How NASA Builds Teams: Mission Critical Soft Skills for Scientists, Engineers, and Project Teams

CHAPTER 17

Your Team Can’t Afford Drama

Mounting the Stage—Performing Your Melodrama

Now, here is the bad news. You can master everything in How NASA Builds Teams described so far and find yourself unable to take action unless you are in the mindset of response-ability. What takes us out of this state? We lose our capacity to respond by entering one of the four drama states: rescuer, blamer, victim, and rationalizer. Boy George is broadly cited for, “If you have to be in a soap opera, try not to get the worst role.”

Dr. Steve Karpman pioneered this work with his “Drama Triangle” (1968). The fourth state, the rationalizer, came from placing the 4-D System on drama. (As in previous chapters, note in Figure 17.1 that we continue tracking progress assessed behavior and assessed behavior as we go.)

FIGURE 17.1 No Blaming or Complaining, the Seventh of the Eight Behaviors

Ineffective Emotional Management ➔ Drama States

Figure 17.2 shows the icons for the four drama states.

FIGURE 17.2 Icons for the Four Drama States

Victim: Sad-group feelings launch the victim’s “Nothing I can do” story-lines. Victims then need others to join our “ain’t it awful” complainer clubs.

Blamer: Ironically, scared-group feelings about being blamed launch the blamer’s “It’s your fault” story-lines. Anger ...