EP 164 Where "I am a creator" actually came from

Thirty years ago, a man sat down for his morning quiet time in the middle of the hardest season of his life. His father had died far too young. He and his wife had been trying to start a family, and he had just learned he was infertile. His marriage was ending. And in that prayerful space, he said, "Okay, God, I'm ready to surrender my victim stance in the world. But I need to know: what's the opposite of victim?"

The word came immediately. Creator.

That man was David Emerald, author of The Power of TED. If you've been through the academy, you know this book. It's one of the core texts we study together, and I've heard story after story from women whose lives changed because of it.

Resources from the Episode: 

• Mothers of Creation - Provo, Utah - September 26th
• The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) - David Emerald
• The Karpman Drama Triangle - Dr. Stephen Karpman

AI-GENERATED TRANSCRIPT

Episode 164: David Emerald & The Power of TED

Introduction

AUDREY: Welcome back to the podcast. I’m Audrey Rindlisbacher. If this podcast is helpful for you, please share it, like it, pass it along, and leave a review, so we can share the message of mission and principles with everyone who needs it. I feel privileged and honored to have David Emerald with us today. This is a long awaited conversation. I’ve talked to people for years about how someday I was going to have a conversation with David Emerald about The Power of TED. This is that day, so I am ecstatic. For those of you who have engaged with the work or been in any of the academies, you know that The Power of TED is a core book that we spend a lot of time in to learn better self-management and self-leadership skills. I’ve heard story after story about its impact. If you listened to Carolyn’s interview that came out recently, one of the most important things that happened to her in the program was learning this book and practicing its principles. Today, David is going to tell us more of the backstory, so I’m excited for that.

AUDREY: A little bit about him. His full name, which I didn’t know until recently, is David Emerald Womeldorff. He’s the creator in chief of the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic and founder of the Bainbridge Leadership Center in Washington. His passion and work is in supporting individuals, teams, and organizations in leading and working from an outcome-focused and passion-powered orientation. His principles and frameworks are based on his decades of study, observation, and application in collaboration with a wide range of individuals and organizations. His pen name is David Emerald, and with a last name like Rindlisbacher, I can understand why he did that. He’s the author of the best-selling The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic), a teaching story about self-leadership, and 3 Vital Questions: Transforming Workplace Drama, which is also phenomenal, by the way. I’ve studied that one quite a bit. It’s an organizationally focused teaching story that draws on his more than 30 years of experience in leadership development, change leadership, and employee management. David’s books are sold worldwide. David, where should I send people to find your work?

DAVID: If you go to powerofted.com, where you’ll end up is at theempowermentdynamic.com.

AUDREY: Perfect. That’s where you’ll find all of his work. And I’ll talk more later about some of the other ways I’ve engaged with David and his wife, Donna. They have some other incredible programs. But to get the conversation started, David, can you give us some of your backstory? What were you doing professionally before all this authorship came up, and what did you learn there?

The Backstory

DAVID: The backstory is that prior to the epiphany that eventually led to The Power of TED, and I’ll certainly share that whole story, I was living in Dayton, Ohio, working in corporate America, focused on management and organization development. I had a communication background. I was introduced to Robert Fritz’s work and was engaged in a course being run at a hospital based on his creating technologies, and I became friends with a gentleman named Bob Anderson, who’s the founder of The Leadership Circle. A number of things just came together in my life. At the time, my wife and I were trying to start a family, and that wasn’t working. And I’m pausing on that, because a big part of the backstory is that the things the character David faces in the story are autobiographical.

DAVID: In about an 18 month period, three things happened in my life that were quite formative. One was that my dad, who I had a very healthy relationship with, passed away at much too young an age. He was in his early 60s. My wife at the time and I were trying to start a family, and I was declared medically infertile. She was quite introverted, and for whatever reasons, she chose not to have us explore any other options. So that marriage failed. As the marriage was coming apart, we were engaged in some couples therapy and doing quite a bit of work, and as things continued she decided to withdraw from that. It was during that period of time that I learned about the Karpman drama triangle and its roles of victim, persecutor, and rescuer.

The Epiphany: What Is the Opposite of Victim?

DAVID: I had been working on my own with this therapist for about three months. One morning I was sitting at my desk engaged in what I call my morning quiet time, which has always been some combination of prayer, meditation, and journaling. I was in that contemplative, prayerful space. I remember having my eyes closed, and I just remember saying to the God of my understanding, “Okay, God, I’m ready to surrender my victim stance in the world, but I need to know: what’s the opposite of victim?” And I’ve got to tell you, Audrey, immediately the word creator came. It was so stark that my eyes flew open, and I thought, I don’t know what I expected, but I didn’t expect that. I can’t say that I heard a voice, but the experience was such that I could understand someone saying they had an experience like that and heard a voice. I wish I could say, like Paul on the road to Damascus, that my life was forever changed. That was not the case. It was a personal epiphany. And I’m now talking about a good 30 years ago, around 1990 or 1991.

AUDREY: Just as an aside, when was the book first published?

DAVID: In 2005, actually 2006.

AUDREY: So about a 15 year period. Wow.

DAVID: There was about a 10 year period where I would think about it from time to time, and then it would fade into the background and life would go on. I continued in the corporate world in executive and leadership development and was involved in The Leadership Circle that I mentioned earlier, a very powerful feedback process, doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle at the University of Notre Dame in their executive programs.

AUDREY: What kind of work did The Leadership Circle do?

DAVID: It’s what’s called a 360 degree feedback tool. If you think about an organization chart, it’s 360 degree in the sense of getting feedback from one’s boss, one’s peers, one’s direct reports, perhaps clients, around the perceptions they have of one’s leadership.

AUDREY: And you’re facilitating that feedback loop.

DAVID: Exactly. It’s a coaching conversation. The Leadership Circle at the time also had a couple of leadership workshops that I facilitated and co-facilitated. And the ways of thinking that are captured in The Power of TED and in 3 Vital Questions, I owe a lot to Bob Anderson and the framing of what I call the victim and creator orientations, or the problem and outcome orientations. So you asked earlier what prepared me for this work. All of those elements were in there, and they came together in the personal epiphany I just shared.

AUDREY: Would you say that insight, or revelation, or epiphany changed your behavior at all? Made you see the world differently? Was it having any kind of personal impact before you built a model for others?

DAVID: Yes and no. The yes is that because of the other work I was doing, in The Leadership Circle we would talk about a reactive orientation versus a creative orientation. That creative orientation, which evolved in my work into a creator orientation, certainly impacted me. And I have long been mission driven in my own work. From that work I crafted my own mission statement, which has not changed much since the early nineties. I can call it up on my screen.

AUDREY: I would love to hear it. And why did you call it a mission statement?

DAVID: Because it’s what I’m called to do. It’s certainly purposeful, but it felt more like a mission statement than a purpose statement. Here it is: I am called to support and facilitate individuals, teams, and organizations in consciously shifting to a co-creative, vision focused, and passion motivated orientation for their lives and livelihoods. This is my lifelong ministry of service to humankind. I am a partner in creation with God. As spirit works in and through me, I serve as a channel of God’s abundance, love, wisdom, and power to touch, heal, and transform my own and others’ lives and ways of being in the world.

AUDREY: Wow. That is beautiful.

DAVID: That’s been on my wall through multiple moves. It really has been my North Star in terms of all the work. And that existed before I had a name for TED, before I had alternatives to the persecutor and the rescuer.

Meeting Donna and the Conversation at Notre Dame

DAVID: Fast forward about 10 years. I was doing a lot of work with The Leadership Circle and some international work with another consulting company. I was on my own, so I could live anywhere. In 2003, I was attending a workshop as a participant at a place called the Whidbey Institute and met Donna Zajonc. We really connected around a shared interest in leadership. She was coming out of public leadership; she had been an elected official in the Oregon legislature. In 2004, because I could live anywhere, I ended up moving to the Pacific Northwest as Donna and I were starting to date and our relationship was growing. I initially moved to Whidbey; we live on Bainbridge Island now. The reason the move is germane to the story is that as I was unpacking, I came across one of the journals where I’d played around with an alternative triangle to the drama triangle and its dynamics between victim, persecutor, and rescuer. So I had that fresh in mind.

DAVID: I was at Notre Dame getting ready to do a debrief around a Leadership Circle profile. A gentleman came in: six foot five, blond hair, blue eyed, not an ounce of fat on his body. The reason I share that is that within minutes I knew he was third generation military, had led a platoon in the first Gulf War, and had been in the private sector for about three years. We get into our conversation. The night before, they had done some work with an art therapist, and he had his journal with him. Another very important part of his persona: he was very traditional and fundamental in his Christian belief. The reason that’s relevant is that he opens his journal, and he’s got little stick figure pictures: two military oriented pictures, then a Bible, and in the middle he had VS, for versus. It was the military versus his faith. I said, “Tell me about the versus.” He said, “I’m really struggling as a leader in the private sector around how to deal with conflict.” I said, “When you were leading a platoon, how did you deal with conflict?” He said, “In the military, it’s pretty simple. You contain, control, and move off to the side.” I said, “That probably doesn’t work too well in organizational life.” He said, “No. And people come into my office and they’re just such victims.” I said, “That triggered something for you.” Because the orientations come out of The Leadership Circle work, I could do a really quick review of that with him. Then I said, “Let me share something related to this,” and I shared the drama triangle, which for him at that point, as it was for me when I first learned it, was what I call in the book a blinding flash of the obvious. He said, “That’s it. That’s what I experience.” And I said, “As you shift your focus to more of a creative orientation, or what I call in this work a creator orientation, it makes possible a different set of relationship roles and dynamics.” At the time, creator had always been the antidote or the opposite of victim. The label I had at the time for what became challenger was teacher: what has this come into my life to cause me to learn and develop? And what became coach, the antidote to the role of rescuer, was servant.

DAVID: We got into this deep conversation, just got into a flow state, and we came toward the end of our 90 minutes together. I just remember sitting there, Audrey. I looked at him, and I looked at the whiteboard, and I looked back at him, and given his faith, I said, “Creator, teacher, servant. Can you think of three words to better describe the life of Christ?” And he said, “Oh. I got it.”

AUDREY: Wow. That’s so beautiful.

DAVID: The next morning I was at the little South Bend, Indiana airport, and I called Donna. Donna is a longtime master certified professional coach, and she said, “How did your coaching sessions go?” I said, “Well, I had one that was pretty remarkable last night,” and I told her the story. And I got silence. This is back in the Verizon advertising days of “Can you hear me now?” I looked at the full bars and said, “Are you still there?” She said, “Yes. Is that original?” I said, “No, the drama triangle has been around since the 1960s.” She said, “No, the other triangle.” I said, “Well, yes, I guess it’s just something I’ve thought about off and on for years.” And she said, “You have got to write that down. That could be so useful to other people.”

TED Gets a Name and Becomes a Story

DAVID: So I came back, and we were out for a walk one evening asking, what am I going to call this alternative triangle? In the course of that conversation we hit upon the empowerment dynamic. The next morning, we were sitting doing our quiet time, and my monkey mind was going, empowerment dynamic, empowerment dynamic, T-E-D. And I went, huh. It’s got a name. It came out of the quiet time, and I told Donna.

DAVID: The day after TED showed up, I walked into Donna’s house. Donna was working on a book out of her public leadership experience and was on the phone with a publishing consultant she had been working with named Cece. Donna said, “Oh, Cece, David’s model has a name.” Cece said, “What is it?” “It’s TED, the empowerment dynamic.” And Cece said, “Hand David the phone.” So Donna handed me the phone, and Cece, who has this wonderful Texas accent, said, “Okay, dear, let me tell you what you’ve done.” I said, “What have I done?” She said, “You have anthropomorphized the concept. Now I want you to write a story.” And I was like, “You want me to what?”

DAVID: That teed up playing around with how I could approach this as a story, because I knew there had to be the models and the visuals. The apartment I was renting overlooked a beach down a bluff, and one morning Donna came out of quiet time and said, “What if the conversation takes place on the beach, and Ted etches the models in the sand?” And I was like, where did that come from? All the inspiration coming.

DAVID: I know one of the other questions you’re curious about is how the other characters evolved. I had the idea of a conversation taking place on the beach, and I knew what the models would be: the orientations, the triangles, dynamic tension, creating outcomes. So I put together a few friendly focus groups, three of them in total, and just shared the ideas on flip charts. A couple of things happened. In the first little focus group, one of the participants said, “There’s no female here.” And I said, “You’re right. There needs to be a female presence.” And Sophia, the wise woman, was born out of that. The other thing that was a bit of a surprise to me is that there was some pushback on both teacher and servant. For some people it was, “I’ve been blessed to have some really great teachers, and I’ve had some really terrible teachers.” And the word servant, even though it was well intended, carried that whole sense of servitude, so it was challenged. What emerged out of that was challenger as the antidote to persecutor, and coach as the antidote to the rescuer.

DAVID: Then there were some magical moments in the writing of the book itself, which went pretty quickly, about six months, because I was still doing quite a bit of organizational work. I truly feel I was guided. I’ll give you one instance that has always stuck in my mind. There’s a scene where Sophia comes into the story on the second day of David and Ted’s conversations. She comes running up the beach, and she has a headband on her wrist. She wasn’t wearing the headband, and I wondered, why does she have a headband on her wrist? I just let it be there as the story was emerging, and of course I was being edited by Cece as I went along. Then, when I got to the chapter on dynamic tension, which Robert Fritz calls structural or creative tension, and I always use a rubber band to illustrate the tension, she takes the headband off her wrist to illustrate the concept of dynamic tension. There were just magical moments along the way.

AUDREY: That is incredible. You know, we talk a lot about the word servant, especially in the Mission Driven Mom program: that we are becoming servant leaders. In my book, The Mission Driven Life, there are seven laws of life mission, the first four preparatory, where you work on yourself, and then you go lead in your communities. Those preparatory laws are loving God, loving yourself, loving truth, and loving humanity, and learning to love humanity is becoming a servant leader. That’s the subtitle of that chapter. So we’ve talked a lot about servant leadership, and I have several books on it. There’s a book, you’ve probably heard of it, I can’t remember the author’s name, called The Servant. He taught servant leadership all over the world, and he talked about the same kind of thing: that he would get pushback on the word servant. He tells the story of a man in a life crisis who goes into a monastery for a week and learns valuable things about what it means to be a true servant leader and what leadership should really look like. There’s a lot of crossover. He talks about the marriage of the head and the heart, and you do too. It’s fascinating to see you both arriving at some of those common principles and ideas.

DAVID: Very much aligned. I have no issue with the term servant. And one of the things you’ve said a couple of times that I want to explicitly call out in a positive sense is that The Power of TED is written as a fable on self-leadership, and that was done purposefully. I’ve got to tell you, Audrey, I wrote the book because I needed to write the book, and I felt called to write the book. It was consistent with the mission statement I shared with you. And it was almost a hobby, because I was doing so much travel and so much work in organizational leadership. It’s a self-published book, and it grew a baby step at a time. I remember Donna and I were traveling to Vietnam to visit her oldest daughter, who was trekking around Southeast Asia, and we were changing planes in Seoul, South Korea. I checked on Amazon and said, “Donna, somebody bought the book.”

AUDREY: As a self-published author, I totally get that moment.

From Self-Published Book to Worldwide Community

DAVID: Then there were several meetings and conversations along the way, and what started to happen is that organizations found out about the book. A group in Dallas, Texas called the Stagen Leadership Academy started to adopt it. Everybody who goes through their leadership programs gets a copy of the book, kind of like what you’re doing. It just really took off, and 20 years later it’s still selling very well on Amazon and other places. I feel eternally blessed to be doing this work, and it’s been my full-time work for a good 10 years now. I used to do quite a few workshops pre-pandemic. Now my primary focus is on building what we call our community of practice, and with the bringing online in 2019 of 3 Vital Questions, which is an organizationally based fable, we have about 125 certified trainers in nine countries now, all virtual. That’s really my focus.

DAVID: Where we are now is that we have a couple of outcome statements related to the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic. Our really big, audacious one is that the Center for the Empowerment Dynamic has the infrastructure, the people, and the financial resources to abundantly serve the next seven generations. The notion of seven generations comes out of indigenous thought. A number of tribes, as their councils would meet, would use that as one of their frames: if we make this decision, how is that going to impact seven generations down the road? So that’s the grand outcome statement. The current outcome statement is really around what the next generation of this work will be. Because I need to say, this work is not about me. This work is not about Donna. As woo-woo as that may sound to some people, I am eternally grateful that this work came through me, but it’s not about me. The importance of the community of practice is that it’s a big part of the next generation. We haven’t figured out how to hand off the baton yet, but we’re working in that direction.

The Impact in Mission Driven Mom

AUDREY: That is so incredible. I’m grateful for you, I’m grateful for the work, and I’m grateful for the inspiration. I have seen so many powerful transformations. We’ve probably had 1,200 people do the program at this point, and a huge number of them talk specifically about this transition in their frame of reference. I had a woman whose marriage had been on the brink for a long time, and this is just one of many stories I could tell. She finally submitted to going through the program, and when it was all done, people who knew her asked how her marriage was, and she said, “It’s great.” They said, “What in the world changed?” She said, “Well, I did that Mission Driven Mom program.” They said, “What difference did that make?” And she said, “It taught me to take responsibility for myself, that I have to meet my own needs and be the creator of my own life, and that I’ve been expecting my husband to do that for me.”

DAVID: She reclaimed her agency.

AUDREY: Yes. The program cycles four times through self-care, self-leadership, and self-discovery, and The Power of TED is in that first self-leadership section. Every subheading for that section is “increasing my personal power by,” and in the section your book is in, it’s “increasing my personal power by becoming a creator.” We designed little mini posters that people can print off and hang up on their mirror, in their home, in their room, and the first one says, “I am a creator.” I interviewed one of our students recently, and she said that when she read the book, went through that section, and pulled up her card to hang on her wall, tears came to her eyes and she thought, “That’s right. I am a creator.” I asked her what the impact of that has been, and she said, “All my relationships are significantly better. I stopped blaming everybody.” There’s another poster called No Blame Zone, so I encourage them to watch their words and stop blaming. That’s how it rolls out for them.

AUDREY: I want to tell you how I found this book. My husband was getting a marriage and family therapy degree. We had had a troubled marriage for a long time. We had worked through a lot of key things. He had a pornography addiction for a long, long time, and we found answers for that. There are lots of other stories around that, but through all of those experiences, at some point we were introduced to the drama triangle. I found it somewhere doing research, and for me, like it was for you, it was just clearly true. It made sense of so many things and brought human interaction down to such a simple construction that it made everything easier and cleaner to navigate. But what’s ironic, and I don’t know if this was your experience, is that I went to try to find books on it, and there were very few. Some of them were not all that great, and there was not a whole lot of alternative offered. I just researched and researched until I found your book, and I thought, well, he’s telling me he’s got it all, because it says “an effective escape from the drama triangle,” and I knew exactly what the drama triangle was and who Stephen Karpman was. I got online and watched an interview between you and him on YouTube, and I think on that interview he even said your model is the very best solution to the drama triangle. I got the book, read it, was just blown away, and I’ve used it in my programs ever since. It’s so helpful, but people are so unaware. It’s just not commonly taught or understood.

The Death of a Dream

AUDREY: It helps in so many little micro ways too. Today I was going back through the book again, with all my notes and questions and highlights, and every time I go back, there’s something new that I needed to hear or that I see again. For me today, it was the reminder that the reason victims are positioning themselves as victims, or struggling in their victimhood, is because of, how do you say it, the death of a dream. And I’m right in the middle of that. I’m right in the middle of a moment in my life where it feels like a lifelong dream is dying, and it’s been incredibly painful. It was so vital for me to hear that today and to remember that I cannot have dreams built on other people’s choices, that past paradigms weren’t helpful, and that I have to move through those to be a creator again, to get back on track with what I know my call to be. I remember years ago I had a dear friend who was in crisis and grieving so many things, and she complained to me incessantly about her husband. I just kept saying to her, you’ve got to find what’s yours. And that was brought back to my mind going through the book again. I also want to tell you and everyone listening that when I went through your coaching program, which was phenomenal, there’s an exercise where you deconstruct what the problem is, and you look at a situation and see if you can come up with seven things you’re learning out of it. So helpful, even though the situation is unwanted and unwelcome.

Victimization vs. Victimhood

DAVID: If I can, Audrey, there’s so much in what you’ve just said that I’d like to add to and build on. One thing, given your current situation: a distinction that has emerged since The Power of TED was written, and this distinction is in 3 Vital Questions, is the distinction between victimization and victimhood. Victimization is something that we all experience as human beings. It’s situational. I use the proverbial scale of one to ten: one being the slow line at the grocery store again, and ten, you just have to turn on the news to see people experiencing the severe end of victimization. That is distinct from victimhood, which is a way of being. An identity. This work really stands as a challenger to victimhood while acknowledging the reality of victimization. And when there is a dream or desire that’s being denied or thwarted, whether by someone else or just by circumstances, I think there are times when it’s important to acknowledge our sense of victimization. To grieve. And not to deny or minimize. Part of the power of this work, and you just gave voice to it, is knowing that you’ll move beyond that. You’ll get back into that creator groove.

Stephen Karpman’s Endorsement

DAVID: And I appreciate you mentioning Stephen Karpman. That little video was shot in his garden; Donna and I had the opportunity to visit with him. When I first reached out to him, as we were coming toward the finishing of the book, Cece asked, “Who would you like to have endorse the book?” I said, “Well, I’d love it if Dr. Karpman would, and I don’t even know if he’s still alive or where he is.” We found him in the San Francisco area, where he’s been for a long time, reached out, and sent him a copy of just the empowerment dynamic chapter. Then I got a phone call. Donna and I were over at my apartment cleaning. The phone rang, Donna answered it, and I heard her say, “Oh, Steve, David will be glad to know that you called.” She handed me the phone and said, “Steve Karpman.” He said, “I read your chapter. I want to thank you for it. I think this is the best escape I’ve ever seen from the drama triangle.” I said, “Thank you. Can I use that as an endorsement?” He said, “No, I’m sorry. I’ve had a long policy of not endorsing anybody’s work, because I’ve been ripped off, and people have taken the triangle and named it themselves.” I said, “Okay. Thank you, I really appreciate it.” About three weeks later, I got an email from him saying, “I’ve thought more about it, and if I can refer to the empowerment dynamic as the empowerment triangle, you can have my endorsement.” And you were right about the books that were out there. As I was doing my own research, there were a number of things that had been written on the drama triangle, some that were okay, but basically what I found, and my guess is what you found as well, was: now that you know about it, just don’t do it anymore.

AUDREY: Yeah, just stop it. Not super helpful.

DAVID: Moderately helpful, but ultimately we need more. What do I do with this energy? What do I do with this focus? What do I do with these emotions? That’s what I feel blessed to have had come out of that epiphany.

AUDREY: At the end of that coaching, or somewhere along the line, we were encouraged to make a statement, and you had a template for us that was phenomenal. Mine is two and a half pages long at this point, and it’s been a working document. It’s my daily creator statement. Every day that I take it out and take the time to read through it, it recenters me. It is so, so helpful. Probably the most helpful phrase in it is that I see myself and others as creators, resourceful and capable, able to navigate life successfully.

DAVID: Wonderful. Well said.

AUDREY: It reframes the interactions I’m going to have that day, how I’m going to talk to myself and see myself, and how I’m going to see the people in my life. I have six children, and many of them are in adulthood at this point. Those adult parent relationships are tricky to renegotiate. It’s been tough. They’ve had some really hard times that we’ve had to walk through with them. This came at a time in my life when it was so needed, and it has been helpful more times than I can tell you.

DAVID: I am so grateful to hear that.

Pity vs. Compassion

AUDREY: I want to spend a few minutes before we finish talking about a few of the concepts in the book. You mentioned victimization and victimhood, and I’m so glad you brought that up. Of course, I’m just going to tell everybody to go read the book for themselves. It’s going to take them a couple of hours, they’re going to refer to it for the rest of their lives, and they’re going to need it. If they want to do my program, great. If they want to do your programs, great. I don’t really care. I just want them to have this tool. So, near the beginning of the book, you bring up pity. You talk about how Ted comes in and he doesn’t judge, but he doesn’t pity. And later on, David makes a comment about not pitying himself. Why did you call attention to the concept of pity? Why was it important that Ted didn’t judge or pity David? Why is that part of this orientation?

DAVID: A couple of things. One is that in framing both the Ted character and the Sophia character in my own mind as I wrote, Ted, even though he does ask some coaching questions, really embodies a challenger, whereas Sophia embodies a coach. The reason I bring that up is that someone who is stuck in victimhood, distinct from victimization, often pities themselves, and in that sense can be pitiful. A conscious, constructive challenger, as Ted is in the book and in 3 Vital Questions as well, has compassion for the fact that change and growth are not always easy. But they don’t stand in judgment, and they see the person they are challenging as a creator in their own right, whether they act like it or not, and whether they know it or not. So they would not reinforce the sense of “oh, poor me,” which is the pity statement. It’s really coming from a place of compassion for whatever the struggle is, for whatever is calling forth the learning and growth.

AUDREY: So what is the difference between the pity and the compassion? How would that show up if you were wanting to be a challenger instead of a rescuer or a persecutor? How could you tell the difference for yourself?

DAVID: That’s a great question, Audrey. What comes to mind is that if one is feeling pity for themselves or someone else, the word that comes up for me is stuck. It’s like having your feet in tar, stuck in the pity. As a challenger, rather than saying, “Gee, Audrey, you’re sounding like you’re having a pity party,” I would not say that. What I would do, if I was noticing that, and I’m going to use a convention that has come up out of this work over the last 20 years, is feed back to you and say, “Well, Audrey, I really get that you’re feeling stuck, that you’ve got a lot of feelings in this. And I’m just curious: what’s one step you could take, whether it’s a conversation or some journaling, what’s one step you could take to begin to become unstuck?” And notice that I’m now going into the coach role.

DAVID: That convention comes from a friend of mine who has been a longtime Buddhist practitioner. Quick background on this: he has had the opportunity to have two private conversations, ten minutes long each, with the Dalai Lama. He asked the Dalai Lama at one point what he should be teaching, because he had a teaching background. The Dalai Lama said, “I don’t know how to tell you what to teach, but I can tell you what I know every human being needs. Every human being needs to be heard, seen, and loved.” My friend Mark calls that HSL. So by acknowledging and saying to you, “I really get the feelings you’re having,” you’re being heard, you’re being seen and not judged, and you’re being loved and respected. If that space is created, it opens up the real possibility that you could take a baby step to start to get unstuck. Because you’ve been heard, seen, and respected.

Letting Go and Believing in Others

AUDREY: Wow, that’s beautiful. You made me think of something very simple. When I’m faced with someone who looks like they’re in self-pity or looks stuck, even myself, there’s this simple reminder that they can do it. You can do it. You can overcome this. It can be done. I know you don’t see the way yet. And it has to start with an inner conviction. I have to really believe that. I have to remind myself of why they can do it, of what resources they have available to them, and of how I can get behind the changes that need to be made: not by giving them the answers, and not by pushing or forcing, but just by believing in them. And I don’t win every time, because I slip back. I tell people all the time that I’m a recovering rescuer. I’m a mom. I want to have the answers, I want to put the band-aid on, I want everyone to feel better as fast as possible. And I want the dreams that I’ve carried for 30 years in bearing and raising all these children to be manifest right now. Getting into that tension is painful, and I want it to end. But the times when it’s successful: I’ve had two different experiences with my children where I basically reminded myself of all the reasons why they were capable and literally told God, I’m handing them off. They’re yours. And on two different occasions, I have had children come to me and say, “You are different.” It was immediately after, and I didn’t try to be different, but I was different. Because of the FISBE, the focus, inner state, behavior, I didn’t even always notice the nuanced ways my behavior toward them had changed. But my focus changed, so my inner state changed, because I was focused on how they could do it, why they could do it, why it wasn’t my role to babysit them, why it was their journey to have, why I couldn’t dictate the terms. Every time I stay in that space and let them walk with God and do it on their own, our relationship gets better. They feel closer to me. They feel like I’m not trying to control anymore. But I have to be super intentional about walking myself through that whole thing, especially when I’m really stuck. And sometimes it takes a while.

DAVID: Sure. And I just want to reinforce that what I hear in those descriptions is that a very powerful baby step can be the act of letting go. I’m not saying that’s easy. What you inherently did is that you made the focus shift from your child being a problem to solve to seeing them as a creator: capable, resourceful, and whole, with resources, seen and unseen, that they can draw on. Your shift of focus leads to what can be subtle behavioral changes. And then they recognize, somehow intuitively, that your frame of reference toward them is different. You’ve not said anything to them, but it’s palpable somehow. They’re able to recognize in your countenance, in your energy, that there’s been a shift in you, and that is liberating them in some way. Because you’re treating them as a creator rather than reacting to them as a victim, either you feeling victimized or seeing them as a victim. It changes the whole energy.

Ego and Control in the Drama Triangle

AUDREY: Yes. And wanting to fix it, and wanting to control it, and wanting to have a different outcome that I’ve prescribed, and not liking the outcome that is happening, and it’s painful, and all of that. The other thing that was super helpful in the book today: at one point, and maybe Ted says it, there’s the idea that the drama triangle is just fraught with ego. You wouldn’t think of a victim as being really egotistical, but I see that in myself, because it’s me imposing my will. I’m wanting it to look a certain way because I want to look a certain way. And that whole concept of feeling embarrassed or ashamed: I don’t want to tell people this is how things are turning out, because it doesn’t look the way I wanted it to look, and it doesn’t make me look good. You become a parent, and you put your life on the line. All of it, and that includes your ego. You don’t always get to look like the star parent based on current outcomes, and it’s painful.

DAVID: Well, and the other thing, Audrey, is that all three of the drama roles, victim, persecutor, and rescuer, are all trying to control the situation. Ultimately, it is I oriented. Whereas all three of the empowerment dynamic roles, creator or co-creator, challenger, and coach, are we oriented. They’re focused on the other person.

Do Not Weaponize This Work

DAVID: One thing I want to add before we go. There are two things I think are really important to say to your listeners. One is: please do not weaponize this way of being and thinking. What I mean by that is that one of the least empowering things you can do is to say something like, “Audrey, here’s this book. You really need to read this.”

AUDREY: You’re broken.

DAVID: Yes. And what goes along with that is this: I have one surefire way of being reacted to as a persecutor, and that is simply to tell the other person that they’re being a victim.

AUDREY: You mention that in the book too. I ran across it again today. You tell somebody, “Hey, you don’t need to be a victim,” and immediately you’ve built a wall between the two of you. They’re just not going to listen anymore.

DAVID: Exactly. There are other ways of opening the doors to a more empowered way of being.

AUDREY: And to give people, well, it’s not even mine to give. Their freedom, their liberty, their right to choose, their right to have their own life. That’s not even mine to give. But when I’m trying to control things, I feel like I’ve got to give them that. It’s just a form of letting go, to recognize that. That’s why we use that metaphor of giving birth. Maybe another way you would talk about your book is that you gave birth to it. I gave birth to my children; I didn’t create them. I’m not responsible for their life. Their life came through me. I was talking to my daughter recently, having a better moment than some, and I just said to her, “I gave you life so you could live it. I didn’t give you life to control it. It’s your life, not mine.” That’s the place I try to stay in. I don’t always do a great job, but I try.

DAVID: Wonderful. You know, the drama roles, and you said “recovering rescuer,” I want to really emphasize that those are roles that we play, roles that we can draw on. The genesis of those roles happens very early in life for all of us, in the reactive strategies we form in reaction to what’s going on around us. Our true essence is that creator essence. That’s who we really are. Because we are creators. And that is not a role to play. That is a way of being to embrace.

AUDREY: That is so great to remember. I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it that way: in drama, you’re taking on a persona, but as a creator, you’re just being you. You’re being your best you.

DAVID: Your best self, yes.

Problems vs. Outcomes

AUDREY: There’s one other thing I’d love to talk about, and then as we finish up, anything else you feel you want to share. There’s a distinction I want to try to get clear about. Later on in the book, there’s the FISBE, the focus, inner state, behavior. One way of talking about the drama triangle would be that it’s kind of problem centered, and I want to say that the empowerment dynamic is the opposite of that, that it’s solution focused. But you chose not to use the word solution. You chose to use the word outcome. So I wrote down: how can we tell the difference between when we’re reacting to a problem, or reacting to our anxiety, and shift it? Why is it outcome instead of solution? Because what I’ve seen in some of my students is a concern that comes up: “But if I don’t focus on the problem, I won’t solve it. If I don’t sit with it and try to brainstorm solutions...” I can see the wisdom in not using the word solution in some respects, but could you give more clarity around how someone can navigate that for themselves? Because it’s really easy to tell yourself, “I am being a creator,” but still be problem focused, and to think you’re doing it right because you’re trying to solve the problem.

DAVID: Let me give that a shot. I didn’t use the term solution because we talk about problem solving, and one of the things I want to emphasize is that the victim orientation, or let’s call it the problem orientation, is not a problem solving orientation. It is merely a problem reacting orientation. We tell ourselves we’re reacting to the problem, but in reality, we’re reacting to the anxiety that we feel. And if we take steps that help the problem, what tends to happen is that our anxiety diminishes, and when our anxiety diminishes, we lose energy for action. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that problems absolutely exist. The empowerment dynamic is not Pollyannaish. It is not in any way diminishing the reality of the problems we face in our lives. When we face a problem, here’s the work to be done: to frankly ask the question, why do I care about this problem? What is it about this problem that I care about? There’s a phrase I came across a number of years ago from two Harvard professors, Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey. They make the observation that behind every complaint lies a commitment. Behind every complaint lies a commitment.

AUDREY: Wow. Writing that down.

DAVID: The reason that’s an important phrase, and the add-on question, is this: do we complain about things we don’t care about? Of course the answer is no. So when we’re complaining, or facing a problem, the work is to be able to ask and answer, and we may need the support of someone in the coach role: what is it about this problem that I care about? Why do I care about this? Unpacking what it is that I care about gives me an opening for focusing on the outcome I want to create. The other thing I want to say, Audrey, is that we solve problems in service to outcomes. In the use of dynamic tension and going after outcomes, we identify the obstacles, the problems that we need to resolve, in service to the outcome that we care about, that we’re passionate about. I hope that helps.

AUDREY: Yes, that’s super helpful. So if I take the time to unpack it: I’m not liking the way that I’m feeling. That’s an important insight, right? Something’s off. There is a problem, because I’m not liking the way I’m feeling in this relationship or in this circumstance. And then asking myself: if I’m complaining about this, if this is making me uncomfortable or angry or anxious or resentful, why? What is the center of that problem, and why do I care about it? We did a little bit of this in the coaching, and it was super helpful. And then you take that and you start looking at values, which is actually something we do in the self-discovery element of my program, which I built before I even did your coaching a couple of years ago. The woman I interviewed recently about the program said that what she got out of it was The Power of TED, and another major one for her was values: recognizing that she doesn’t have all the same values as her husband, and that’s okay. She can honor his values and honor her values, and she cares about things because she values them.

DAVID: Well, I’m so glad that the coaching course impacted you and has been of value to you. I will tell you that Donna has further evolved the coaching curriculum. She came out with a book two years ago: Who Do You Want to Be on the Way to What You Want? Coaching with the Empowerment Dynamic. It’s also a fable, also a story. She is doing wonderful work with coaches who want to coach with the empowerment dynamic, taking it to an even deeper level.

AUDREY: Right, I got that book. And I’ve had a couple of my students go on from my program to do the coaching program with her, because they want to be coaches and they understand how helpful this construction is.

DAVID: So whereas I’m focused these days on building the community of practice, she’s really focused on the coaching curriculum and working with coaches.

Holding the Tension

AUDREY: It’s phenomenal. That’s really, really great stuff. When you were talking before about how to know if you’re problem focused or focused on the outcome, it reminded me that one helpful way to tell the difference is how you’re feeling. Looking again at the FISBE: what’s your focus, and what’s your inner state? And then in the Robert Fritz book on creating that I grabbed, he has this section on tension. Have you ever heard the water glasses story that he tells?

DAVID: Tell me.

AUDREY: He introduces the idea of tension at an event. He puts seven glasses up at the front near the podium, and he has a pitcher of water there. All he does, before or between or during or after presentations, is pour water into a glass and leave it. He doesn’t say anything about it. He just lets it be at the front of the room all day long and into the evening. People start asking him, “Why are the water glasses there?” And all he would say was, “That’s a good question.” “Well, are you going to tell us?” “That’s a good question.” He just let the tension sit there. Everyone began to speculate, and then people started messing with the glasses. Different people took drinks out of them or poured out part of the water. Someone put a flower in one of them. Then he has everybody write down what they thought the glasses meant, and they read out all the answers, and he deconstructs with some of the people who messed with the glasses why they did it. The whole section is so helpful, and it plays beautifully into The Power of TED, because some of the people were playing with the glasses because they so desperately needed to control the situation, and that need to control was coming out of being in the drama triangle in some regard. They couldn’t handle the tension. He says that when we feel tension, we can deflate our goals, and a lot of times we do. We deflate the importance of our values or commitments. We deflate what we really care about, just to alleviate the tension. I think people do that when they walk away from their faith. Sometimes the tension is so uncomfortable that they minimize how they felt about that faith at one time or another. And there are a myriad of ways: they walk away from relationships, or from jobs, or from opportunities. It’s wrapped up a lot in that tension issue. And if everyone can take your advice and ask themselves what they’re committed to, that lends itself to being able to continue to care without feeling like they have to control. Because that’s what the tension is, right? You have to care but not control.

DAVID: And as creators, it is a discipline to be able to hold the tension and not to react against it. You’re so right. This is a phrase from my friend and colleague Bob Anderson: one of the easiest ways to reduce the tension is to compromise the outcome. And what he says that is so powerful is that we can’t invest our souls in a compromise. There’s a part of us that knows that we’re compromising. But we can’t hold the tension because of the anxiety that we feel in it. And another thing I would like to say is that, again, this work is not Pollyannaish. It seems simple, but it’s not easy.

AUDREY: I reread the preface again this morning, and you mention that several times: how nuanced it is, how difficult it is to actually live it out day by day. It is a practice. We talk in my academies a lot about practicing principles. Principles are universal truths that we can apply to our lives in a myriad of beautiful ways. Everyone is going to live those principles differently, but we have to practice them to imbue them in our lives. And what you said about compromising on the outcome, on the dream, on the goal, on the vision, on the mission, goes back to what you teach us about taking baby steps. You can alleviate the tension by decreasing the goal, or you can alleviate the tension by taking the baby step and letting that be enough. One of the things I wrote in my creator statement is: I know that the thoughts I choose to entertain and the words I choose to speak are critical parts of what I’m creating, because they’re the seeds and soil from which my creations grow. And: I am grateful for the incremental baby steps that help me manifest these outcomes, because it is the small steps that I can recognize and act on today that keep me engaged in the creative process.

DAVID: That helps me remember what I was going to say, which is that creating outcomes is not anxiety free. There are times when we’re going to feel that anxiety, and the question is, can we have the anxiety without the anxiety having us? If the anxiety has us, that’s when we compromise, and that’s when we take less effective action. But if we can say, “Okay, I’m feeling anxious, and I’m going to take this baby step anyway,” that’s part of the process of creating outcomes. And I want to close by saying: don’t for a moment think that David Emerald is always in the creator orientation. I’m a human being just like all of us, and I certainly have times when I go reactive. But I think the measure of this work is that I’d like to think I catch myself more quickly, and I take baby step actions more quickly and more consciously. Reacting and feeling that anxiety is part of the human experience. Experiencing victimization is part of the human experience. So we need to have compassion for ourselves around that as well.

Closing Thoughts

AUDREY: Yes. What’s so liberating for me is to feel like I don’t have to stay stuck, that I have tools, and that there’s something I can turn to. Obviously, I’ve always been a person who turned to God and turned to scripture, and those things are helpful, but I find these principles reflected there too. I find that God brings me back to them because they’re truths. And when you were talking about anxiety, it reminded me of one of the times I read the book, maybe when I was teaching it, when I remember having this really clear epiphany: well, you’re going to feel uncomfortable either way. For me, that was a huge thing. I’m going to feel anxious either way, so I would rather be moving toward something than always reacting to something, if I’m going to feel anxious either way.

DAVID: There you go. There you go.

AUDREY: Well, thank you. This has been so great. Such a privilege, and such an honor. I really can’t thank you enough for the mission you’re engaged in, how you’ve given your life to it, and what you’ve given to so many people that I interact with. What a blessing it’s been in my personal life. I’ve taught it to my children, and it’s blessing their lives. One of my kids said recently, “Well, I just need to be a creator,” and I thought, yay. So it’s working.

DAVID: This has been an inspiring conversation for me, Audrey, and I really appreciate the invitation very much.

AUDREY: It’s been wonderful. Thank you so much, David. Bless you for all the work that you do. Everybody, please head over to theempowermentdynamic.com and check out all the programs. There’s a lot to engage in there. There are three books between David and Donna that I’ve read. I love them all and highly recommend them all. At the very least, grab The Power of TED. Do your best to engage with it and to live it out, because I can promise you, even the attempt will radically change and bless your life. Thanks for joining me today. We’ll see you next time.