The Flag System is all about looking at an individual’s actions, comparing them to their words, and from that, get an idea of whether this action and The Flag System is all about looking at an individual’s actions, comparing them to their words, and from that, get an idea of whether this action and word combination is a Green Flag, that is Good Sign; an Amber Flag, that is Caution; or a Red Flag, that is Concerning.
TLDR – The Flag System helps us to quickly recognise if a person’s behaviour is a good sign, an indicator for caution, or concerning. In isolation, it is not a judgement of the person, but as you explore the other Traffic Light Systems, it is a useful tool when you do need to judge someone.
This incorporates into the Traffic Light System, where:
- Green = Good,
- Amber = Caution, and
- Red = Concern.
Quick Traffic Light System Review
To maximise cooperation, a functional society prioritises enculturing forgiveness, second chances, assuming that bad behaviours are just a mistake and defining kindness in terms of keeping people in the group, looking after our weak and injured, and letting people grow. Keeping people happy runs the risk of People Pleasing and Conflict Avoidance which we cover in Rejection Sensitivity.
The Traffic Light System uses the standard traffic light colours to help guide our evaluation and management of people.
- Green is what we are looking for. Green is trust, cooperative behaviour, social building trends.
- Amber is unknown, uncertain, be alert but not alarmed.
- Red is caution, problematic, abusive behaviours and trends.
Flag System
The Flag System assesses and individual behaviour a person may display. Their actions speak the loudest – so what are they doing? Does their action warrant a Green (preferred), Amber (caution) or Red (harmful) flag?
Trust Zones
Trust Zones describes how we can place a person’s trending behaviours in one of 3 zones, Green (Presumption of Good), Amber (uncertain, unknown), or Red (Presumption of Harm), which simplifies how we interact with people on a day to day basis.
Good to Abusive Scale
The Good to Abusive Scale is the process we use to evaluate a person’s response to inevitable mistakes and guides us to work out whether we should give them the presumption of good (Green Trust Zone), or the presumption of abusive (Red Trust Zone).
The Three Pillars Method
The Three Pillars Method is used to help guide how many chances we give people to improve, and how to gauge that they are learning (Green), poorly learning (Amber) or abusive / failing to learn (Red). We don’t need to give everyone a second chance.
Understanding Behaviour: Actions over Words
Behaviour is “the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially towards others”. We can assign a coloured flag to how a person behaves towards ourselves or to others. It is important to look at both a person’s actions and their words, and then look at how well they match.
Actions speak louder than words. Actions are what a person does, and we can look at the effect that action has on the world. In the Philosophy of Mind, it is well understood that you cannot truly know the mind of another. You don’t know what it is like to be them, and you can’t know why they do what they do. You can know their actions. Actions are verifiable, evidence based and can be independently confirmed. From a reasonable sampling of someone’s actions, you can make predictions on what they are likely to do in the next situation – and it is that predictability that is what the Flags try to help us to understand.
Words are nice when they match people’s actions, but very concerning when they don’t. That is, if their words are nice words.
If a person’s words are threats or falling into some harmful rhetoric, then this is generally a warning sign. If the person’s language is an exception to their trend, or clearly marked as humour, then it may not be a Red Flag on its own. Beware of Schrödinger‘s Douchebag, More on that later.
It is important to recognise that there is a big difference between a person’s intent and their actions.
While we can never truly tell what a person was intending, we can see if they recognise the consequences of their own actions. If those consequences inspire them to learn, grow and evolve their choices to avoid outcomes that harm others, then this is a good healthy indicator, and we can assume the person had good intent. We all started from ignorance, and some things are quite difficult to predict without experience, and sometimes things just go wrong.
“It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness, that is life.”
Jean-Luc Picard, from Star Trek – The Next Generation
If a person does not learn from the consequences to their actions and doesn’t make changes to address that, this is quite concerning. This is explored more in the Good to Abusive Scale, where we begin by assuming that people are good people and mean well, but sometimes they are ignorant or unskilled.
As a person demonstrates repeatedly through their actions that they either:
- cannot comprehend how their actions are harmful (and won’t change them), or
- are not concerned that their actions are harmful (indifferent or harm was the goal)
Then this person progresses towards us assuming they are abusive people.
Harm doesn’t have to be physical. I can be social, financial, identity, beliefs, etc.
See Cycle of Violence:Violence is More than Physical for more.
That is, we should start to assume their next action has a high risk of being harmful and that their words are likely to be falsehoods until we can verify that their action wasn’t harmful or that their words were true.
Understanding the Flag Colours
The Flags help you understand an individual behaviour with little to no context. If a person’s behaviours trend in a particular colour, you may assign them to a coloured Trust Zone (Green for Assumption of Good, Red for Assumption of Harm).
Colour Guide
- Green Flag = Good, a trend of Green suggests Green Trust Zone.
- Amber = Caution, a hard to define action without enough context.
- Red = Concern, a trend of Red suggest Red Trust Zone.
Green Flags = Good
We assign Green Flags to behaviours that are collaborative, transparent, considerate and promote the general good.
A quick shortcut to working out what is likely a Green Flag is to consider what we would have done to help the situation given similar resources. This is a bit similar to the simple creed of “do to others’ as you would have them do to you”, but ads in a bit more consideration of context, culture, skill ability and the resources. Some of us have quite high standards or over do things due to People Pleasing, Anxiety or Rejection Sensitivity, so it is fair to accept that others do things to a reasonable “lower” standard.
Please, don’t overdo how “low” that standard is. Consider whether this would be considered reasonably acceptable by someone’s boss, by a police officer pulling you over, or how you’d expect polite behaviour to be towards a venerated elder person.
This is not an exhaustive list. It should give you a fair idea of the flavour of what Green Flag Behaviour looks like.
Click > to expand
Consistent and Reliable
Green Flag people are consistent. That is, if they tend to be a few minutes late, they are almost always a few minutes late. This builds an ability for you to reasonably predict them and feel comfort in that prediction being close enough to right that you know what is likely to happen.
That isn’t the same as boring. It means that the person can be relied on to do what they say, and they are consistent in doing that.
Someone who varies what they do all of the time is not reliable. Will they turn up? Who knows! Will they come early or late? Who knows! It is hard to trust someone who constantly changes.
Disagreements are Respectful Discussion
Disagreements are inevitable. A Green Flag person will work to resolve this through respectful discussion. The person may want some cool down time if they are heated or think that you are. After the cool down time, they seek to discuss with you what went wrong and look for a solution to the problem.
Green Flag people do not assume that you are the problem until you prove that you are. This is covered in more detail in the Toxic People Mind Toolset [LINK].
Equivalent Standards
A Green Flag Person applies similar standards to others as they do to themselves and people whom they care about. They do not apply a different standard, without a good “specific to that person’s needs” reason.
Examples of equivalence: When I was about to lift a heavy object with another person, I asked first “how strong are you?” They said “very strong”, so I needed to only communicate how I proposed we move the object. I didn’t assume they were weaker than me due to size, gender etc.
Examples of exception: I don’t have a gambling problem, while my friend does. Knowing this issues, I won’t propose going to the casino, nor let them handle large sums of money. They know I know, and we have had frank conversations about how to manage risk so that their gambling problem doesn’t harm us.
Honest
When Green Flag people tell you something, it is accurate to the reasonable best of their knowledge. When they do find out they were wrong, they are quick to humbly own their error and let you know.
Green Flag people tell you relevant information in a timely manner and don’t keep you in the dark.
Respectful Boundaries
Green Flag people will respect your physical, emotional, and belief boundaries.
A valid boundary is what affects yourself, not necessarily someone else.
For example, you may not like hugs. You can state that you don’t want one and no one should give you one, as your boundary has defined what happens to you. You can’t have a boundary that no one can get hugs in your vicinity, or that everyone must hug you, as you are now defining what happens to other people in your boundary – which is not valid.
This is tied to Consent [LINK], which we cover in more detail elsewhere.
Respect your Feelings
Green Flag people will respect how you feel about a thing, even if they do not feel the same way, or understand why you feel that way. Green Flag people will try to validate that your feelings are what you feel, and not tell you that your feeling is invalid.
They may seek to try to help you to process your feeling if they think that your feeling is based on misinformation or a mistake. Ideally they would validate that you are feeling what you are feeling before working to help you see if the circumstance matches what you feel.
The Spirit of the Message
Sometimes we use the wrong word, a word we use is ambiguous, or there is a subtle other meaning in the choice of word.
The Green Flag person tries to see what you mean behind what you say.
They don’t pick on you for poor word choice, but they may respectfully seek to clarify their understanding to ensure they have understood you well.
This is discussed in the Toxic People Mind Toolset [LINK] regarding the Principle of Charity.
Timely Communication
Green Flag people let you know what is going on as things develop. That is, if something changes in a way that requires a change in plans, or may affect you, they let you know either as soon as possible, or in enough time for you to make adjustments. When a situation is dynamically changing, many Green Flag people will give you confidence levels of their expectations so that you can begin to make a few back up plans.
Willing to be Wrong
Green Flag people are willing to admit to an error. They would rather discover and become correct than argue to be “right”. That doesn’t mean accepting error without evidence and logic, but it does mean that reasonable evidence and reasonable logic will prompt them to re-examine their position and seek to find out more. When they know they are wrong, they are quick to admit to it. If they think they might be wrong, or are not confident they are correct, they will state uncertainty.
Amber Flags = Caution
Amber Flags are wake up calls, “proceed with caution”.
The person’s behaviour is concerning or odd, but not clearly an indicator of harm. When you see an Amber Flag, this is a good time to be more alert and check out some other recent behaviours of the person, and then to continue to watch their next few. That is, take off the rose tinted glasses so you can see if the flags are Red.
If the odd behaviour was just a quirk, that is, an anomaly from their past and future behaviour, then this might just be A Bad Day, and nothing to worry about. We cover having A Bad Day in the Three Pillars Method.
Catching them in a Lie
This Amber Flag is raised if a person who is usually honest with you Lies. That is, you have found out that they mislead you or stated a thing that you know they are aware of is a lie. This isn’t likely their mistake, or that they were misinformed, this is, upon evidence, clearly a lie.
People have the right to privacy, and sometimes we are holding someone else’s truth that we have no right to tell. A person doesn’t have to tell you all the truth all the time. Even so, being a bit more skeptical about what you hear for a while is smart.
Being Stubbornly Wrong on a Topic
Nine out of ten people are thought to have a delusional belief about something. Perhaps this is their weird belief and they just don’t want to look too closely at this one thing. So long as it is not harmful to you or themselves, let them have it.
As with all Amber Flags, you should take a closer look at their other areas of stubbornness. If it all harmlessly connects to this belief of theirs, and hurts no one, adjust. If it shows more areas of concern, this may not be a compatible or safe person for you.
Unexpected Changes in Behaviours
An Amber Flag is raised when the person’s usual behaviour changes. This might just be a bad day, it might mean something else is going on, but you should pay attention to what is happening.
Over Sacrificing Self
Generosity is where you give to someone something (time, goods, service) that you have in surplus that helps their need. There are no string attached (where they owe you later, or you call in a debt).
If you don’t have surplus, but detect that a person’s need is great, you might sacrifice yourself to help them. A sacrifice is brief, and not too harmful. It can be a noble thing to do.
There is an upper boundary to that, where sacrifice turns into a problem. That is, where a person is continuously sacrificing their own good for the good of others. Sacrifice is rarely needed, so a person who sacrifices their own good frequently should get your attention. While not necessarily a toxic trait, this behaviour pattern may require you to make some decisions to help manage this behaviour and how it can affect you.
Red Flags = Concern
When we see Red Flag Behaviours, this warns us that something is not right here.
Generally, these actions lead to harm, or try to excuse harmful actions, shifting the responsibility away from the person who did the actions. Red Flag Behaviours can also increase the confusion in communication, making this less certain rather than more certain.
While people who have a known learning or intellectual disability may do Red Flag Behaviours, we need to consider the context of their behaviour within their diagnosis. A person needs to have insight, the ability to form new memories and a desire not to harm people for them to change.
Click > to expand the below. Each has some tips of what this looks like and some include what to do about them or how to test for them.
Double Standards
What is good for the Goose is good for the Gander. That is, if someone set a rule for everyone to follow, they should follow that rule for themself. If that rule doesn’t apply to them, and this is a common theme for them, Red Flag.
There are exceptional circumstances where a single rule can have double standards, like if you have a gambling addiction (or similar) and there is a single aspect that needs to be factored around. This should be a known issue that you are willing to admit is true, not a claim they have made about you that you know is false.
Gas Lighting
Gas Lighting is when a person tries to convince you that what you know to be real is false, and or convinces you that you are crazy.
Sometimes we are wrong and mistaken. When we are, it shouldn’t take too much independent evidence to show that. When we are wrong about what we recall in a conversation with people, that can be harder to get evidence for. However, if we make mistakes with recalling information in conversations, we should do that with most people. If multiple trusted people think you are fairly accurate, then claims that you’ve forgot or been mistaken by one or two people is dubious. There are thing you can do to check that in the future.
Anyone who actively Gas Lights you is someone to be wary of.
Untrustworthy
A person who lies, fails to keep promises, or takes your things without returning them is not someone you want to trust. A person who frequently breaks your trust is not trustworthy.
If you feel that you can’t trust the person, then that is concerning.
Controlling Behaviour
There are many ways a person can try to control you. To some extent, this is tied in with “Choice Violations” and “Emotionally Manipulative”. A person who controls you may give you the illusion of choice, or make a bad choice too expensive to take. You may think you are making decisions, but you are not really.
A good way to find out if you truly are making decisions and are respected in your choices is to randomly say “No” to the person of concern. Don’t explain why you don’t want to do the thing, just don’t say “No” and stick to it. How the person in question manages that will show you if they are controlling. A controlling person will try to force you to tell them why you are saying “No”, and then try to push you into saying “Yes”. A controlling person will ignore your “No” and do the thing anyway. A controllingperson will get very upset, cold, or angry, and you will find that you want to make them happy and want to change your mind.
A decent person will accept your “No” and adjust. They may reasonably seek to understand why, but will then fairly quickly accept “I don’t want to” as a good enough answer. A decent person will ask what you want instead. A decent person will compromise without an emotional load.
Choice Violations
There is a big difference between asking someone if they would like a cup of coffee and telling them that they are going to drink a cup of coffee. Even if you wanted the coffee, being told that you must drink it takes your choice away and it should feel bad. Taking choice from you is a choice violation. This can be in the form of:
- absence of asking you your input
- ignoring your input
- a false choice, where either choice ends up with the same outcome
- a limited choice, where you aren’t allowed to choose off the list
- being told what your choice is
Identity Attacks
Identity attacks are where the concerning person draws into question fundamental aspects about your identity. They may challenge your good intent, your intelligence, how you identify your sexuality, how you identify your gender, or any other strength virtue you identify as important.
Emotionally Manipulative
It is natural for us to have an emotional response to an incident. This is part of what helps guide our decisions.
A concerning person will push you to have a “negative” emotional response, that is a threatened emotional response such as fear, anger or disgust or a self conscious emotion such as self doubt or sadness. These feelings are easier to trick someone into and once triggered, your cognition will decrease and your emotional reactions will be stronger. This makes it easier for the concerning person to push you to make actions that you normally would not choose to do.
This can include a guilt trip, prompting you to doubt yourself, scaring you, angering you, or making you feel sad.
Often an emotionally manipulative person will either try to be trying to change your choice, or distract you from what they have done.
In these situations, try to conceal your feeling and stall for time while you regain your cognitive mind. Stop worrying about what they are saying or doing (so long as it is safe to do so) and become curious about why they are trying to push your emotional buttons. So long as the person is not actively physically harming you, you have time to regain your thinking. Remember to breath regularly all the way down to your belly, trying to keep your in and out breath even, or if needed, extend your exhale. Once you have identified that the person is pushing your emotional buttons, it no longer matters what they are saying or arguing – a person who is correct can tell you why in logical ways citing evidence. To push your emotional buttons means they know they don’t have a good statement.
Once you have regained your composure, try to work out if they are trying to make you act against your nature, or if they are trying to distract you from something.
Isolating
An abusive behaviour is to isolate you from people. They will try to push you to only trust them, or their friends. They will try to isolate you away from nurturing people, such as friends, family and medical / therapeutic professionals. Isolating can also be against a group of people, such as a gender due to jealousy, an ethnic group due to racism, or a religious group.