Carla Miller [00:00:02]:
If you've noticed unhelpful patterns of behavior playing out in your team or if you've got a tense relationship with a colleague, then this week's episode can provide insight into what's causing those patterns. My guest leadership coach and podcast host Rebecca Whittaker shares why we get pulled into the drama triangle and what we can learn from transactional analysis to understand ourselves and our relationships with others better. Now transactional analysis is new to me, so it was really interesting to talk to Rebecca and understand this drama triangle and reflect on how it plays out in the workplace and the role that we can play as leaders in creating more positive behaviors and relationships within our teams. In this episode, Rebecca provides an introduction to this concept, and I'm delighted that she's running a workshop within women leading this autumn to bring the next level of insights into how leaders can reduce drama within their teams. This is the influence and impact podcast for women leaders, helping you confidently navigate the ups and downs of leadership, and feel less alone on your journey as a leader. My name is Carla Miller. I've been coaching leaders for the past 15 years, and I'm here to remind you of the value that you bring to your organization. To help you believe in yourself, and to share practical tools and insights from myself and my brilliant guests that will help you succeed in your career.

Carla Miller [00:01:33]:
Now speaking of women leading, it has now officially started, which is super super exciting. So as I record this, we've had our 1st peer support call, and I've been hearing fantastic things about that. And then this week, we had our 1st group coaching session where I hopped on, got to meet some of the members, we got to talk through some of the challenges that are going on for them. And there's this brilliant group of women from all sorts of different sectors, all sorts of different specialisms, sharing experiences, sharing knowledge, supporting, and learning from each other. Absolutely loved it. Can't wait for what comes next. Lots of brilliant workshops lined up with guests including Rebecca, and a menopause session on sleep coming up soon that I think is much needed for me. So come and join over 40 women in women leading.

Carla Miller [00:02:26]:
My community to help you lead without overwhelm. To find out more, head over to carlamillertraining.comforward/womenleading. Now, let's get on with the episode and find out more about this mystery drama triangle. Welcome to the show, Rebecca. Lovely to have you here. How's your day going?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:02:49]:
It is busy, but manageable. And it's gone all gray again here, Carla. I don't know what it's like with you in the lakes, but all of a sudden, the sunshine has disappeared.

Carla Miller [00:03:00]:
Yes. Same here. Today is a gray day, which means we've got headspace to think about drama instead of how we want to be outside in the sun. So drama in the workplace, really interesting topic. Why is this something you're passionate about, and what's your background in this area?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:03:16]:
For me, drama in the workplace is one of those things that that when you start talking to people about it, it's that real penny drop moment where they're like, ah, okay. So this is why this happens. This is why I have this relationship with this person, or this is why, you know, I can see this with my team. And for me, understanding is such a a great gift. When we understand things, that's when we get to choose differently. So I love being able to talk to people about drama so that we can see how we can actually step out of drama, how we can start thinking about doing things differently. But until you understand it and until you understand what you're doing, you can't do anything about it. And my background in this, oh, where to start with that? I mean, I probably start right back in my early career.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:04:01]:
So my actual background is in engineering, Carla. I spent 15 years working as a mechanical engineer. So I used to see drama everywhere. Not know what it was, but drama was all through my career. And then I first got introduced to transactional analysis which is the theory that I then use. And it's the theory that drama comes from many many many years ago when I was doing, a leadership and management diploma. If I'm completely honest, I didn't really get it at the time. I think I wasn't quite sort of mentally mature enough to think about it as a theory.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:04:35]:
And then when I started studying as a coach, TA came up again. And this time it felt like coming home. You know, when you hear something it just suddenly makes the world make sense, and so then I went on to study transactional analysis further with the Byrne Institute as part of they're looking at organizational, transactional analysis. And I just love it as a theory. I just love it.

Carla Miller [00:05:02]:
Brilliant. And I'm sure, like me, the listeners are keen to know more because I'll be honest, I know very little about it. So let's start with when you say drama, how are you defining it? Because when you first suggested this title, I was like, imagining theater drama. So what what are you talking about when you're talking about drama?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:05:21]:
Yeah. I love that. Yeah. People often say that they think about theater or they think about, like, an episode of Corrie, and, you know, like, total drama, you know, in our lives. And it's not that all. It can be. It can be that sort of real extreme of it feels like this is something that would happen in a soap opera. But drama has weaved its way so neatly and so subtly into our everyday lives that it's just become part of what we do.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:05:51]:
So drama is those interactions where you come away thinking, how on earth did that happen? I was only trying to do something, you know, whatever good and noble thing you were trying to do, And it's blown up. But as you as you think about how on earth did that happen, you come back to that conclusion of this always happens to me. These things always end this way. And it can be as simple as what I'm gonna call an invitation into drama. So where someone sort of, says something that you know if you pick up on that, a heated debate is gonna ensue or a full blown argument is, you know, gonna follow. So it could be something as small as just noticing that little invitation from someone. 2, a full blown slang in March where before you know it you're shouting at each other across the office. You know, printers are getting thrown out of windows in frustration.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:06:48]:
That's a true story actually, by the way. Oh, gosh. Not me.

Carla Miller [00:06:51]:
But I

Rebekah Whitaker [00:06:51]:
did have a colleague who was he was a thrower, and one day a printer went out of the window. So, yeah, drama could be everything from those tiny little back and forth to full blown arguments. But

Carla Miller [00:07:05]:
at the

Rebekah Whitaker [00:07:05]:
end of it, everyone comes away feeling rubbish. No one feels good after drama. But drama does actually serve to help reinforce our position in the world and the way that we see where we belong in the world. So it always comes away with that you knew it would happen, and you feel rubbish afterwards.

Carla Miller [00:07:27]:
Okay. So it's kind of a pattern or a dynamic in that way.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:07:31]:
Totally. Drama's habitual. It is one of those ways that very early on we learn to, get our needs met without specifically asking for how for the thing that we want in order to get our needs met. And I see you smiling and nodding there like, okay. Yeah. So it's it's a habit and it becomes a habit that then we we repeat because we we drama doesn't happen in conscious awareness. You know, you don't think I'm gonna start an argument with you because, I don't know, I'm feeling a bit annoyed with my cat and I'm gonna take it out on you. You don't, you don't consciously think that.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:08:11]:
It happens out of our conscious awareness. And this is, you know, when you said what is it that I love, about about drama and about talking to people about dramas. We start to bring that stuff to conscious awareness. We start to see those patterns that are happening for us.

Carla Miller [00:08:28]:
That makes sense. And the reason I was smiling is you said it starts very young, and I was thinking about how my little boy, who's 6, sometimes he's clearly trying to pick an argument because he he's upset or something's going on, and he can't articulate it. And actually, what he needs is a good cry, so he just keeps trying to escalate. And there's me responding really calmly, and he's just trying so hard to escalate. And I'm like, oh, you've got some emotions. You just really need to get out here, haven't you? And you don't know how else to get them out. So, yeah, it really does start young, doesn't it?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:08:57]:
Yeah. Really young. And and, you know, whatever theory of psychology you look at, they all sort of agree that by the age of sort of 8, we've formed our lens of the world. And and part of our lens of the world is how we get our needs met in certain ways. And, you know, it sounds like you're doing an amazing job there, Carla, by not rising to it because very often we do. And I'm a parent myself, and I certainly find myself and I I I now now that I understand this, I see and I see it coming. But still sometimes it still gets me. And away we go and we're, we're going in and we're arguing and we know exactly how it's going to end.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:09:39]:
We, you know, it's often me and my daughter. Me and my daughter lock horns the most. She's 9. 9 going on 19. And you know, we both come away at the end feeling rubbish and then we need to go back later and we have a little cuddle and we say we're sorry. But, yeah, it does it does. It starts it starts really young.

Carla Miller [00:09:55]:
It does. And to be fair, I do lose it eventually, but I I try not to for a while. Okay. And you you've mentioned transactional analysis. What's we don't need, like, 20 minutes on the theory, but what is the basic theory behind it?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:10:11]:
Yeah. Don't worry. I won't give you 20 minutes. I don't want to bore you. That's absolutely not my intent when I talk about transactional analysis because I love it too much. I don't want people to be bored. So it was developed by Eric Berne back in the 19 fifties. So Berne was a, psychoanalyst at that point working as a psychotherapist.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:10:31]:
And back in the fifties when transactional analysis, sort of came about, therapy at the time was very much where the therapists were the experts and therapy was done to clients. That makes sense? They weren't really involved in understanding their own treatment. And Burn wanted to change that. So he started to write about this theory in a way that meant that clients could understand it for themselves. So it's a theory around human growth, development, relationships. And, you know, the transactional analysis quite literally is thinking about, you know, when I say hello, what happens? What do you do next? And all the stuff that then goes behind that. So I think that's probably one of the reasons that I love it as well because it feels like it is easier to understand. It feels like it talks in terms that I can relate to.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:11:31]:
So, yeah, it's been around since the fifties, since Eric Berne.

Carla Miller [00:11:35]:
And was it originally developed with sort of more personal relationships in mind, or was it developed with the workplace in mind?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:11:42]:
So it was originally from a psychotherapeutic perspective. But over the years, it has, evolved and being used then in in a number of different environments and organisations are then one of them. So you've got a psychotherapeutic branch of TA, you've got educational, you've got counselling, And then you have organisational too. And even just from a, you know, really basic understanding of how our human relationships evolve is really useful in the workplace. All the organizational TA in itself sort of looks at the overall relationships and the overall growth and development of the organization, which is sort of like that next level. It's fascinating stuff, though.

Carla Miller [00:12:30]:
One of the things that you've mentioned, to me before the call is this idea of a drama triangle. So what is a drama triangle, and what do we need to know about it, or why do we need to know about it?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:12:42]:
Yeah. Okay. So the drama triangle was actually developed by, another transactional analyst, a guy called Steven Carpman. So remember I said Eric Berne wanted to make things easy to understand, and he thought that that's what he was doing. But sometimes, just sometimes, I think he forgot how clever he was. And so there's times when he would talk about things. And so so Eric Berne talks about games. The games people play.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:13:10]:
He actually wrote a book, The Games People Play, that stayed in the New York Times bestseller list for over 2 years. It was really really popular when it was released. And he wrote a formula. And people immediately look at formulas and they're like, oh, kind of turned off by them. You I think you either, like, love maths and formulas or you're immediately like this doesn't work. So Steven Cartman developed the drama triangle as a visual way of representing what it was that was going on in these games that Eric Berne was talking about and drama comes from games. So if you imagine, I'm gonna, I'm calling it an inverted triangle because normally if I would draw a triangle my point would be at the top. Okay? But in the drama triangle, the point is at the bottom.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:13:56]:
Okay? So if you try and visualize that. And so, of course, you then have your 3 corners. So we have our 3 positions on the drama triangle. So, if we start in the top left, as you are looking at this triangle, this is our persecutor position. So persecutors will try and keep themselves above other people by belittling them or bullying them. They take that stance of it's not my fault. You've messed this up. You know, if only you'd have listened to me in the first place, it would have all been okay.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:14:35]:
I always think of persecutors like mister Wormwood from Matilda. Have you seen or read Matilda, Carla?

Carla Miller [00:14:41]:
Do you know what? It's on in the background a lot on the television, but I have not watched all of it. I'll confess.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:14:48]:
No. No. That's fair enough. There's a lot there's a part in it where mister mister Worm was having this run at Matilda, and he's saying, no. I'm big. You're small. I'm smart. You're dumb.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:14:57]:
I'm right. You're wrong. And there's nothing you can do about it. And that's our persecutors. So another patient position that we have on the top of the triangle, so if we move over to top right now, is our rescuer. So rescuers want to make the pain go away without really addressing the problem. And rescuers need to be needed by other people. That's where they get their validation from.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:15:23]:
They tend to be very busy people, and they by without the rescuers. Which then leaves us with our final positions. This is our bottom point and that's our victim on the triangle. And victims are helpless and hopeless and they're inferior to everyone else. They take no responsibility for the position that they're in but they also discount their ability to get out of their position. Now, when you describe it like that, they're kind of like the extremes of the behaviors. So some people will kind of sort of nod and recognize and say, Oh, yeah. I can see when so and so does it like that.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:16:12]:
I can see that they're a persecutor or someone is always, you know, saying that they will never understand what it's like for them, you know. You can you'll identify that person in your team, won't you, who seems to have it so much harder than everyone else. But it's not always the extremes of the behaviors that you need to think about. It's what they can look like when they're watered down a little bit because those are the ones that we see all the time. And what happens is we all have a go to position on the drama triangle. So we get that invitation from someone. That little thing that hooks us in. And we go to our go to position.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:16:51]:
And then during drama, we kind of move around the triangle a little bit and we get spat out in a whole new position. So I am a chronic recovering persecutor, and if you'd have told me a few years ago that I was a persecutor, I would have been mortified and I probably would have got a bit cross, you know. How dare you say that I bully and belittle someone. Never would I wouldn't dream of that. That's horrible. But it's re it was true. It was true. So I might say things like, I can't believe you've you cannot understand this yet.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:17:25]:
What on earth is going on? My 3 year old could have got this by now. So that's like a that's quite a classic persecutor sort of, phrase. And at the end of drama, I get spat out in victim because, funnily enough, people get a bit cross with me after I've put them down. And so they can often turn into the persecutor. And I get spat out thinking, I can't believe that you're having a go at me about this. I was only trying to I was only trying to help you. I was only trying to get you to understand. And now look at what you've look at what you've done.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:18:01]:
It always ends like this.

Carla Miller [00:18:04]:
Okay. I have questions as I try and process this. Okay. So we all have a preference, but presumably, there are because I can think of some relationship. I think, like, family relationships come to mind more often. I can think of some relationships where I'm at. Okay. I can think of one where I'm a persecutor.

Carla Miller [00:18:21]:
I can definitely think of another one where I'm a rescuer, for example. Yep. Yeah. And I know I have a massive aversion to the idea of being a victim. So can different situations bring out different elements in you? Do we all have those different elements in us, or is it that we have one really strong preference?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:18:41]:
Yeah. We all you're absolutely right. We will all have those elements with within us. We all have that potential to be one of each of the positions with different people in different circumstances. And if you think because we come onto the triangle in one position and we exit it in a different one, we're picking up those different characteristics, whether it's from where we enter or where we exit.

Carla Miller [00:19:05]:
And if there's 2 people, is there therefore one bit that never gets touched? So, like, say you I can see how if you're in an argument with someone, like the example that you gave, and someone's being mean and someone's a victim, and then they attack back. I can see how they've swapped, but then there's no one to rescue them. Like so so it's not do you always move around the triangle within drama? Or sometimes you stay in the same place?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:19:33]:
You always get spat out in a different position. So you're always chewed up and spat out somewhere different, you know. According to this is, you know, really sort of into the nitty gritty of Byrne's game formula. It doesn't count as a game, which drama is a game. It doesn't count as a game if you don't get spat out in a different position. Okay. However, depending on the situation, depending on the discussion it is that's going on or the argument or, you know, whatever you wanna call it going on will depend how many of the positions that you cover because drama could be, you know, 2 or 3 interactions. You know, it doesn't you might not have the time to move around to lots of different positions, but you will always end up in a different place to where you started.

Carla Miller [00:20:21]:
Okay. Brilliant. Thank you. And then you said that there are watered down versions, and you gave us sort of your own version, watered down What might a watered down version that we see every day of a victim and a rescuer look like?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:20:34]:
So a rescuer might, arrest or let's do, like, a bit of a rescuer and, victim interaction. And, actually, you know when I said back in my career I could think of drama everywhere? I had, a couple of colleagues who worked in the next sort of bay across from us. And they were part of the finance team. Now don't ask me what their specific roles were. It's going back some. However, every month, this same kind of conversation would happen between the 2 of them. Where, one, let's call him Dave. Dave would sit there and go, oh.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:21:10]:
Oh, I can't believe it. I'm really up against it again this month. Why is it that I always end up with so much more to do than everyone else? This is just ridiculous. It's really getting on my go. I've had enough that I'm always the busy one. So he was very much coming from that victim position. No one knows what it's like for me. And so then Colin.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:21:30]:
Let's call him Colin. Colin would come in and say, oh, Dave. Don't worry. Like, I'm nearly done with mine. So do you wanna send something over to me? And I can I'll I can finish it off for you. You know, just send me the next batch over. And then David say, oh, yeah. But mine are really hard and, you know, there's there's some really complex stuff.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:21:50]:
And by the time I explain it to you, it'll just be easier for me to do it myself. And and and Colin's, you know, he's trying to be really really helpful. He's like, well, you know, I deal with similar things. Like, send it over to me. I can totally sort that out for you. And this would go back and forth back and forth where Colin's really trying to be like, seriously? I will do it. You know, I'll add it onto my workload. And it might get to the point where Colin's a bit, you know, where I said sometimes rescuers end up doing things they don't really wanna do.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:22:19]:
Where he's like, look. If I need to stay an extra hour tonight to do it, then I'll stay. So very much, you know, I I I can sort this out for you. And it always ended the exact same way with Dave switching to for God's sake, Colin, why do you always do this to me? Why do you always do that? I don't need you to do this for me. You always think that you know better and he'd he would move into that persecutor position. And he'd get really cross that he was trying to be rescued. And Colin would move into that victim. I was only trying to help you.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:22:52]:
I don't know why you're always having a go at me. Every month.

Carla Miller [00:22:57]:
I'm feeling sorry for Colin. I remember someone once telling me a little bit about this triangle. I go, why would everyone not want to be a rescuer? Like, that's the best thing to be. So it's really

Rebekah Whitaker [00:23:13]:
And do you know what, Carla? That's a really common misconception

Carla Miller [00:23:15]:
that somehow being a rescuer is better.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:23:15]:
That if you're

Carla Miller [00:23:15]:
gonna be

Rebekah Whitaker [00:23:15]:
anywhere on the triangle, be a rescuer. But no. None of these positions are good. None of them are noble. But, no, none of these positions are good. None of them are noble. And they all so when you are a rescuer, you are essentially discounting the ability of someone else to think and act for themselves. You're saying, I will do this for you because you're not good enough to do it yourself.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:23:43]:
And that isn't actually a great message to hand over to anyone. Or I certainly wouldn't like it. I know I get really frustrated if I see someone trying to rescue

Carla Miller [00:23:55]:
me. Yeah. And I can hear you when he was pushing back. Like, sometimes people do just want to moan, don't they? And they don't necessarily want you to step in and solve their problems for them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Interesting. So how does this play out? If we're if we're a leader of a team, what do we need to know about this on sort of a a day to day basis? Does it start with knowing what your what your preference is so that you can pick up when am I moving into it, this unhealthy triangle?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:24:25]:
Yeah. And, you know, that would be the first thing that I would always encourage leaders to understand because it's so easy, isn't it, to look at other people and see what it is that they're doing wrong. And that's what we're looking at, you know. When we're thinking about drama, it is, it is an unhealthy position to be in. And so it's really easy to, sort of, point that finger and be like, oh, I see this rescuer in my team. I see this victim. This person's a persecutor. But, if you are a team leader or a team manager and you want to start reducing the drama in your workplace, it has to start with you.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:25:00]:
And for that to happen, you need to understand your own position on the triangle. So I said that this happens out of conscious awareness. But now I've, kind of, hopefully, brought this to awareness a little bit. You will start to see this. And again, you'll start to see it much easier with other people. But take those few minutes to think about, hang on a minute. What was my role in this? Where did I come into the triangle? And you'll start to be then able to establish the those patterns for where you, get hooked in by people. So you find yourself really going at it and go getting into the drama.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:25:41]:
Where you're actually inviting people into drama. If you think about that rescuer position, for example, because that's what lots of people want to do. Right? They they want to help other people. But there's a difference between helping and rescuing. So we're going in that rescuing position to take it away from people. Well, if you are going in as the rescuer, you are automatically trying to push someone into victim. And a lot of people, you said earlier, you have a real aversion to wanting to see yourself as a victim. I hate it if people try and put me in victim.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:26:14]:
So, you know, if you think that's an immediate sort of invitation for that dynamic to occur, for drama to happen by you going in and rescuing someone. So, be aware of where your common pitfalls are. What people? What situations? What kind? It can be as simple as a word. You know, it could be one word that you know is gonna, is gonna get you. I, I did a session in an organisation around rethinking difficult, difficult conversations. And we used a different part of transact actual analysis to understand our conversations. But we looked at the word 'but' and how, the things that we say before but are kind of those words that we think we should say because it makes what we're gonna say next socially acceptable. So I'm not being funny but I think you're a lazios.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:27:05]:
Or my favorites are when people say I'm not being racist or I'm not being sexist but because you know that the next thing that comes out of their mouths is gonna really wind you up. And, you know, one of the guys, in in this training session had said, I've just had a massive light bulb around the word but. And he is then immediately drawn into drama as soon as he hears that word but. So think, is it, you know, just a word? Is it a sentence? Is it certain people? And try to spend some time. What is it about these people that means that we always end up locking horns or that we always leave each other with that bad feeling?

Carla Miller [00:27:43]:
You've started to answer my next question, which is why as a leader do we care about this? Why is drama is drama not just a natural part of life that we need to let happen? Or is this something that we should be being more proactive about because it's damaging people's ability to perform?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:27:58]:
Do you know? It's an interesting question about is it just a natural part of life. Because, sometimes, when I'm delivering sessions on this, people say to me, yeah, but I kinda like a bit of drama. And as we go through it, we realize it's not the drama that they like. Because as we said at the start, no one comes away from drama feeling good. The thing is that drama is the only thing that is scratching a certain itch for them. It's it's the way that they've learned to get this need met. So it's not something that we should just let play out. We should be looking at how else we can scratch that itch.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:28:35]:
How can we scratch it in a healthy way that means that we don't walk away from these situations feeling bad? And when you think about it from a leadership perspective, you know, there's a very real cost to drama happening. You know, I refer to drama as the ultimate team unbuilder. Because if you think how much money is spent each year on team building activities and, you know, you go out the office for a day and, you know, climb a tree together and do you trust me if I, you know, to let you fall back and I'll catch you and all that kind of good stuff. And we come away and everyone feeling wonderful. But we don't spend any money understanding what are those things that then erode that lovely team building work that we do. And the things that erode it are those tiny bits of drama that happen every day. Because when they're happening, they're affecting people's self esteem. It affects their performance.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:29:32]:
It affects their relationship with others. It affects their productivity. And then there's also that cost to drama when, you know, there's, like, the post incident meeting. It used to be where everyone would gather around the water cooler. It depends where you work now. It might be on WhatsApp or you jump on a little teams call to discuss what it was that just went off in that meeting. And you know everyone's deciding whose side they were on and and what they're gonna do after that person was so horrible or after that person was so useless and they're trying to get everyone else to do their work for them? There's a cost to that. And ultimately, if you cannot build and maintain those strong relationships with your team, there's a cost to people leaving as well.

Carla Miller [00:30:15]:
Absolutely. And are there certain situations in the workplace that you see prompting a lot of drama?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:30:25]:
I can't put my finger on a specific, you know, like, if this happens, there will be drama. Because ultimately, we're all drawn into drama in different ways. And the things that spark me off and make me want to hop on the drama triangle and go for a roll around, you might not even they might not even be on your on your radar as a problem. And that's where then this self awareness piece and understanding what your sort of triggers, what your hooks into drama are are so important because it's not as easy as just saying, oh, every time someone asks for help or every time a manager says that something is wrong, drama will ensue. No. There's there's ways that you can say that things are wrong without getting into drama. And equally, you know, how you can then, like, RSVP no to those invitations that you get from other people to to go into drama. And, and, you know, that's one of the, one of the great things about once you start to understand where it is you are drawn into it, where you find yourself, you can then start thinking how you want to respond to those invitations.

Carla Miller [00:31:41]:
That makes sense. I was on a, group coaching call this morning, and so I'm kind of layering this as a lens over some of the scenarios people were bringing. And I noticed quite a lot that lack of clarity from leadership creates the sort of situations you're talking about as well. So we all have our individual pools into drama, but where there's a lack of clarity or where you've set it up so effectively you've got silos between teams. I often deal with that from an influencing perspective, and getting people to see things from another perspective. So it's really interesting to look at it with this lens as well. Now the members of women leading are super lucky because you're gonna come and run a workshop for us, aren't you, on what do we actually do about this?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:32:27]:
Yes.

Carla Miller [00:32:28]:
And I'm really interested because I I I need to process it because it's actually quite a lot to take on board, isn't it? It's a whole new lens to look at relationships through. It is.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:32:37]:
It is a different lens. And, you know, I love it when people sort of come with one of those real life scenarios where or if you go away and think about one of those last interactions that you had with someone where you've come away, you've not feeling good. You know? You're not feeling good about it at all. You know, to then think about, okay. Right. I've got those 3 positions. Persecutor, rescueer, victim. And and actually, like, analyse where was I? Where was the other person? Did we move around? Where were we spat out? You know? And once you start to sort of once you can process a real life scenario, I think you'll start to see

Carla Miller [00:33:15]:
it a lot. Yeah. It's really interesting.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:33:17]:
But, yes, very much looking forward to come in and deliver in the workshop. And then, you know, looking at how we move away from it. How do we stay off the drama triangle and what we can do instead?

Carla Miller [00:33:28]:
Yes. So let's leave people with a bit of hope. Is it possible to to stop replaying this, at least in some parts of our life or in certain relationships?

Rebekah Whitaker [00:33:39]:
Totally possible. Totally possible. And the first step of that is the self awareness and actually being able to spot where it is that you normally get caught in drama. And then from that, just through a few subtle tweaks in your behavior and in your intent can mean that you stay off the drama triangle even when other people are trying to invite you back on. Because remember, it's that habit. And those habits think about people that you have a lot of interactions with. You know? You have a a habitual way of dealing with each other. And so when you start to do something a bit different, people can find that a bit weird.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:34:19]:
And they're thinking, well, this isn't how not our normal interactions go. Normally we'd be doing this by now. And so they can still really try and pull you back on. But from understanding the way off the drama triangle, you can keep yourself off it. They can go and try and play in drama all they want, but you can stay off it. And then what happens over time is people realize that where you're playing now is a much nicer place to be. And so they come and join you there instead. They wanna stay off the drama triangles themselves because they realize that they're no longer walking away from those conversations with you feeling rubbish.

Carla Miller [00:34:58]:
It's so interesting. I'm really looking forward to learning even more about it and those what it looks like, the healthy alternative to this, and how to say no to invitation. So, I have to wait till October because that's when your workshop is. We were also running one for us before then as well, aren't you? You're doing one on how to coach and motivate your team. But thanks so much. It's been very insightful. You are an amazing guest. You've really brought that to life and simplified something very complicated.

Carla Miller [00:35:27]:
So I think this has been a really, really valuable episode for people. So thank you so much, and I look forward to hearing more.

Rebekah Whitaker [00:35:35]:
Thank you very, very much for having me, Carla.

Carla Miller [00:35:41]:
Thanks so much for listening to today's podcast. I hope you found it super valuable. If you would like more, if you'd like to keep working with me, there are a few ways you can do that. Very briefly, you can work with me 1 to 1 as a coach. You can join women leading my community for women leaders where you get loads of support from other women. You get, support from me and monthly workshops helping you to to develop your leadership skills, and help you lead without overwhelm. We also have regular menopause gatherings for those of you going through perimenopause within women leading. The third way you can work with me is with influence and impact by program I've been running since 2019 to help you to confidently step into your power as a leader and tackle self doubt as well influence upwards.

Carla Miller [00:36:34]:
And then, finally, you can work with me in house. So I run be bolder training. I run women's workshops. I give keynotes for women's networks. We do gender neutral versions of everything as well. So there's lots of different ways to work with me. Best thing to do, either head over to my website carlamiller.co.uk, and drop me a message, or head over to LinkedIn. And let's have a chat about how I can best help you.