The Paradigm for Change and Innovation

How often have your teams been well-intentioned, but gotten stuck in patterns that didn’t generate the desired results? When our relationship paradigms resemble Hollywood movies, with villains, victims, and heroes, we are bound to get stuck in a zero-sum game. However, if we can shift our paradigm to one that fosters collaboration, we can generate much better results.

None of us want to be victims as it feels pretty miserable. Yet, all of us feel this way at times. None of us want to labeled as villains either, even though any time we challenge something, we run the risk of being seen this way. All of us want to be heroes. We all want to be the leaders that save the day, bring in the big deals, give people clarity, hope, and safety. When we feel like heroes, or when we are associated with heroes, we feel validated and worthy.

Yet, it is impossible to truly be a hero for any length of time. Heroes always end up being seen as villains or victims at some point in time.

Perhaps we need a new paradigm where we can all create better outcomes, strengthen our organizations and improve our environments, and feel good about ourselves and those around us.

HEROES, VILLAINS & VICTIMS: THE KARPMAN DRAMA TRIANGLE

In the Karpman Drama Triangle, there is no ‘healthy’ role to play, and the resulting culture can be quite toxic. There are extensive stories in family psychology, organizational behavior, and sociological research showing how unhealthy the triangle is.

The Victim:

• Victims must be helpless with no choices, and they must be grateful to the hero for saving them.
• There are at least two types of victims. (1) Those that are truly victimized and in the short-term don’t have options or the ability to exercise options (willing but unable). And (2) those that are unwilling to exercise available options. A few of the unwilling group have made a career out of the victim role, however, most of the unwilling group may have shifted into learned-helplessness: they no longer believe they can change the circumstances.
• Problems arise when the victim changes the rules and starts trying to help themselves. They are often pushed back down by a withdrawal of resources/support, social shunning, demonizing, reinjuring, etc.
• Given the choices of villain, victim, or hero, when a victim does gain some power, they might temporarily shift into the role of villain to feel some sense of power and possibly revenge. Or they may aspire to the hero role.

The Hero:

• Heroes 'save' others: damsels-in-distress, organizations threatened by ‘evil competitors’, and cute furry animals stuck in trees.
• At best, the hero brings short-term solutions that make us feel good because they rarely collaborate or foster learning. Heroes do not create sustainable solutions.
• Problems arise when someone asks the hero well-intentioned questions. If the hero doesn’t have a huge ego investment in being a hero, they might welcome the questions. However, if the hero’s identity or status depends on looking like a hero, questions will be treated as challenges; the hero then feels disrespected or victimized, and they respond with their power and status, becoming villains (temporarily), and pushing self-motivated victims back into the victim role. They label questioners as 'villains'.
• It is almost impossible for heroes to be full-time heroes. What heroes do in their "off hours" is often overlooked. There are lots of recent news stories illustrating how frequently people revere the “heroic image” (based on their business prowess, or mythical image, or ...) and turn a blind eye to the 'villainous misdeeds'. But eventually evidence of some of those 'villainous misdeeds' leak out and become public knowledge.

The Villain:

• There are many examples of temporary-villains, villains-disguised-as-heroes, and just outright destructive villains.
• However, there is also a somewhat ironic villain. Some people are labelled as villains, but are actually asking the important – but hard – questions, the ones calling out the proverbial elephant in the room. They might even risk their careers and become whistleblowers.
• This type of villain is often someone who makes us feel uncomfortable in a variety of ways: they can make us feel scared, angry, or embarrassed. And often it feels more comfortable to shut those people up, ignore the realities they want us to acknowledge, and push down our body-wisdom so we can maintain a semi-comfortable status quo.
• To maintain the status quo, the constructive ‘villains’ are often branded as trouble-makers, boat-rockers, or 'not a team player'.

The Karpman Drama Triangle is a Zero-Sum Game

• Questions are perceived or used as weapons. Yet for growth, innovation, and change we need good questions.
• People are not expected to develop new skills and new patterns of behavior. Yet for growth, innovation, and change we need individuals and teams to continuously evolve.
• There is no collaboration or creative conflict. Yet growth, innovation, and change depend on collaboration, co-learning, and co-creating.

By only having the choices of hero, victim, or villain (the Karpman Drama Triangle), we lock ourselves into a constant battle of trying not to be victims, and trying to be or looking for heroes..

The Karpman Drama Triangle is a constant battle against perceived ‘villains’, but it offers no structural change, outcome improvements, nor growth of individuals or organizations.

Fortunately, there is a powerful alternative that supports collaboration and innovation.

THE ALTERNATIVE: A QUESTIONING, COLLABORATIVE PARADIGM

One alternative to the Karpman Drama Triangle is The Empowerment Dynamic, created by David Emerald.

The Empowerment Dynamic recasts the roles:

• The Victim becomes the Creator. The creator is responsible for making change, so they can create better outcomes for themselves and those around them.
• The Hero becomes the Coach. The coach is responsible to ask questions to help people (individually and collectively) continuously analyze and develop an understanding of the real problem, to create possible options to address the real problems, and to implement solutions (a process of exploration, experimenting, and ‘commercializing’).
• The Villain becomes the Challenger. The challenger is responsible to ask the hard questions, to call out blind spots, oversights, biases, and any other limiting conditions.

In the Creator-Coach-Challenger paradigm, each person will play different roles at different times, depending on what the situation requires. When someone slips back into the Victim-Hero-Villain paradigm (whether out of habit, or fear, or power-play), they need to be held accountable (ie challenged) and supported appropriately to stay in collaboration (ie coached).

MAKING THE CHANGE

Making the shift from the destructive paradigm to the collaborative requires our own personal and cultural evolution. To adopt this Creator-Coach-Challenger paradigm, we must embrace our own evolution and create the conditions for this culture to thrive. This includes fostering:

• growth mindsets (a belief that we need to continuously learn and evolve)
• body-wisdom (the ability to leverage physiological signals as valuable information)
• creative conflict
• collaboration
• psychological safety

Creating a culture that supports successful, sustainable change and innovation is its own change and innovation project. But it is well worth the effort. By adopting a mindset and creating a culture of Creators-Coaches-Challengers, we can strengthen ourselves, our teams, our organizations, and our environments. And we can have a lot more fun doing it.

I’d be pleased to work with you and your teams to accelerate your collaboration and innovation culture. Please message me if you’d like to explore how to make this happen.?