A 5 minute guide to flipping from Rescuer or (gulp) Persecutor to Coach and Challenger

If you're reading this, you likely already know Stephen Karpman's Drama Triangle. If not, you can dive back into it right here and how it relates to collaboration.

When we're trying to collaborate with other teams - or other people more generally! - we can end up feeling frustrated and either rescuing people ("I'll do it!") or expressing our frustration ("You're doing it wrong!"). The Drama Triangle shows a way out of this - flipping our instinct to rescue into skillful coaching and flipping our frustration into healthy, helpful challenge.

In this guide, we're going to address HOW you can take on that coaching role, when there is no official coach/coachee relationship (and sometimes, far from it!).

First, what's the difference between coaching and consultancy?

In plain English:

• Coaching: You ask questions centred around the other party's situation, help them think and get them to own their actions. You enhance their ability to solve this problem and future problems like it.

• Consultancy: You bring the answers, models, recommendations. You give advice. Useful for quick decisions, compliance, and known problems where you have specific scarce expertise.

  It's rare that we use a pure coaching approach and more likely that we will 'blend intentionally'. We might start with coaching to uncover goals and open up a conversation about reality, then drop in consultancy for targeted advice. 

Before you coach, get permission

Many people don't like being coached-by-stealth. Before you start “coaching” someone, check they’re up for it and make a new mini social contract.

• “Is it OK if I ask you a few questions?”

• “What would be most useful for you right now?”

• “Can I help you think this through for ten minutes?”

Use the simplest coaching more for structure: GROW 

• Goal: “What does good look like by the end of today?”

• Reality: “What’s happening now? What’s working? What’s not?”

• Options: “What are three ways forward?”

• Way Forward: “What will you do, by when, and how will we know?”

Quick techniques

• Scaling questions: “On a scale of 0–10, where are we now? What would make it an 8?”

• Reframing: “When has this gone well before? What was different?”

• Challenging assumptions: “What evidence supports that?”

• Experiment framing: “Let’s try X for two weeks and decide based on Y.”

Three common scenarios you might come across

1. With senior stakeholders: Anchor on shared outcomes, keep it evidence-based. Offer small, low-risk experiments. Example: “Let’s run a two-week pilot and review.”

2. With peer teams you don’t manage: Build trust with reciprocity and clarity. Write a 3-bullet working agreement and test it for a month.

3. With someone less experienced: Mix coaching with small bursts of mentoring. Example: “Want me to show you, or do you want to try it and I’ll give feedback?”

Being a Challenger (the good kind)

In Stephen Karpman’s drama triangle, the “persecutor” role pushes, blames, or controls. The healthy flip is the challenger – someone who holds high standards, asks hard questions, and does it with respect and clarity.

• Why it matters: Challenging well prevents groupthink, surfaces blind spots, and keeps quality high.

• Challenger stance: You stand for outcomes, not ego. You make the request clear and the reason obvious.

• In practice:

  • “I’m noticing a gap between our stated goal and what we’re doing. How shall we close it?”

  • “If we keep this scope and date, what’s most at risk - and is that acceptable?”

  • “What evidence would make us change our approach?”

• Self-check: Am I challenging for the sake of progress, or am I venting frustration?

• Blend with coaching: Challenge to raise awareness, then coach to help them own the next step.

Pitfalls to dodge

• Coaching without permission.

• Advice before understanding.

• Avoiding necessary decisions.

• Challenges that sound like attacks.

• Vague, giant experiments.

• Getting a good coaching conversation going - and then flipping back to just telling them what to do / what you think without signalling.