A Failure of Nerve -- Chapter 7
Emotional Triangles

Emotional triangles are the building blocks of any relationship system.

They function predictably, irrespective of the gender, class, race, culture, background, or psychological profile.

Emotional triangles follow the following rules:

• They form out of the discomfort of people with one another.
• They function to preserve themselves.
• They interlock in a reciprocally self-reinforcing manner.
• they make it difficult for people to modify their thinking and behavior.
• They transmit a system's stress to its most responsible or most focused member.

Almost every issue of leadership and the difficulties that accompany it can be framed in terms of emotional triangles.

Emotional triangles thus have both negative and positive effects on leaders.

An emotional triangle is any three members of any relationship system or any two members plus an issue or symptom.  Most common emotional triangles:

• Family Triangles
• Workplace Triangles
• Healing and Mentoring Triangles

The "Laws" of Emotional Triangles

• How they form
  They form because of the inherent instability of two-person relationships.
• How they operate
  They are self-organizing and perpetuated by distance, and they tend to be perverse.
  • Self-organization
    One side tends to be more conflictual than the other two sides; if one can succeed in calming that side the conflict will generally surface in one of the other relationships.
  • Distance
    Distance perpetuates an emotional triangle
  • Perversity
    Characteristic of trying harder to change the relationship of B and C, making the relationship move in an opposite direction.
• Their interlocking nature
  The emotional triangles of any relationship system interlock
  • Family life
  • Sports and other teams
  • Corporate life
• Stress
  A leader's stress and his/her effectiveness are opposite sides of the same coin.  The type of leadership which creates the least stress also happens to be the type of leadership that is most effective.

The Togetherness Position

The togetherness position is one in which the leader feels responsible for keeping a system together.  Leader is most likely to burn out, dysfunction, or suddenly die at the point when forces pulling in opposite directions have stretched the leader's capacity to hold things together to its breaking point.

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Friedman, E. H.  A failure of nerve:  Leadership in the age of the quick fix.