The Zone System helps us to work out when we can relax and accept people at face value, when we need to be cautious and when we need to be on alert. Based on the behaviours a person shows over a reasonable amount of time, a person shows you how they should be zoned. This incorporates into the Traffic Light System, where Green is safe, Amber is caution and Red is Alert.

The Traffic Light System

Contents, TLDR

Flag System, Three Pillars and Toxic People -in brief

The Flag System helps us identify good Green Flag behaviour, concerning Amber Flag behaviours and warning Red Flag behaviours. We should address concerning and warning behaviours with a conversation and inform the person.

With the help of the Toxic People Mind Toolset, we navigate whether the person is making a mistake or has a problem.

The Three Pillars help us determine how often a person can make mistakes and how many chances it is fair to give them to improve.

Trust is Earned – Generally a trend, not a single action

The saying “actions speak loader than words” is very apt for looking at their behaviour. A person can promise you the world, but promises are empty until they are acted upon. Toxic people will often promise the earth and will rarely follow through. Promises to learn better, to change their behaviours, to be there for you and so on. Decent people will do as they say, and be reliable.

We give to people who speak truly, who are consistent, who are reliable and who deliver on their promises Green Flags for these behaviours. In a way, each Green Flag adds to our ability to trust them. By trust, we mean that our prediction that they will do actions that we can positively rely on is most often matched in reality.

Behaviours that are hard to categorise as good or bad will earn an Amber Flag. We may upgrade that to a Green Flag later, or demote it to a Red Flag as we learn more and attempt an intervention with them as per the Toxic Person Mind Toolset.

Behaviours that are harmful, that are in contradiction to what we feel is right and good, will earn the person a Red Flag. A person whom we predict will do Red Flag behaviours often enough will not be someone we trust.

Not all Red Flag behaviours are equal. The Three Pillars help us to differentiate between Soft Red Flag and hard Red Flag behaviours. On the Red Pillar, an unforgivable action does not require a second chance.

Spoon Theory is the general idea that we all have a finite amount of resources that we can spend throughout the day to get through the day. Some of us have a smaller number of Spoons to get things done and some processes are more expensive for us than for most people. Social Spoons are the internal resources that we expend to manage interacting with people.

The Three Zones allow us to figure out whether we can relax and let our guard down (Green Zone), be more attentive but not yet alarmed or concerned (Amber Zone), or whether we need to proceed with extreme caution and put in protective strategies and boundaries (Red Zone). This helps us to conserve cognitive and Social Spoons when interacting with trusted people, increase alertness around uncertain people (a bit more expensive) and be danger wise when interacting with known perpetrators (very expensive).

Green Zone – Comfort

People who mostly trend Green Flags have earned a place in the Green Zone of trust. Some of the people who show these behaviours might be good friends, or even intimate partners. Green Zone People do not have to be friends, they may just be people who have proven themselves to be trusted acquaintances, work associates that you can rely on, or family members who are allies. The point is, people who have earned Green Zone status have matched enough Green Flag behaviours to their words of intent that they can, by default, be trusted.

Knowing this means that you can decrease your level of alertness to harm and preparation for failure around them. Knowing who is a Green Zone person allows you to make reasonablly accurate assumptions about their likley behaviours rather than having to treat every encounter as an unknown. Green Zone people do what they say, or make it clear that something has occurred that has prevented them from doing so in enough time that you can generally make adjustments. Green Zone people try to make amends for errors, and learn from mistakes. Green Zone people try not to promise or agree to things they likely can’t do.

That is, you can relax.

It is posisble that someone can behave out of character and no longer be trusted.

Amber Zone – Caution

People in Amber Zone either haven’t yet given you enough examples of their behaviours to trust that this is truly their trend, or people who are acting unexpectedly oddly and you need to pay extra attention to what they are saying versus what they are doing, and looking more at what the consequences of what their actions are creating and whether or not the person is making positive changes.

New People – being reasonably cautious

It is helpful to assume that a new person is likely to be good and giving them a chance to show you how good they can be. We should aim to default to the first three parts of the Toxic People Mind Toolset [LINK] for new people.

We Assume the Good, most people are mostly good most of the time
Apply the Principle of Charity, people make mistakes and likley don’t mean to cause problems, so we hope for the most charitable explanation of their actions, but check to see what they say they meant
Use Hanlon’s Razor, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”, aka malice is rare, so the odds are poor behaviour is ignorance or a mistake

The new person has not yet earned our trust, so they are in Amber Zone as we get to know them. While we need to give them some opportunities to show us they can be trusted, this should be on a sliding scale of minimal bad consequences to yourself or others if the person shows themself to consistently not be trustworthy.

If a person shows themself to be worthy of trust and is predicting their actions on the assumption of Mostly Good Most of the Time matches the reality, then the person can be promoted to the Green Zone of trust.

If the person shows themself to not be worthy of trust, and or their actions do not match a person who is Modltly Good Most of the Time, then they can either stay in the “I don’t know you well, or have much trust in you” side of the Amber Zone, or if they have done some suitably questionable actions or hurt you or someone you care about (with enough evidence to be confident with) then the person can be shifted to the Red Zone of trust.

Ambiguous Actions of a Green Zone Person

Sometimes people are going through a hard time and they become unreliable, or sometimes we have been far too forgiving of someone because we thought they were a Green Zone person. When we have noticed that a person’s current actions are at odds with how we would expect a trusted person, a Green Zone person, to act, then it is wise to temporarily put them in the Amber Zone, to remind us to be cautious for a while.

If the reason why a person has been reclassified to Amber is a temporary life issue, or a certain catastrophy of misunderstanding between the two of you (or someone else you trust), then this should be short term and the person can go back to being in the Green Zone when things are settled. If, on the other hand, we do find out we misjudged them, the section above about a person not being worthy of trust applies: they can either stay in Amber Zone of not being trustworthy, but also not being harmful, OR they can be demonted to the Red Zone if there are signs of harmful behaviours.

Sometimes we have misjudged this person when we put them in the Green Zone, or something else has occurred that has significantly disrupted how they interact with us, and that person is now of concern. This can be a good reason to recategorise them as Red Zone.

Red Zone – Concern

People who have used too many Red Flag behaviours to be trusted, and they either cannot understand the effect of their actions, don’t care about that kind of consequence, or that actually is what they want. Either way, these people need high levels of caution.

A person who is classified as Red Zone has shown that they frequently cause harm, either physical, financial, emotional or other. It is important to recognise that they are doing harmful things and you cannot trust them. There can be a range of reasons why they might be doing those harmful things, and it doesn’t matter what those reasons are. When you make a plan and they are involved, your history with them shows that they are not likely to do the kinds of actions that help things. Their actions are costly, disruptive and or harmful.

Put another way, when you make a plan with a Green Zone person, you might make a back up plan in the unlikely circumstance something goes wrong. When you make a plan with a Red Zone person, you’d be a fool to not make several management plans for when things likely do go wrong.

Harmful Behaviour, It doesn’t matter why they do it

Red Zone people are not ignorant of what they are doing. That is, they have been told in such a way that a reasonable person who was ignorant has elected to make some changes and grows from that knowledge; yet the Red Zone person has not changed for the better.

We are leaning on the bottom 3 steps of the Toxic People Mind Toolset [LINK] for this.

Ignorance people can be taught, incapable can’t
Grey’s Law “Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from mallice”
Assumption of Mallice: it doesn’t matter whether they mean to hurt you or not, they are hurting you

This could be because they don’t understand why they should, and given that they were reasonably informed, they may not be able to comprehend and show some level of understanding deficit. Even so, a reasonable person who can’t understand why their actions are harmful to you, should trust that you have told them that it is harmful and make a reasonable change to not harm you anymore. This is what you would do if someone told you a thing you did was bad but you didn’t understand why – upon discovering that you just can’t get it, you would ask what you should do differntly to avoid continuing to hurt them. Red Zone people don’t do this.

Red Zone people may be so self absorbed that they don’t really notice the harm that they do. While it may be tempting to forgive them for this, when the harm is pointed out to them, they do not make changes to avoid the harms to others. This results in them continuing to harm, and that is the prediction we must make for them.

Red Zone people may be aware of the harm they do, and just not care. Red Zone people might be people who not only are aware of the harm they do, they may enjoy the actions that harm and knowing that it harms.

While it can be interesting to know which kind of Red Zone person you have, mostly it doesn’t matter. What matters is that they will fairly reliably cause harm often enough that you need to be very careful when dealing with them.

Managing Red Zone People

We can’t always avoid Red Zone People. Sometimes they are in our circles despite our efforts to get them out. This could be a family member, a work collegue, or a friend of a friend of ours.

Friends of Red can’t be Green

When a friend continues to interact with a Red Zone person, even if that friend would normally be a Green Zone person, be cautious classifying them as Green Zone. A friend is different to an aquaintance, so in this case, we will interpret a friend as someone who often includes the Red Zone person in their plans, or spends significant time with the Red Zone person. This means the Red Zone person influences the normally Green Zone friend enough to decrease their trustworthiness.

Enough Spoons to be Alert

When you interact with a Red Zone person, it is important to ensure you have enough spoons to be alert and able to metaphorically fence with them. If you do not have sufficient spoons, cancel the interaction.

Staying on alert and being able to avoid potential conflicts is exhausting. Try to keep the interaction to a limited amount of time, often 2 hours or less. Have a reason to leave if you need to.

You can sometimes dilute the intensity of the Red Zone person with more people, but some Red Zone people will manipulate a crowd and that is even more expensive.

Avoid Committing on the Spot

Red Zone people try to push you to make a committement for or against a thing and will try to impart emotional reasons or urgent reasons for you to do so. The best tactic to manage this is delay the decision until you have had a bit of time to think about what you really want to do.

This is sometimes not possible and a decision needs to be made. The default you should go for in this is “No, but I might change my mind.”

Avoid Relying on Them

Red Zone people are poorly reliable, or they are reliably poor help. This is what got them into the Red Zone.

Where possible, have a back up plan for what you needed them to do. Where possible, create limits to how long you will wait, what you will spend in time or money, or when you can comfortably cancel.

Mostly, though, avoid making plans that rely on them.