frustration and, ironically, reduced impact.
Edgar Schein has untangled the paradox of being helpful in his
excellent book Helping. At its crux is the insight that when you
offer to help someone, you “one up” yourself: you raise your
status and you lower hers, whether you mean to or not. This idea
seems counterintuitive, I know, because so often our desire to help
comes from genuine caring. But the insight rings true when you
put yourself in the shoes of the person who is being offered help.
When you think back to times when “help” has been thrust upon
you, you’ll probably notice a curious mixture of reactions that
include resistance, frustration, disempowerment and annoyance.
So what’s going on? And how can you temper your approach so
that more often you are helpful in a way that actually helps? A
useful starting point happens to be a triangle.
The (New) Seven Dwarfs & the Karpman Drama Triangle
Transactional Analysis (TA) is the slightly-out-of-fashion
therapeutic model that has given us the labels of “parent-child”
and “adult-adult.” It’s intriguing, but almost impossible to apply
directly in organizations. It involves too much therapy-speak. The
Drama Triangle, a practical interpretation of TA developed by
Stephen Karpman, is one way to make TA practical and useful.
The Drama Triangle starts by assuming that, at least some of
the time, we’re playing less-than-fantastic versions of ourselves
with most of the people with whom we interact. If you’ve ever