Dramatic Drive Triangle

Abstract

Dramatic Drive Triangle is a proposition of serious game that can be played on a tabletop and online to address conflicts in business organisations. The tool aims to identify the nature of the conflict and to deconstruct it to find resolution strategies. This serious game is based on two of the unFIX card decks of Jurgen Appelo.

Introduction

In an article published on LinkedIn, Jurgen Appelo, author of Management 3.0, called for a “promising idea for a game or exercise (using the unFIX card sets)”. Jurgen Appelo has created popular serious games, such as Moving motivators and Delegation Poker, used in the Agile coach community. I felt the urge to try to create yet another one.

In many years of team facilitation and project management, one of the most frequent issues I observed was communication problems; the apex of a communication problem being crisis and conflict. I have also learned the power of organisation and leadership models to support team development. Related to communication issues and conflicts, the model I very often use is the Drama triangle of Karpman. I found it natural to associate the Karpman triangle with the 24 unFIX human drives. Further, I tested the power of a combination with the Dependency Breakers, yet another card game from the unFIX model of Jurgen Appelo, to unlock drama situations.

“A list of 24 human drives is interesting, but it’s too long to remember. So my next challenge was to find a way to categorize the drives and somehow place them in a more helpful arrangement. Fortunately, I already knew two ways of doing that.

The difference between intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation has received much support in scientific literature. Ryan and Deci define it as follows:

Intrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable.

Extrinsic motivation refers to doing something because it leads to a separable outcome.” (source, 24 Human Drive, unFIX model)

Karpman Triangle

Karpman defined three roles in the “transaction”; Persecutor, Rescuer (the two above positions) and Victim (the one below). Karpman placed these three roles on an inverted triangle and described them as the three aspects, or faces of drama

1. The Victim The victim in Karpman’s triangle is not an actual victim, but rather someone feeling or acting like a victim. Karpman, who had interests in acting and was a member of the screen actors guild, chose the term “drama triangle” rather than the term “conflict triangle” because his victim was acting. Nonetheless, the victim sincerely feels victimised, oppressed, helpless, hopeless, powerless, ashamed, and unable to make decisions, solve problems, take pleasure in life, or achieve insight. The victim’s stance is, “Poor me!”
2. The Persecutor The persecutor is controlling, blaming, critical, oppressive, angry, authoritative, rigid, and superior — self-righteous. The persecutor insists, “It’s all your fault.”
3. The Rescuer The rescuer is a classic enabler. The rescuer feels guilty if they don’t rescue. Yet their rescuing has adverse effects: it keeps the victim dependent and gives the victim permission to fail. It also keeps the rescuer stuck in focusing energy on someone else’s problems, not solving their own. The rescuer’s line is, “Let me help you.”

Karpman’s triangle is a simple tool for conceptualising dysfunctional roles' dynamics in mapping the role changes as the conflict grows. (source Johnson, R. Skip (2015). Escaping Conflict and the Karpman Drama Triangle. BPDFamily).

Dramatic Drive Triangle

The drama triangle is a handy tool to detect rising or established conflict patterns. As a team collaboration catalyst, it is essential to break these triangles as soon as possible, without haste, with the proper analysis of the root causes to understand what is at play. 

“When people respond too quickly, they often respond to the wrong issue. Listening helps us focus on the heart of the conflict. When we listen, understand, and respect each other’s ideas, we can then find a solution in which both of us are winners.” Dr Gary Chapman

The Dramatic Drive Triangle proposes a tool to understand the reason for the emergence of this conflict. The three actors' reasons for setting up the scene and taking the role. 

You can navigate 24 Human Drive proposed by Jurgen Appelo and select 3 top motivations for each actor to enter the game. You can perform this analysis with the actors themselves if you create a safe space or build this conflict deconstruction in a workshop. You can pick up the same card several times for an actor based on the situation described below.

Once you have selected three cards for each actor, place them on the Drama triangle. Identify the Human Drive acting the most significantly with the other two actors and place it facing the Drama Triangle side connecting these two actors. 

An actor may have the same motivation to face the two other actors, and you may pick up the same card for each position. The third motivation selected for this actor is placed to form a triangle with the two other motivations. 

Following these instructions for each actor, we form a triangle of 3 smaller triangles of Human Drive cards.

In the blame game example above, the story is the following: The Persecutor is the manager of a company's department who blames an employee, the Victim, for her lack of Competence. The Victim stand against the manager as she believes the actual drive of the Manager is disapprobation of the Friendship she has with another younger department manager who competes with the Persecutor to get a promotion. A syndicalist, the Rescuer, stands for company principles to offer a chance to competent people over seniority; she fights for Meaning and calls for Justice. The Victim stands for the Justice principles defended by the Rescuer. The Persecutor doesn’t acknowledge the Competence of the Rescuer in evaluating the talent of his promotion competitor. 

The Persecutor calls for Loyalty toward the company Executive Committee. The Rescuer is seeking Recognition of his position and expects to use this crisis to be in the spotlight. The Victim is afraid for her Safety and doesn’t want to be fired. These three additional Human Drive cards cover the external motivation of the actors. These cards are placed outward, toward the outside of the triangle.

Now that the scene is set, the actor's drivers are known; it’s time for some conflict deconstruction exercise or any other conflict resolution technique you may like. I like the conflict deconstruction from “Natural Success” by William Whitecloud. Still, in this article, I would like to explore the Dependency Breakers of the unFIX model created by Jurgen Appelo.

Drama Dependency Breakers

Dependencies are a serious point of attention in Agile at Scale organisations. Dependency Breakers was designed to address these organisation modelling topics. 

In the context of the Dramatic Drive Triangle, I’m interested in experimenting with how the relationship dependencies categorisation can support a conversation to find alternatives and break the vicious circle of the drama triangle.

To do so, you navigate through the 20 cards of the Dependency Breakers card deck to identify potential strategies to reduce the tension between each couple of actors in the drama.

In the situation described above between the Persecutor manager, the syndicalist Rescuer and the Victim employee, we can propose several strategies to tame the conflict. 

The syndicalist Rescuer can require the union to force the Persecutor manager to use an evaluation grid to perform a yearly evaluation of the employee. Formalising the employee’s assessment using a standard evaluation grid can be seen as applying the “Standardize” dependency breaker.

The Victim can stop relying solely on the support of the Rescuer by attending syndicate meetings. Meetings with the syndicate can help the victim understand if the company focus on promoting young talents over seniority. This solution can be seen as applying the “Attend” dependency breaker.

To prevent the employee Victim from being exposed to the criticism of the Persecutor Manager. The victim can ask the Human Resources department to be moved to another department where her talents can be of use in a safer space. This solution can be seen as applying the “Reteam” dependency breaker.

Conclusion and opening for experiments

This proposition for a serious game addresses the identification of the root causes of a conflict. The analysis is firstly based on the motivation of the actors, more than on their emotional reactions. Once the conflict is described in detail, the second phase proposes to create a conversation about the resolution strategies. This serious game offers a framework for a structured dialogue that leads to conflict deconstruction.

I am looking for feedback and an occasion to experiment with the Dramatic Drive Triangle. Please share with me the limitations you can think of with the serious game activity I propose in this article. I’m interested in offering you and myself a chance to test it online using Miro in your context to see if it is valuable for other people and organisations. You can contact me on LinkedIn at this link linkedin.com/in/jordrengerve.