To everyone new this week: welcome. You being here means more than you know. Knowing it lands with someone like you keeps me going.

I'm Lavena Xu-Johnson. I write about psychology for founders. Why? Because scaling a business means scaling ourselves first.

Happy Thursday, founders,

Years ago, I stumbled across Karpman’s drama triangle in a book, and it shifted how I view dynamics between people. This framework cuts through the mess of toxic relationships, showing how we get stuck cycling through the three roles of Victim, Persecutor, Rescuer, while chasing needs we don’t voice instead of forging real connections. Karpman (1968) saw it clearly: once we’re caught in this triangle, we shift roles, stir dynamics and it frays the relationships we need to lead.

Two weeks ago, I dug into the rescuer trap, exploring how blurred boundaries drain us as founders. This week, we’re tackling the next role in the drama triangle: the Persecutor. It sneaks into our leadership, often disguised as “holding people accountable,” but its finger-pointing can unravel teams and stall progress. Let’s unpack how it happens and how to break free.

Partnered with Notion

Thousands of startups use Notion as a connected workspace to create and share docs, take notes, manage projects, and organize knowledge—all in one place.

We partnered with Notion to give you up to 6 months free of new Plus plans, including unlimited Notion AI (up to 6,000$ in value)!

Almost everyone, at one period or another, has been involved and enmeshed in unhealthy and manipulative interpersonal relationships in which they played psychological games (Fulkerson, 2003; McKimm & Forrest, 2010; McMahon, 2005). Karpman (1968) developed the drama triangle, a theory of human interaction to explain and understand destructive interpersonal relationship patterns, based on the interplay of three psychological characters: Persecutor (villain), Rescuer (hero), and Victim (damsel in distress).

In authentic relationships, we co-create space with open dialogue and respect. In role-based ones, we’re guessing games, twist intentions, projecting expectations before verifying. Players involved in the drama triangle often act upon their own egocentric needs rather than exhibiting genuine interests in the feelings of others (Burgess, 2005; McMahon, 2005). These inauthentic interpersonal exchanges serve the purpose of avoiding authentic intimacy (Fulkerson, 2003).

A 2020 study validating the Drama Triangle Scale found that people scoring high on the persecutor dimension often enact blame to regain control. But it backfires, fostering resentment in teams. Interestingly, the scale showed persecutors aren’t always aggressive; sometimes it’s passive-aggressive sighs or “just stating facts” that erode morale.

For founders, the persecutor role masquerades as tough love: “They dropped the ball, again.” Or “If they’d step up, we wouldn’t be here.” It feels like a justified tactic for safeguarding the ship. But it’s often rooted in anxiety, the fear of failure bubbling up as criticism.

Blame doesn’t land in a vacuum. A 2017 review on power dysfunctions in teams (Tost et al.) found that leaders in “high-power” modes, like persecutors, create hierarchies where lower ranks withhold info, reducing team performance. When you lean into persecutor mode, others don’t hear “constructive criticism”, they feel attacked. It reframes you as the enforcer, not the collaborator.

A 2017 analysis of workplace blame in healthcare settings (Cooper et al.) revealed that blame cultures reduced error reporting, leading to repeated mistakes and higher risks. In startups, where iteration is everything, this means stalled progress.

Studies on blame cultures (e.g., Oxford Review synthesis) link to drops in engagement, higher turnover, and decision paralysis, where everything escalates to you.

1.  Shatters psychological safety: Edmondson’s work on psychological safety (1999, expanded in 2020 studies) shows teams with low blame but high candor innovate more, because people share ideas without fear.

2.  Breeds inertia and resentment: Blame fosters “learned helplessness” in others, leading to little innovation - as your team is waiting for your verdict.

3.  Hijacks your bandwidth: Every blame session lingers as “attention residue”, pulling focus from strategy. Over time, you’re firefighting your own fires.

Blame calms you momentarily but amplifies team stress. Over-functioning leaders (who blame to “fix”) often pair with under-functioning teams, per family systems theory applied to organizations (Friedman, 1985).

Psychological safety matters, and it’s often all about how real feedback is delivered. When the temptation of blame takes over because it might feel efficient, just be reminded that it could be a tax on your culture.

How do we shift away from a prosecutor’s default’s blame urge? We can draw from resilient leadership models (e.g., Friedman’s self-differentiation) to stay calm without controlling.

1.  Build no-blame retros: Inspired by agile practices and blame studies, run sessions focused on “what happened” instead of “who failed.”

2.  Question your triggers: Next blame urge? Ask, “What’s my anxiety here?”

3.  Track patterns, not people: Log escalations monthly. If blame repeats, it’s a system fix, structural changes cut blame incidents.

4.  Carve out reflection zones: Block time for non-judgmental thinking.

When you’re on the receiving end of a persecutor’s blame, whether it’s a co-founder’s sharp critique or a team member’s pointed jab, it’s easy to get defensive or fire back. But that just tightens the drama triangle’s grip. Instead, try this: pause and name the dynamic to yourself without escalating. Acknowledge their frustration “I hear you’re upset about the missed deadline” and redirect to the problem, not the person “Let’s break down what went wrong and how we fix it”. Research from conflict resolution (Deutsch, 2011) shows this de-escalation approach - validating emotions while focusing on solutions, cuts hostility in tense exchanges. For founders, this keeps you out of the victim role and models accountability, turning blame into progress.

As always, hit reply if something in here hits home.

Until next week,
Lavena

P.S. If you want to get a founder feature about your own story, reply to this email. If you’d like to reach our newsletter audience (founders, creators, and marketers), click the button below.

If you’re new here, I’m over the moon you’ve joined us! To help me craft content that’s actually useful (and not just noise in your inbox), I’d love it if you took 1 minute to answer this quick survey below. Your insights help shape everything I write.

Dive into our other newsletters - where psychology meets the creator economy, e-commerce marketing, and Human resources.