Strengthening the Triangle
If these roles sound familiar to you in your everyday professional life, I’m somewhat envious. Very few people are naturally gifted creators, coaches or challengers. Even fewer are fortunate enough to have social networks that coincide to form these winner’s triangles. Yet the power of this social model is that we can construct our own triangles.
The first—necessary—step is self-reflection. Transactional analysis, on which the winner’s triangle is based, is all about getting into the right ego state. Embracing well-being, in all its facets, is necessary to get into a state in which we can objectively look at our relationships and find the creators, challengers and coaches that we need to succeed. Of course, there is no easy way to self-reflect. Such activities as meditation, journaling and peer feedback can help us develop the skills for, and practice of, self-reflection and self-awareness. That way, at least one vertex of the triangle can be established.
The next step is to branch out and find the other aspects of the triangle. This depends on the environment. Despite wishful thinking to the contrary, we can’t just mindset our way out of a malignant environment. But we can gravitate toward people who seem to have a knack for creating, coaching and challenging. And, by reciprocity and long-term interactions, we can shape the contours of those relationships so we get robust winner’s triangles. Every environment is different so approaches must necessarily be personalized.
The third and most essential step is retaining those relationships. That is where June and the turnover of fellows comes to be so important. These triangles are embedded within the panoply of other shapes and relationships. Ensuring the winner’s triangle remains sharply delineated yet responsive to changing needs and desires is vital. Critical to understanding the winner’s triangle model is that we rotate through the different roles in the triangle. Gaining greater self-awareness of when we switch roles and how we do so in our relationships can fortify that triangle even more. Alternatively, when triangles no longer serve their intended purposes, we must muster the strength to break those old triangles and create new ones.
A Kaleidoscope of Winner’s Triangles
The last quirk of the winner’s triangle is that we are only looking at it from a single perspective. The fact is that we are coaches and creators and challengers to multiple people in multiple settings simultaneously. Winner’s triangles intersect each other in both expected and unexpected ways. Some triangles may synergize with others and other triangles may lead to interference. Such is the complexity of human relationships. They cannot be reduced to elementary school shapes.
