Getting Past the Drama at Work
Kayla and Will work in the same department of a mid-size organization. Despite being each other’s closest colleague, the frustration between them is boiling over.
When the team didn’t meet their quarterly targets, Kayla blamed Will’s “lazy approach to planning,” while Will blamed Kayla’s “caustic attitude toward clients.”
They both complained to their director.
“Tell her she has to be nicer to the clients if she wants them to call her back,” demanded Will.
“Tell him he can’t wait until two days before the deadline to start his outreach,” Kayla asked of their boss.
Their director, Amy, liked to fix problems and be helpful. In the past, she’d tried to appease Kayla and Will, soothing ruffled feathers. But no more. It was time, Amy knew, for her team to stop blaming others and instead manage their own conflict.
Conflict at work
Psychologist Stephen Karpman was a member of the Screen Actors Guild, so when he was trying to explain the way conflict is experienced, he turned to the language of theater. What we’re experiencing, he said in 1968, is drama. Karpman would have looked at Amy, Will, and Kayla and said they were actors in the script of the “drama triangle.”
Karpman’s drama triangle is useful for exploring the conflict we experience at work and elsewhere. Karpman said we default to one of three roles: victim, villain, or hero.
The victim feels they’ve been wronged. Often, they feel unjustly blamed or maligned by the person they see as the villain. Will sees Kayla as the villain, and he’s the victim; Kayla sees Will as the villain, and believes herself to be the victim.
Amy is playing the third role, the hero or rescuer. Separately, Kayla and Will turn to Amy and say, “Rescue me!” Will wants Amy to justify his behavior and to tell Kayla she’s wrong; Kayla wants Amy to put Will in his place and defend her ways of working.
Managers and leaders are often asked to play the role of hero. “Tell him he’s wrong, and I’m right.” Here’s the thing—many of us, like Amy, enjoy being needed. We are fixers. We have an innate desire to help. So we lean into the circumstance, trying to rescue our team members and defend their honor. Ruffle soothed feathers.
If you’re a parent of more than one kid, this probably feels familiar.
You may also have felt like a victim before.
Or like someone had taken your well-meaning comment and made you like the bad guy. These are common roles and the script is timeless.
Moving past conflict at work
Getting out of the drama triangle at work requires changing your role. Behavioral scientist David Womeldorff offered alternatives to the victim, villain, and hero in his “empowerment dynamic.”
To get past workplace drama, you have to change the script. I’ll offer a question for each role in the empowerment dynamic, to help you get away from the drama.
Instead of being a victim, see yourself as a creator. You can focus on outcomes instead of the problem, and create a solution.
How can what you’re learning help you be better for the future?Instead of seeing your colleague as a villain, see them as a challenger. If you’ve ever watched a sports movie, you know that playing against a really good competitor improves your game—they challenge you to be better.
How is your challenger helping you clarify opportunities for growth?Finally, instead of looking for a third party to rescue you, you can ask them to be a coach. A coach offers guidance and helps you focus, but they don’t do the work for you.
What would it look like to seek (or to be) a coach rather than a hero?
Of course, truly resolving conflict at work takes more than just switching from a victim to creator, or hero to coach. That’s the starting point, but more hard work will follow: you have to address the task and relationship challenges honestly and directly, with thoughtful language, curiosity, and a spirit of compromise. But none of that can happen if you don’t let go of the drama.
