Possibly the Most Brilliant & Most Annoying Insight into Mindset & Human-Relations You’ll Read This Year

Damn you Karpmann.

If you don’t know the Karpmann Drama Triangle, it’s a model of mindset and relationships which will probably shift your world on its axis. When the penny drops, you’ll be incapable of viewing yourself or your relationships the same way again.

It takes a minute to understand and a lifetime to navigate. After 12 years of working with the triangle, I still see new patterns and foibles emerge in my own behaviour all the time. Like I say, damn you Karpmann.

The Karpmann Drama Triangle proposes that, through formative experience, we learn to gain power in any relationship by adopting one of three standard ‘positions’:

1. Perpetrator — I’m right you’re wrong; I’m powerful; I’m not responsible… you’re to blame…
2. Victim — I’m wrong… I’m always wrong; I’m powerless; I’m not responsible… everyone is nasty to me and it’s not fair…
3. Rescuer — I’ll fix it; I’m powerful (in a helpful elf, ‘please love me’ kind of way); Don’t worry… I’ll take responsibility for EVERYTHING…

Here's the rub...

When you find yourself in one of these three mindset positions, you simply perpetuate your, and everyone else’s, position.

If you rescue a victim… they stay a victim…

If you perpetrate a rescuer… they rescue until they snap…

If you play the victim.. people continue to either perpetrate or rescue.

And things get really hairy when people move around the triangle together. Here’s an example: The rescuer finally snaps, thinks ‘Well sod this for a game of soldiers’, gets angry and moves to the perpetrator position… at which point the victim says, ‘You see everyone’s always horrible to me’… and the perpetrator, shocked by the rescuer’s surprise change in tone, gets self-pitying and moves to the victim position. It’s really grim.

Luckily, there's a way to get out of the triangle

You can escape the triangle by developing a 4th mindset position—one that sits outside the triangle. This is the ‘Leveller/Observer’ position, and the mindset is:

• "I’m OK, you’re OK, and we have a challenge between us we need to fix.”
• “I’m responsible for my words, thoughts, deeds… you’re responsible for yours.”
• “I notice the drama, I’m happy to discuss it, and I’m not getting in it.”

There’s a richness to Karpmann’s work which it’ impossible to capture in this short article, but here’s an experiment to get you going…

Your Mindset Leadership Experiment

Step 1 – In your next team meeting sit back and observe:

• Who’s showing dominance and power, shutting people down, rolling their eyes or throwing their weight about? Who, in an oh-so-subtle, executively appropriate way, takes the ‘I’m right you’re wrong’ perpetrator position.
• Who’s playing the victim card? ‘It’s not my fault, I can’t, that never works, it’s impossible, it’s not fair’?
• Who’s a helpful elf, taking responsibility for everyone and everything, placating, fixing, worried about everyone else’s feelings and trying to fix everything by being super helpful but ultimately controlling?

Step 2 – Notice your own behaviour—which mindset position do you move to under pressure? Is that mindset keeping your team stuck? How would they benefit if you adopted the ‘leveller / observer’ position and mindset?

Let me know how you get on..