The Devil’s Triangle

Not the area bound­ed by the tip of Flori­da, Puer­to Rico, and Bermu­da, so called because it is the mys­te­ri­ous grave­yard of ships and planes that have sim­ply van­ished.

This one is much clos­er to home. Known as “triangulation” in rela­tion­ships, it hap­pens when two peo­ple talk about a third per­son when he or she is not present. A place where trust, and there­fore, per­for­mance, not so mys­te­ri­ous­ly founder.

It would seem like tri­an­gu­la­tion is an inevitable fact of life in our work­ing con­nec­tions to one anoth­er. How are we sup­posed to get along with­out talk­ing about each oth­er to each oth­er? It wouldn’t seem very real­is­tic to sug­gest we should nev­er talk about oth­er peo­ple unless they are present. And tri­an­gu­la­tion can’t be all bad. If I need some pos­i­tive coach­ing about how to approach a col­league on a del­i­cate mat­ter, isn’t it legit­i­mate that I rehearse a lit­tle with a third per­son I trust?

Yes it is, but this is not the tri­an­gu­la­tion I am speak­ing of, which has much more to do with neg­a­tive dis­cus­sions of the motives, qual­i­ties, and char­ac­ter of oth­ers than any sort of pos­i­tive rehearsal. Broad­ly speak­ing, it refers to all those times when a per­son is incon­sis­tent in his or her state­ments, say­ing one thing to anoth­er indi­vid­ual direct­ly, and some­thing else at the water cool­er or over the phone, or oth­er­wise “in private.” The rep­u­ta­tion of the per­son dis­cussed is often defined by the water cool­er dis­cus­sion. “So-and-so is fun­da­men­tal­ly inse­cure, that’s why she has to dom­i­nate every discussion.” “So-and-so is manip­u­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion for his own gain.” “So-and-so has no back-bone – why doesn’t he stand up for him­self – he’s always get­ting walked on!” Some­times these are framed as ques­tions such as, “Don’t you think so-and-so is…? This allows the lis­ten­er to chime in and build on the premise. The inevitable con­clu­sion of these dis­cus­sions is that some­how it will be us who have to pay for the prob­lems of oth­ers. These can be more or less seri­ous diag­nos­tic dis­cus­sions or they can pret­ty much look like Junior High School.

It is easy to know if I am tri­an­gu­lat­ing. Do I say the same things in the same way when I’m talk­ing to a third-par­ty about some­one as I say to that some­one direct­ly. This is almost a com­plete def­i­n­i­tion of open­ness to me. Do I tell the same truth to both peo­ple. Think this over for your­self, if you like. How open are you by this definition?

I am always amazed in my work how fre­quent­ly back­ground char­ac­ter­i­za­tions sur­face about oth­ers. We are lit­er­al­ly filled with con­clu­sions and per­cep­tions, and there­fore feed­back that is nev­er shared. The rea­sons for not doing so are well doc­u­ment­ed: fear of reper­cus­sions, fear of con­flict, fear of dam­age to the rela­tion­ship, con­cern it wouldn’t do any good, a feel­ing that it’s not my place to speak up, pri­or con­di­tion­ing in my fam­i­ly of ori­gin (“If you haven’t got any­thing good to say, don’t say any­thing), etc. And in the end, the cen­tral fact becomes we as indi­vid­u­als are sim­ply not very good talk­ing direct­ly to each oth­er about each oth­er. This is cer­tain­ly not true for every­one, but it is true enough to char­ac­ter­ize many groups and orga­ni­za­tions, from front-line ser­vice providers to senior man­age­ment teams.

And this dynam­ic direct­ly affects how we cre­ate social sys­tems – work­place com­mu­ni­ties. We learn to live in two worlds: the world of what we say to peo­ple to their faces and what we say about them lat­er behind their backs. The actu­al com­mu­ni­ty is often more in what’s said “off-line” than on. It is pre­cise­ly this divid­ing line that keeps orga­ni­za­tions from grow­ing; not grow­ing in size, but in capa­ble prob­lem-solv­ing, inno­va­tion, and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Keep­ing the two worlds apart helps no one grow up, get bet­ter, face facts, deal with per­cep­tions and rep­u­ta­tion, work through the tru­ly thorny per­for­mance issues in an emo­tion­al­ly hon­est way, and ulti­mate­ly, come out of denial and get real. But of course, if we want oth­ers to come out of denial, we’d have to come out of our own denial first. The amount of actu­al human capa­bil­i­ty wast­ed cir­cling issues rather than address­ing them is as cost­ly as it is unfathomable.

Which is to say, accord­ing to the mean­ing of the word, fath­om, that we don’t know how deep this sea of unused poten­tials real­ly is – ours and theirs – this sea where we could be real­ly in touch with each oth­er. Stay­ing afraid and mis­trust­ful just per­pet­u­ates the super­sti­tions and leaves an emp­ty ocean in the Devil’s keep.