Are you the drama? Victims, Villains, and Heroes at work

Nat: Kristen and I have tuned up to record this podcast, which is being videoed and now being put on social media, and we’re wearing the same top.

Kristen: Well, we’re wearing the same colour top.

Nat: Green. I copied you. What about the green? I went green — I was influenced subconsciously by Kristen’s green top this morning, and in my attempt to look like a normal human being to record the podcast, I have copied. But drama is a great starting point for today, because today we’re talking about the drama triangle, which you may have read about in our newsletter if you’re a Newsy subscriber. It’s a very simple way of articulating the unhelpful roles we all tend to fall into when things go awry. It could be when we’re feeling uncertain, rejected, worried, or threatened — all those natural emotions can lead us to adopt one of these roles, and at the time we feel completely justified in doing so, because our body and brain are in that self-preservation mode. But what we can accidentally end up doing is adding to the drama. So we thought we’d talk about drama today.

Kristen: Yep. Yeah, we wanna talk — I wanna uncover, like, am I falling into this more than I should be? Are you the drama? Am I a role, or am I completely justified? Number two, I wanna talk reality TV, because I wanna talk about what constitutes reality TV and what doesn’t, and then our favourite shows, or the history thereof. And then I wanna chat about the actual drama triangle — there’s a few funny stories about the guy who coined it.

Nat: Always a freaking guy who coins it.

Kristen: And then finally, let’s chat about the different roles.

Nat: Fabulous. And I just gasped because I remembered my word of the day that I want to share with you — my origin of a word — and I’m typing that in at the bottom. Don’t go look.

Kristen: All right, all right. And let’s talk drama too.

Nat: Okay.

Kristen: Well, I wanna chat about being a hero, which is one of — because we’ve got hero, victim, villain. We’re gonna go into each role and do something —

Nat: Yeah. Do you think we want to give a quick overview of each role?

Kristen: No.

Nat: No?

Kristen: Okay, I wanna flip it today. Bear with us — so everyone, if you didn’t like this format, write in, reply, let us know. But I wanna go into it after. Just bear with, okay? No, what is it — the… yeah, okay.

Nat: Okay.

Kristen: Hero is a role where I find myself — okay, frankly, I’m gonna rate myself a good problem solver, and I get a dopamine hit when I help people solve their problems. I do have a superpower of storyteller, and one of the superpowers is telling people how incredible they are — so I get a dopamine hit from people coming to the realisation of how amazing they are, and their real potential and incredible possibilities for their lives. I love forcing people to think expansively, like, “Of course you can do that.” And number two, I like problem-solving. When people come to me — friends, kids, otherwise — I jump into problem-solving, let’s-get-you-a-solution mode, which invariably ends up driving my teenage daughter, now adult daughter, nuts, but it’s a thing I do. And I’m wondering — is that hero behaviour? I benefit from helping people solve their problems. Is that bad?

Nat: I think that’s a really good example, and I love it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it comes down to motivation, and I do think, regardless of how you help people, you’re probably gonna feel good at the end — that’s part of it. They often say if you’re suffering from severe depression, or a real down patch, one of the best things you can do is help someone else, because it really does help your brain. But when it comes to problem-solving, I’d say there are two ways you could approach it. One is problem-solving — AKA actually solving their problem — and the other is solutionising, AKA trying to land on something quickly so you feel good about yourself. Those are two very different things, and I don’t know which one you do. The second is more about wanting to feel in control, telling someone something they can do so that you feel, “Great, sorted, underway, everything’s back in order.” The first often takes a lot longer, because it’s about really understanding what’s wrong, understanding all the context around what they care about — like your teenage daughter, what she may or may not want to hear — and solving that. So for your teenage daughter, it might be that you’re jumping to solutions, but what she really wants is just for you to sit and listen.

Kristen: Right. I do the first one.

Nat: The solutioning?

Kristen: Yeah.

Nat: I think you do both, but I do think that’s the difference when it comes to hero mode. And by the way — these are roles, not people. We all do all of them.

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nat: And I’ve got an example of being in hero mode recently.

Kristen: Okay.

Nat: When we want to land on something so desperately because it’s motivated by us, I think that’s quite normal, and it’s usually when we’re feeling sort of wobbly. But the reason it lands poorly, and why it’s part of the drama triangle, is exactly what you said — it’s often not what the person wanted, it often doesn’t actually solve the problem, and we’ve gone about trying to make ourselves feel good and totally overlooked the thing they actually cared about.

Kristen: I think, if anything, I’ll just be aware. There’s real intellectual stimulation for me when I’m nutting through something with someone — they’re in it, and I’m nutting through it, and part of my approach is to go, “Have you tried this? What about this or this?” I do that. So I’ll reflect on that. So tell me about your hero situation.

<Nat: Side note — a really simple thing to do when someone comes to you with a problem, and one of my friends taught me this, is to say, “How can I help you in this? Do you just want to vent? Do you want me to help you solve it?” You give them some options. And it’s amazing how often people say, “I just wanna vent. I actually don’t want your opinion, I don’t wanna discuss it, I don’t want any feedback.” So offering those options upfront is actually a really good way to properly problem-solve without being the hero, because you’re making it about them, not you.

Nat: We have had, as you know, a pretty rough couple of weeks with health — some pretty awful things happening to the people around us. We’re both absolutely fine, but in my life there’s been quite a lot. One of the things I was talking about with a friend, when we were both pretty upset about the situation, is how both of us naturally jump to wanting to solve it — because it’s a person going through an almost impossibly hard time, and there’s literally nothing we can do to make her life better right now. And the very fact of that made us both pretty upset and frustrated, because our brains were desperately looking for, “What if we do this? What if we drop food? What if we send support?” How can we get that dopamine hit, or some sort of feeling of control, in a situation where we don’t feel like we have any? And we both kind of clocked it — wow, it’s amazing how when life felt very awful and uncertain and someone we know is going through a horrible thing, we both went into hero mode.

Nat: It’s kind of like your teenager — what you landed on in the end is asking what she needed. And what she needs is time. She just wants to be on her own for a bit. So the solution wound up being my friend talking to her partner, and he’s going to be in touch when she’s ready to chat, and until then we’re doing nothing — and having to sit there doing nothing, knowing she’s having this horrible time we can’t help with.

Kristen: Yeah. I love that. Get curious. It’s so funny, I wonder if I’ve — yeah, I think that’s great. I was just reflecting that I think people know my MO now — modus operandi — and I think sometimes people do come to me for solutions because they know that’s the dynamic. I think I get it, even though it’s probably not the right thing with my daughter. I think sometimes she gets so frustrated she comes to me for the solution, and I’m like, “That’s also not necessarily a good thing.” So again, I’ll be working on that.

Nat: I do agree with that. I feel the same about when people come to me with a problem. I am very proudly not going to be someone who leaves them in victim mode, which we’ll get to. When someone comes to me and goes, “Woe is me, everything’s hard,” I am not the person to go to for that, because I’m always going to be the person who says, “And what could you do differently?”

Kristen: Oh, I can’t — I know you’re gonna straighten me out. It’s actually the victim mode that doesn’t bother me. When people come and say, “I’m super gutted about this, something bad’s happened, I’ve had a setback” — but maybe that’s not quite it, we’ll get into the roles. But I think it’s the victims who play victim, it’s — yeah, blaming and that, that’s the role.

Nat: Yeah.

Kristen: Oh my gosh, and that’s a classic sibling thing — so triggering. So triggering for me, I’m right away — I’ve actually found myself being like, “Don’t be a victim.”

Nat: Anyway, I totally agree. And it’s a very important point to make — when something hard has actually happened, I think both of us, and most people we know, are the first to stand alongside you and be right there in it. But it’s when you’ve adopted the role of victim that I don’t think either of us has patience for. I really don’t, I can’t handle it.

Kristen: And I wonder, isn’t it always the stuff you see most in yourself that you hate? I probably was a bit of a — anyway. And I think it’s sometimes opposites too, because I genuinely don’t think I’m very much of a victim, but I am a villain quite a lot. That’s my go-to.

Nat: Okay, we’ll get more into that. Villain feels like you’re owning it, even though it’s not.

Kristen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So people who are powerless — I find that really hard.

Nat: I would like to share my other hero moment. Probably in amongst a couple of weeks of watching a lot of people do hard things, we had to take our foster puppy back. And I want to save all the puppies. I don’t think I’ve ever really had a maternal instinct — I love babies, I love puppies, I’m surrounded by them and I love them, but I’ve never really wanted one. I said to Kyla, “Oh my gosh, am I forty-two and feeling the urge?” I’m not, but I have this strong urge — I’ll cry when I see the foster puppies, I desperately need to have one of them and stop them sitting alone. It’s such a weird, out-of-control emotional thing, because logically I’ve always thought it’s important, and now I’m feeling this unregulated emotion about it. I think it’s hero mode — I need to satisfy that instinct of feeling needed, or being able to help, when there are other areas where I can’t. So those poor puppies are gonna be smothered in love next time Kyla lets me have one.

Kristen: Exactly. I don’t think the puppies care.

Nat: I’m up for it, I’m all for cheering from afar.

Kristen: Okay, I wanna chat reality TV, because I got into a bit of a pickle this morning — I had to use my annoying robot to be like, “What is reality TV?” I had to ask it to give me a bunch of reality TV shows, because I don’t think I like reality TV, and it was confirmed — my robot was like, “You like factual entertainment.” It’s lifestyle or factual, in TV industry speak. So the things I love — we’re chatting about reality TV because this is often where the drama triangle shows up, and Nat’s gonna take us through a thing with some of her shows. But for me, when I asked, “What reality TV shows do I like?” — they’re factual entertainment. “Grand Designs,” “Location, Location, Location,” “Hotel Inspector,” “MasterChef Australia.” I’m the best non-cook cook ever — “Oh yeah, you want a roux? I know how you can make a roux,” even though I don’t make them. But I love those types of shows. When I think about reality TV, I was OG — “Survivor,” “Alone” is the thing now, I haven’t watched an episode but I’ve heard it’s great, very intense.

Nat: Oh, it is good.

Kristen: But “Survivor,” I was definitely OG. And then I caught myself watching one season of “Selling Sunset” — can’t stomach it anymore, but I did watch a season. And lastly, I caught myself watching a show last week called “Destination X,” and it was so cringe, so bad. The whole premise was to guess a destination, but really it wasn’t, because you had to complete all these competitions and tasks — which frankly I loved, because I wished I was competing against those people. But that was how you won the game, not guessing the final destination. So stupid. Anyway, if anyone’s watched it, please concur — it was so dumb. But that’s me, a factual entertainment person. What about you, Nat? Is that not counted as reality TV?

Nat: Well, no — it’s expert-led, no elimination, no manufactured conflict, so that isn’t reality TV.

Kristen: But isn’t “MasterChef” —

Nat: Oh my goodness, I so disagree.

Kristen: “MasterChef” —

Nat: No, you’re thinking of Gordon Ramsay and “Hell’s Kitchen,” and manufactured conflict, when they’re like, “Time’s ticking down,” and someone’s forgotten to do this —

Kristen: No, you’re thinking of the team-ingredient-got-burnt one, or “My Kitchen Rules”?

Nat: Yeah, those ones — those are all conflict. But “MasterChef” is so wholesome and cheesy.

Kristen: It’s so wholesome. Okay — I need to go look this up, actually. It says these evolved alongside — anyway. What about you? Do you know what I say to “Say Yes to the Dress”? I do, but then there’s no manufactured conflict, sometimes the mother-in-law —

Nat: But yeah, I feel like they might fall more under your thing — the factual one, yes and dresses.

Kristen: Do you wanna pick one? Well, I like it — that’s like a guilty pleasure of mine, no longer, but it used to be, because I was like, “Which dress would I choose?” Anyway, so — I’d like to know which reality TV show you would be on if you could be on one.

Nat: Oh, one hundred percent, “Survivor,” or “Destination X,” or “Amazing Race.” Anything — actually, no, not “Survivor,” I don’t wanna do that. I want “The Amazing Race,” and the stupid new “Destination X” show.

Kristen: Yeah, I think I’ve heard of that one. I am exactly the same, I always thought “Amazing Race.” Did you ever do the thing of being like, “Who would I go on it with?”

Nat: Oh yeah, definitely an ex, not my husband.

Kristen: And could you give us your reason?

Nat: Because he and I just — my ex, this sounds terrible, but we even talked about this, we would be amazing on it. We just had that thing, whereas my husband and I just have our thing in every other sense of a relationship.

Kristen: Yeah, I mean, I don’t think anyone’s worried about your relationship.

Nat: No, I change my person around at the time, all the time. But my sister actually very kindly, for one of my birthdays, did an amazing race — did I ever tell you this? It was so cool, she didn’t tell me anything, she just said she was gonna pick me up for morning tea at Mum and Dad’s, and then I was picked up in a van, and all my friends started piling in at different stops, and we wound up at Mum and Dad’s, with two or three teams. She’d set up this amazing race through the bush across the road from Mum and Dad’s house. It was insane — we did blind beer tasting, we had to eat what I called fermented kina as one of the food challenges, it was kina tasting. She’d organised it at the local pool so we could run in and dive to the bottom to grab stuff. It was intense, like an hour of intensity, and all my friends are quite competitive so it was hectic. Anyway, part of that is I vomited eating the kina, it was not my thing, and my brother-in-law, who was the kina taster, was like, “You have to have two bites,” and I was like, “Yeah, I was done.”

Kristen: That sounds like that gross one where you had to eat slugs and stuff — remember that? “X Factor”?

Nat: So many of us, because we’re all so competitive, did it, and we all threw up. That was my biggest issue with doing “The Amazing Race” — bungee jumping, heights-related stuff, and food-related stuff, because I have a terrible gag reflex, I just can’t eat. I remember once they had a starfish on there, and I thought, “I could probably do that, it’s crunchy,” and I thought I could do the bungee jumping thing because I could talk myself into it for a million dollars — the scary things, I could see myself doing. But the food things, I’d need someone who’s really good at that. Kyla would be very good at that.

Kristen: Just quickly, I don’t think it was “X Factor,” that’s the talent show — it was “X Marks the Spot” or something, wasn’t it? No, it was something where you had to eat slugs, or crawl through snakes, or something disgusting.

Nat: Anyway, gross, gross, gross. But okay — so, you, I know you’ve followed a couple of reality TV shows, and then you’re gonna go into a lovely explanation of the drama triangle.

Kristen: Drama triangle, woo-hoo, as you see fit. My microphone decided to stop working, so hopefully it’s back — it says it’s back, but it did say recording failed, so who knows.

Nat: You’re good, if you’re listening to this, we survived.

Kristen: You’re good. I actually, if I’m being honest, am not a reality TV watcher — I get bored very easily. I watched, I think, the first season of “Big Brother” when it was invented in Australia, and I loved that because it was people — there was no concept of reality TV yet, so these innocents went in, completely removed from society with no idea, and they were so shocked to come out as celebrities. It was a fascinating social experiment of that first generation. And the only ones I’ve really watched — I watch “Grand Designs” and stuff sometimes, I only got into the cooking ones — is that once we left our last company, I think the first week I binge-watched “Love Island.” I don’t know why, I just couldn’t function, I needed something that was gonna be brain-dead TV. I was obsessed, and I learned all the words — like, “I’ve got a text,” “I’m open to chats” — and I taught all the nine-year-old kids in my life what those phrases meant and got them all saying it. So I watched that. The one you’re thinking I watch, which I actually haven’t, is “Married at First Sight.”

Nat: Oh, I thought you had.

Kristen: No, I have at some point been in the vicinity of it. No — I have watched “Say Yes to the Dress.” But the reason I brought up “Married at First Sight” a while ago is because we were staying with Kyla’s auntie, and she was watching it, and I was like, “Ooh, I wanna see this.” I feel like a lot of reality TV, we know what it is because someone’s watching it, you just end up in the vicinity. So I kind of knew what it was — I’d heard it referred to as an experiment in what happens if the “experts,” in quotation marks, match you, and then you meet this person and have all the support around you to get set up in a relationship. I presume season one was about that, but of course over time it evolves — I actually listened to a great podcast about reality TV and the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, how season one was amazing because it was people who just wanted to be Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, but by season three it’s people who want to build an audience too.

Nat: Yeah, right.

Kristen: And so they all change, they all die by default after season one. Anyway, so we’re watching “Married at First Sight,” and it’s evolved, and I know it’s appointment viewing for a lot of people — if you’re in an office, it’s one of those things you’d come back and discuss. But I’ll use it as an example of the drama triangle to explain what it is, because I watched it play out in this episode. So the three roles in the drama triangle: victim, villain, and hero. The way they played out in “Married at First Sight” is at the dinner parties they hold — the idea is you’re meant to come and catch up on how everyone’s doing, but it’s orchestrated drama, orchestrated conflict, because of course they all turn up. This one was fairly far into the season, so they turn up at the dinner table, and you can tell there’s tension between some couples, and between couples. And in this one, some woman made a comment about another woman — something about her being dramatic, or always wanting the spotlight, “Here you go again.” And the woman the comment was aimed at pushed her chair back, stood up, burst into tears, and said, “Why is everyone always picking on me? Why can’t I ever do anything right?” and stormed out. And one of the guys from the couple — not her partner — ran out after her. And the people at the table were all backstabbing, like, “Ugh, she deserved it, someone had to call her out.”

Those, to me, were the exact perfect articulation of the drama triangle. The woman who runs out crying, saying, “Woe is me, why does everyone always pick on me, why can’t I do anything right,” is the victim. The critical thing about victim role, over just being a victim, is that you’ve created a narrative about powerlessness — you’ve decided you’re completely out of control, you have no responsibility or autonomy to solve something, everything is happening to you and you can’t do anything about it. That’s often what you hear in a workplace — “Why is everyone always doing this?” It’s very focused on me, and very focused on powerlessness. The guy who ran out after her is the hero — he’s the one going, “I’m gonna save you, I’m gonna go back and explain, I’ve got your back,” getting that dopamine kick out of being the big-time supporter. And the people at the table are in villain mode — and it’s important to note that villain mode doesn’t mean they are the villain, it means they’re pointing out a villain in someone else, or maybe themselves. So it’s them saying, “Someone had to call her out, she’s in the wrong, she’s always causing drama, she’s always doing X, always doing Y.” That role is when you’re the person — this is what I do — who just needs to find a bad guy. Sometimes when you’re in villain mode you might point the spotlight at yourself and go, “I’m so dumb, I always get it wrong, I always make mistakes.” It leads a little into self-limiting beliefs. But the key thing between victim and villain mode is: victim is “woe is me, I’m helpless,” and villain is “it’s someone’s fault.” And then the hero jumps in trying to solve everything, but really it’s self-motivated too — regaining control, feeling like you’re orchestrating things, or you’ve found some ability to sort things out in the chaos.

It’s funny that this term was coined by Steven Karpman in the late ’60s, and reality TV is what — probably twenty to twenty-five years old, I think “Survivor” is around there — so that wouldn’t have been around when he coined this. But he watched fairy tales and read film scripts, and noticed these patterns — things like Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella — he mapped how characters swapped roles mid-story, and that’s how he came up with it. And he was a big sports guy, so he used a triangle as part of a doodle on a sports play. Random, but there you go. And it’s funny that modern-day reality TV hasn’t changed — these are very common roles and dynamics we play on screen, but equally in the workplace and in our relationships.

Nat: And I think it’s because they serve us, right? In the moment they serve us, and we’re not thinking, “I’m in the drama triangle” — we’re thinking, “I am so justified because everyone’s against me,” or “That person’s being an asshole and needed to be called out,” or “I’m going in to help.” That’s how we think we’re acting, but what we’re actually motivated by is something quite different.

Kristen: Yeah, I know — back to villain, sorry, where villain came from, and I look forward to hearing your word. But this one was — villain has come from a Latin word, villanus, which was actually farmhand, and it became a bad thing — the connotation of what a villain is. It was in medieval times, and it was the snobbery of looking down on farmhands — it was a class of people who were villains, a peasant. So originally, just kind of lowborn people, no moral judgment. Bogans.

Nat: So that’s where villains came from. We love bogans.

Kristen: But it is a role we can kind of adopt, not necessarily a personality. What’s kind of interesting, I think — and we wanted to do this episode to raise awareness of it — is you’ve gotta join Powrsuit if you wanna know how to get out of it. We’ve got a cheat sheet and an entire class on, one, identifying an existing dynamic you’re in, and two, exactly how to get out of it, with actions, in that cheat sheet. So you’ve got a tool — join at powrsuit.com.

Nat: But I think what’s interesting is that you can play different roles in different relationships. Like, it would make sense that parents often play hero for their kids —

Kristen: And it makes sense that your kids are often victims — I’m sure your daughter feels like a victim every time you jump in as a hero.

Nat: Well, and/or if her brother gets something that she doesn’t.

Kristen: Oh yeah, that’s a thing too. But I know it’s also easy to fall into victim mode with a manager — that’s a dynamic where you can often feel hard done by, and you’ll find yourself using “the they.” “They always do this,” or “they this or that.” I think it’s interesting that there’s often a season, or a relationship, where that dynamic is just at play and quite comfortable — it’s like the classic, you’re just in that groove. There was a situation recently where someone I know was made redundant, and it was a pretty rough situation in a small business. It’s interesting, running businesses, how I was able to see that the business is really in strife — they’re against a rock and a hard place, they need to save money, changes need to be made, it’s a really tough position. And I was sort of eavesdropping on a wider conversation about it, and whoa — the victiming and the villaining of the business: “They’re out to get you, they only care about themselves.” And that sort of vague, undefined “they” is a really big part of the villain mindset. I’m like, “Who’s they? The owner? The owner who’s put their heart and soul and money into this business, who’s desperately trying to keep it afloat — are they the villain here?”

Nat: Mm.

Kristen: And it’s interesting how easy it is to jump into that, because you’re hurt and stressed, and it makes it feel easier to have a bad guy, when sometimes there’s no bad guy. It’s just —

Nat: Yeah, well, I was just gonna say that life is unfair. It’s so unfair.

Kristen: It can be unfair, can’t it? It’s unfair and it’s hard.

Nat: And I think that’s kind of why we like the drama triangle as a way of explaining sometimes how our response to just random unfairness is to try to deal with it by jumping into one of these roles, to sort of protect ourselves. So that one, I feel, is an obvious one — like your manager, where it’s easy to see someone as a villain. The other thing — you’ve written this in the notes too, but it’s important to say — is that because these are roles, you can change partway through. Even at that “Married at First Sight” dinner party, we often see this in reality TV, where the hero’s outside supporting the victim, and suddenly the victim turns on the hero, or doesn’t take their advice — “Oh, I’m not gonna do that” — and the hero’s like, “What? You’re not listening to me,” and then they turn into the villain role. And the victim can come back in and start attacking and blaming everyone, and turn into the villain role, and someone else might step in as the hero. Once you know these three roles, when you’re watching reality TV — it’s a great example — you can start to see those dynamics shifting, and you can see that nothing’s gonna get resolved. That’s kind of the point of talking about this — none of them are working towards a resolution, they’re all just adding to the drama, probably with best intentions a lot of the time.

Kristen: What’s the martyr thing — you know, when you’re like, “Oh well, I’ll just have to do it myself”?

Nat: I think that’s hero, but it’s like someone who feels like a martyr.

Kristen: Yeah, okay, good. Thought so.

Nat: That’s what I would say.

Kristen: Okay, what was the word you found, as we wrap?

Nat: I’ve actually just looked at it, and it’s a lie. My dad and his girlfriend played golf on Friday. They both had a wonderful time, and Dad casually dropped afterwards, “You know the word golf? You know where that comes from?” And I was like —

Kristen: Where does it come from?

Nat: “No.” And he said, “Gentlemen only, ladies forbidden.”

Kristen: Does it actually?

Nat: No. Apparently not — I was about to flip the desk. I was like, “No wonder women have felt traditionally excluded.” Apparently it’s a well-known —

Kristen: So that was a — what is it, a wives’ tale, or some sort of —

Nat: Well, it says it almost certainly comes from the Scottish word “golf” or “gowf” — G-O-W-F — which referred to the game in the Middle Ages.

Kristen: That’s interesting.

Nat: It’s believed to have been borrowed from the Middle Dutch word “kolf” or “colf,” meaning club, bat, or stick, and it evolved from there. And then it says, “What about gentlemen only, ladies forbidden?” I asked my robot — it’s a myth. There’s no historical evidence for it, and it’s impossible chronologically, because the word golf was in use in Scotland long before. What I suspect happened is Dad thinks it appeared on a sign at one of the early golf clubs — “Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden” — and my assumption is they’d taken the word “golf” and turned it into a new acronym for their male-only club. So I have no doubt that sign existed, and a lot of golf courses were gentlemen-only —

Kristen: Oh, one hundred percent, and in fact I’d almost say most, if not all, golf courses for a very long time —

Nat: No, I concur — were gentlemen-only. So I think it was more a reflection of reality than the actual origin of the word. Retaking, retaking the — but I spent my whole weekend being in victim mode about that, and then found out just during this that it wasn’t true, so I can come out of that now.

Kristen: Love it. Unfounded. Okay — join powrsuit.com to check out our mini-masterclass on the Drama Triangle, where you can get a cheat sheet. We encourage people to use it with their team — take the activity, go through the mini-masterclass and the cheat sheet with your team, so you can start to use the shared language. It’s one of our favourite things at Powrsuit for teams to do.

Nat: Yeah, our allies did it recently, and they loved it — they said, “We’re gonna go back and do it.” And the reason for this isn’t to put anyone in villain mode, or play the blame game, or judge anyone — it’s actually such a load lifter. We’ve both used it now — when you find yourself in one of those roles, to be able to go, “Oh, I’m in villain mode,” or “Oh, I’m in victim mode,” it takes that load off you. It’s a circuit breaker, from being trapped in it, to going, “Oh, I see what’s happening here.” It doesn’t mean you have to get out of it, doesn’t mean you can’t wallow for a bit — it just means you know what you’re doing, rather than having your emotions lead you.

Kristen: Awareness. Let us know how you found this episode, everyone — we flipped it around a little bit.

Nat: Started with a certain — now it’s like, “Can we set the scene?” I’m like, “No, we’re not setting the scene.” But anyway, look forward to chatting next week, and we’ll catch y’all next time.

Kristen: Bye.

Nat: Bye.