Does Your Brand Promote Drama In The Workplace

Are employees equipped with the mindset and vocabulary to handle drama?

Brand values need to be brought to life in more effective ways. If your brand is all about positivity and empowerment:

Do you teach your people the requisite skills?
Does your company culture promote drama?
Do you have the words to frame or diffuse drama in your workplace?



PROLOGUE
I was part of a company that prided itself in promoting diversity and inclusion. A company where, from day one, we were taught to ‘take care of each other’ and where we were continually reminded, at every company culture event or training, to uphold this value.

Training mostly started with ‘We must take care of each other’

Then proceeded with scenario based questions that required me to select the correct action that exemplified this value.

Then it ends with ‘if you’re unsure of what you’re supposed to do, reach out!’.

Cool.

In retrospect, none of the lessons were remotely useful when it came to real-life scenarios that me and my teams faced. All we probably remembered was to just pass the message along to someone higher up in the pecking order to sort it out. Or raise a complaint to HR.

Here’s an example:

Chad was a new hire.

Chad was your stereotypical Gen Z.

Min-Maxing was his religion.

Minimum effort for maximum results.

You had to convince Chad that any task given was a task worth doing.

This behaviour brewed dissatisfaction among the team members.

Before long, Chad was being singled out.

Any comment or feedback was viewed as an act of rebellion or a sign of him being ‘unteachable’.

Every mistake amplified and blown out of proportion.

So what did Chad do?

Well, he remembered the training, and he followed it to the T.

He spoke to me, the manager, about this situation.

___________________

THE DRAMA TRIANGLE
DRAMATIC STORYTELLING FOR YOUR AUDIENCE? YES, PLEASE.
DRAMA AMONG YOUR EMPLOYEES? NO, THANK YOU.


All good drama has these 3 characters.

The Villian
The Victim
The Hero

The villain finds fault in others, blames everyone but themselves for any mishap, and influences others to ‘gang up’ to dominate any situation.

The victim places themselves in a powerless or hopeless position, complains to everyone about the situation, and relies on others to save them from their predicament.

The hero by default steps in to put a band-aid on the situation, enabling future self-victimizing behaviour, and completely misses the long-term solution.

Guilty of being any one of these?

Maybe your friend or colleague has and you were just a silent onlooker.

A.K.A.

The Popcorn Eater

But we’ll get to that later 😉

Stephen Karpman was a psychologist in the 1960s who was a member of the Screen Actors Guild. He called the 3 characters The Drama Triangle.

The labels given in The Drama Triangle gives us a way to quickly classify the actors and their roles. Some subtle nuances include actors who are both the Villian and the Victim at the same time or the differences between Victim behaviour VS actual victims.

The shift proposed for anyone trapped in the triangle was popularized by David Emerald. David, a consultant, executive coach, and author, introduced The Empowerment Dynamic as a solution to The Drama Triangle. We’ll call this The Empowerment Triangle for easier reference.



THE EMPOWERMENT TRIANGLE
The empowerment triangle proposes a framework to approach the drama. It requires a mind shift in the role of all the 3 actors.

The mind shifts required:

The Villain → The Challenger
The Victim → The Creator
The Hero → The Coach

The Challenger aims to inspire and motivate through positive pressure. Challengers have the courage to confront AND wisdom to ‘wield the hammer’ in a constructive manner. Not to knock people down, but to build people up.

The Creator takes responsibility and accepts accountability. Creators respond to challenges and aim for progress. They take ownership of their work and build to improve the situation while accepting constructive input.

The Coach isn’t there to fix but to support. The coach facilitates, guides, encourages, and knows when to let go. Since this is a LinkedIn audience, The Coach doesn’t give you a hook. The Coach teaches you how to customize a hook formula for your own future needs.

All 3 of these roles are plenty hard to embody but that’s how you empower a team to move forward instead of squeezing every ounce of drama possible for 20 seasons.



Now, what about The Popcorn Eaters?

Bystanders are a morally complicit actor.

Martin Luther King Jr in his famous letter from Birmingham Jail said:

“History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people,”
Let’s take that in one more time.

The APALLING SILENCE of the good people.
The ‘None of my business’ and ‘I saw that coming from a mile away’ energy only makes you a coward.

You're at a vantage point. Those trapped in the Drama Triangle are often too consumed with emotion to notice.

Take on the coach or challenger role in the Empowerment Triangle.

Step in and be the voice of progress and good.



____________

EPILOGUE
I neither had the vocabulary, framework, or proper leadership experience to handle Chad’s situation in the moment.

I ended up playing The Hero.

I took Chad under my wing, executing smaller and individual projects with Chad and arranging workflows that require minimal involvement between Chad and the rest of the team.

All I focused on were client deliverable outcomes.

None of the villains were confronted.

No more complaints.

No more problems.

Not.

Chad left after a few months.



Today, I am a solopreneur. Being in this position allows me a lot of time to reflect on my own shortcomings as a leader and manager in the workplace. Maybe one day, when I decide that leading and managing a team is something worthwhile, I could right these wrongs and prove to myself that this is not just all talk.

Brand values need to be brought to life in more effective ways. If your brand is all about positivity and empowerment, do you teach your people the requisite skills?
P/S. Do you have a different approach in dealing with drama in the workplace?