While predators come in many types, they are generally targeting similar prey who operate in similar ways – us. We have similar weaknesses, certain traits, and vulnerabilities which are used to exploit us. We can learn to spot these exploits and armour ourselves against them. More, we can learn to spot when people are moving beyond fair use of our generous traits and into abuse. Here at Joshua Davidson Therapy, we have developed the Traffic Light System.
Traffic Light System
- Green is good,
- Amber is a caution, and
- Red is concern / harmful.
There are four interconnected parts to this system. We’ll briefly look at them here, and there are links to the full description in each break down.
Summary
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.
1. The Flag System
“Words are cheap. Actions are where it is at.
The true worth of a person is in the actions they take to improve the situation.”
Joshua Davidson, BSW
Actions speak louder than words. Actions are what a person does and the effect it has on the world. Actions are verifiable, evidence based and can be independently confirmed.
Words are nice when they match people’s actions, but very concerning when they don’t.
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 actions, and if those consequences inspire them to learn, grow and evolve their choices to avoid outcomes that harm others… or not.
The Flag System looks at individual behaviour and rates it on its own merits as:
- Green Flag: Good / communal / cooperative behaviour,
- Amber Flag: Ambiguous / uncertain behaviour,
- Red Flag: harmful behaviour.
2. Trust Zones
After learning the Flag System that rates an individual behaviour, we now look at the trend of behaviours and what that tells us.
One of the human superpowers (that we have over other animals) is looking at an existing pattern and using that to predict what might happen next. For people who have shown a trend of Green Flags, you can expect the next behaviour is likely to be another Green Flag behaviour. For someone who has been showing some Red Flags, it is fair to be prepared for Red Flag behaviour.
Put simply, people whom you can expect (rather than hope for) Green Flag behaviour, based on their recent history, can be placed into the Green Trust Zone. Those who have earned their way into the Green Trust Zone people are Assumed to be Good, which saves a lot of time working out whether or not you can trust them. That allows you to spend more energy where it is needed – dealing with people who have earned their way into the Red Trust Zone, Assumed to be Harmful.
The Amber Trust Zone is for people who haven’t yet earned Green Trust Zone or Red Trust Zone, or a formerly Green Trust Zone person who is showing some unusual behaviours.
3. Good to Abusive Scale
The Good to Abusive Scale does 2 different things.
- It encourages you to give a person a reasonable chance to learn from ignorance, earning their way into the Green Trust Zone.
- It reduces the ambiguity of someone’s actions as they earn their way to the Red Trust Zone.
Most people are good, most of the time, in most circumstances, thus we work with them on the Assumption of Good. Without a trustworthy indication, you should assume that a person is good (see the above Flag System and Trust Zones). When a person presumed good makes a mistake, so long as it isn’t catastrophic, you allow them to recognise the error and do better (learn, make amends as needed). If they don’t, you talk to them to ensure they aren’t ignorant of the problem – good people aren’t hard to talk to about problems (although they may not be easy either). People who have been told about the problem and continue to repeat harmful actions are people you can now predict that they are not safe and belong in the Red Trust Zone, and thus their next actions needs to have the Assumption of Harmful.
4. Three Pillars Method
A part of many cultures is the idea of ‘giving people a second chance‘, ‘to forgive and forget‘, and that ‘they are just having a bad day‘. It is necessary to give people the space to grow and learn from their reasonable mistakes, and to have the space to be occasionally less than awesome.
What we aren’t taught well is the reasonable limits to this grace. How many ‘second chances‘ should someone get?
The Three Pillars Method, the Green Pillar steps out what it looks like when people are doing learning from mistakes. The Amber Pillar steps out what is looks like when you need to pay more attention and have a ‘cold hard look‘. The Red Pillar steps out when to recognise that the person’s trend of behaviour, (or perhaps a singular action) is sufficient to assume the person isn’t safe (Green Trust Zone invalid).