Something just hit the fan
You’ve just witnessed a team member storm out of a meeting. The room goes silent. Twenty people suddenly find their laptops fascinating. Everyone’s waiting—waiting for you to do something, say something, fix this.
Your first instinct kicks in: follow them out, smooth it over, have a conversation that makes everyone comfortable again. You’re already composing the message in your head: “Hey, I noticed you seemed upset. Want to talk about what happened?”
But here’s what you’re not saying out loud: “This is a team member getting their sh*t together problem.” And you’re also not admitting how you actually felt in that moment—like a deer in headlights, frozen while your carefully planned meeting derailed in front of everyone.
Sound familiar?
What happened here?
You just got caught in the Drama Triangle, and you didn’t even know you were in it.
The Drama Triangle—a concept from psychiatrist Stephen Karpman—describes three roles people unconsciously cycle through in dysfunctional relationships: Persecutor, Victim, and Rescuer. And if you lead people, you’re moving between these roles more often than you think.
In that meeting moment, you toggled between all three in the span of sixty seconds. Persecutor: “She needs to get it together.” Victim: “Why is this happening to me in front of everyone?” Rescuer: “I need to fix this for her, for the team, for everyone.”
And here’s the problem: your instinct to rescue—the one that may feel most like leadership, most like caring—is actually keeping the dysfunction alive.
The rescuer’s trap
“The best way to help people is to stop helping them.” – Marshall Goldsmith
Let’s be clear about what rescuing looks like at work. It’s following the storm-out with a gentle check-in. It’s smoothing over the awkward moment so everyone can move on. It’s taking on the emotional labor of managing someone else’s behavior so your team doesn’t have to sit with discomfort.
It feels like kindness. It feels like good leadership. And it’s neither.
When you rescue, you’re communicating several things you don’t intend to say: “You can’t handle this yourself.” “Your behavior doesn’t have consequences.” “I’ll protect you from accountability.” And perhaps most damaging: “I’ll protect everyone else from having to deal with you directly.”
I worked with a leader—let’s call her Sarah—who was masterful at rescuing. She managed peer relationships, smoothed team conflicts, intervened in interpersonal friction before it could escalate. She genuinely believed this was her role as a leader. Her team appreciated it, or so she thought.
Then her boss gave her feedback that landed like a gut punch: “You have an opportunity to lean into leadership instead of disengaging from the drama.”
Sarah was confused. She wasn’t disengaging—she was constantly engaging, fixing, managing. What her boss meant was: “Stop rescuing. Start leading.”
The zero percent problem
Here’s the truth about that team member who stormed out: if you don’t address it directly, there’s a zero percent chance anything changes. Zero.
They’ll storm out again. Or shut down conversations. Or send lengthy messages blaming their behavior on being sick, on stress, on anything except the actual behavior you witnessed. The pattern will continue because the pattern works—for them.
But if you have a direct conversation—not as a rescuer trying to make them feel better, but as a peer leader addressing behavior that’s impacting the team—your odds jump to 50-75% that things improve.
Those aren’t perfect odds. But they’re infinitely better than zero.
From rescuer to coach
So, what does that conversation look like when you’re not rescuing?
Sarah and I worked on a simple but powerful shift. Instead of “I noticed you seemed upset, want to talk about it?” she practiced: “I’m really confused and uncomfortable with how things were left after that meeting.”
Notice what’s different. She’s stating her experience, not managing theirs. She’s naming the impact, not diagnosing the cause. She’s opening space for dialogue, not rushing to resolution.
Then came the harder part: “Here’s what I want to feel in meetings versus what I felt yesterday.” This is where most rescuers falter—because stating what you need feels demanding, feels harsh. But it’s the opposite. It’s respectful. It assumes the other person can understand impact and adjust behavior.
Sarah’s final shift was from interrogation to genuine curiosity. Not “Why did you do that?” but “Help me understand what was happening for you.” Coach mindset, not persecutor. Questions, not browbeating.
What your team is really learning
When you rescue, your team learns that drama works. They learn that storming out gets them attention, smoothing over gets them off the hook, and avoiding direct feedback is an acceptable strategy for everyone involved.
When you stop rescuing and start coaching, something different becomes possible. People learn that their behavior has impact. They learn that you trust them to handle difficult conversations. They learn that discomfort isn’t something you’ll rush to eliminate—it’s something you’ll help them navigate.
Sarah had that direct conversation with her team member. It wasn’t comfortable. The team member was defensive initially, blamed external circumstances, tried several deflection strategies. But Sarah held the line: “I need us to be able to have direct conversations when something isn’t working. And I need to trust that you can hear feedback without it derailing our work together.”
Six weeks later, the dynamic had shifted. Not perfectly—real behavior change never is—but measurably. The team member started catching herself mid-reaction, apologizing when she shut down conversations, and most importantly, began addressing issues directly instead of avoiding them until they exploded.
Your rescue mission ends now
The Drama Triangle thrives in the gap between what you’re thinking and what you’re saying. Between “this is her problem” and “I need to fix this for everyone.”
What’s in your left column—the things you’re thinking but not saying—that need to be shared for the sake of your integrity and your team’s growth?
What peer-level leadership conversation have you been avoiding by rescuing instead?
And if you don’t shift from rescuer to coach, what’s lost—for you, for them, for your team’s ability to handle conflict like adults?
The right time to stop rescuing was three incidents ago. The second-best time is right now.
What’s one rescuing pattern you can name today, and what coaching conversation becomes possible when you stop?
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