roles we are playing, and the effects this has on the people around us? Inspecting and Adapting on the research into individuals and interactions.

Originally Posted to Serious Scrum