How many times have you heard yourself say or think something like this:

“That won’t work.”
“I know I’m right.”
“They keep doing it wrong.”
“I can do it all right now.”
“It’s always on me to solve it.”
“I don’t have a choice.”

I would guess just today you’ve had one of those thoughts about clients, other agents, vendors, your family or friends.

The Drama Triangle

In the world of Conscious Leadership, we refer to this as the drama triangle. Each of these statements comes from one of the three roles we love to play when we’re feeling defensive, reactive or fearful.

These roles include:

• Victim – you are the effect of something outside yourself like a person or a situation
• Hero – you seek temporary relief by taking on more than is required in a situation
• Villain – you blame others or yourself

To make this real for yourself, think about a difficult situation for you today.

Making This Real

For example, maybe I’m a team leader. I have a team meeting every Monday morning at the same time but, like clockwork, two of my agents always show up late. It’s incredibly frustrating and has been going on for months. Relative to that experience, you have probably thought things like:

• Victim – no matter what I do, this behavior persists
• Hero – I will make sure we take notes so they don’t miss anything
• Villain – these two are creating a culture of disrespect on my team

Being on the drama triangle and dancing between these roles can be fun. It can feel safe, It can feel great to be right.  It can deliver a hit of adrenaline.

But it can also be exhausting.

Stepping Off The Triangle

And when the pain becomes too great, you have the option to shift and move to a place of curiosity and choice. When that happens, the roles you were playing before can evolve into ones that can create different outcomes. These include:

• Victim >> Creator – you claim your personal power to build your reality
• Hero >> Coach – you help others realize their self empowerment rather than solving for them
• Villain >> Challenger – you provoke others to take action

If we were applying these new roles to our team leader example above, you can see how our thoughts & actions change and help us create a different reality:

• Creator  – I need to set clear agreements with these two that include specifically who does what by when. And, outline the consequences of choosing to not do so.
• Coach – They will face the consequences of missing key updates for the week; it’s not my responsibility to help them figure out what they missed.
• Challenger – I know I need to address this directly with them vs. talk about this with everyone else.

When we move to the Creator, Coach & Challenger, our agency is returned to us. We are no longer wallowing in a state of “to me” and instead are driving outcomes from a “by me” state.

Are we all perfect in this? No. But the objective is to be conscious about where we are (are we dancing on the drama triangle?) and intentional about our choice to shift or not. Then, we are leading from a conscious place and creating what we want in the world (or, at least, our teams).