Unlocking The Drama Triangle with Frankie Kemp

* Website
* LinkedIn
* YouTube
* Instagram

Timestamps:
00:00:00 – Intro & Highlights
00:04:42 – The concept of the Drama Triangle
00:07:07 – Identifying Drama in Your Workplace
00:16:19 – Frankie’s Personal Experience with the Drama Triangle
00:20:42 – Strategies for Leaders to Foster Healthy Work Relationships
00:30:15 – Danger of Imposter Syndrome at Workplace
00:37:55 – Skot & Frankie Discuss the implications for leaders in the workplace
00:42:08 – Small Shifts to take from now on
00:48:00 – Final Takeaways for the show

Frankie Kemp (00:02.00)
Well, if we think of the victim and the persecutor, you don’t have to change. You don’t have to take responsibility. If you’re a victim, you can have people saying, poor you, and that’s quite nice.

I love my parents dearly, but my mother has the most terrible persecution complex. And for about, she’s stopped it recently because we’ve made her, but she would sit down and every time, I am not joking, for about 20 years.

Skot Waldron (00:34.00)
When I’m not hosting Unlocked, I’m speaking at events all over the world. I’m helping leaders and I’m helping teams communicate better. I’m helping them build trust faster and actually enjoy working together. I’ve spoken for companies like The Home Depot. I’ve spoken at national architectural firms. I’ve spoken for pharmaceutical company offsites. I’ve spoken at associations, you name it.

With 99% of attendees of all those events, over 1800 people have reviewed me at this point. 99% of them saying they got some value. That’s pretty awesome. Even the caterers have thanked me. And if they are thanking me and they’ve heard a lot of talks and they’re busy doing their jobs, that’s saying something. If you’re an event planner looking for a speaker who’s really easy to work with, trust me, I want to be the last thing you’re worried about on event day. I’m going to take care of you. And who actually delivers value for your audience that they are going to use on Monday morning when they return to the office, then let’s talk.

Do you have a little bit of drama in your office? Maybe just a little bit, just sometimes, maybe, maybe a lot of times, maybe you have a lot of drama. It’s probably due to people playing different roles in the drama triangle. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And it’s weird that I’ve never talked about this before because it is a pretty common idea maybe that you’ve heard of. I know I’ve heard of it, and a lot of people have heard of it. It was popularized for a little while there and I don’t know, it’s gone kind of quiet. So, I’m glad that my guest today is bringing it back up, Frankie Kemp. And we are going to talk about this today.

Frankie Kemp is the Head Honcho of frankiekemp.com, specialising in people skills for geeks. And we’re not necessarily talking about the geeks today; we’re talking about everybody. Interesting little note here, Honcho. She’s head honcho. Did y’all know that Honcho actually the term we use it in America like, hey, the head Honcho like the boss, you know, maybe in England they do too. Maybe Frankie can answer that, but the boss, right? But Honcho was actually derived from the Japanese. It’s a Japanese term. And after World War II, American soldiers brought it back to America and just kind of popularized it. But it actually in Japanese isn’t really like the big boss. It’s just more like a team leader. But we use it over here like big boss. I don’t know, just something interesting. I thought you could probably like use it some kind of cocktail party or something.

Anyway, she’s built and sold an acting school, then moved into TV as a director and scriptwriter for the Eurovision Song Contest. And if you all have seen that movie, there you go. That’s what she did. If you haven’t, go out and see it.

An award winning storyteller, actor and playwright, Frankie blends theatre craft, psychology and business savvy to help technical specialists communicate with flair and impact. Her book Technical Experts Become Powerful Presenters has been downloaded over 100,000 times, and her training has helped thousands of clients worldwide speak so others listen. A lot of her research, a lot of her work comes around being noticed and the drama triangle can help you, you know, not be noticed in the right way. Okay. We don’t want to be noticed in that way. We want to be noticed in the good, healthy way. And Frankie’s going to help us talk about that just a little more. So here we go.

Well, good day to you, Frankie.

Frankie Kemp (04:14.00)
Hello Skot.

Skot Waldron (04:16.00)
Um, you, this is going to be fun. I already know because you just seem fun and you’re, I don’t know, your blue shirt is fun, your smile is fun and your haircut’s fun. And just the way our whole conversation before is so fun.

You come from the world of theater. So, you understand drama, right? But most workplaces, they have that already. They have a lot of it, right? So, you kind of fit right into this whole workplace drama thing. I want you to explain to us a little bit, like how you’ve seen the drama triangle show up and how people communicate at work.

Frankie Kemp (05:04.00)
Right. Now, often when friends speak to me about their relationships or when clients speak to me about what’s going wrong at work, it nearly always comes down to the drama triangle, which was founded on the work of Eric Berne and transactional analysis, which a lot of, I’m sure your listeners will be familiar with, even if they don’t know about it, with the parent, the child and the adult. But it was simplified by Dr. Stephen Karpman, who interestingly enough is both a psychiatrist and he was a member of the Screen Actors Guild in America. So, he was an actor as well. And with those two hats, he came up with the drama triangle and there’s different roles in the drama triangle. And they are generally pretty toxic, if not to oneself. They are definitely toxic to other people. And as long as you stay on that triangle, you will stay stuck because it’s a cul-de-sac. It’s a road to nowhere, to quote the song.

It’s the characters are the persecutor, the victim and the martyr. And as I run through them, I reckon a lot of people will be sitting there going, “oh, that’s my mum, that’s my dad, that’s my auntie Jean, that’s my boss.” You will recognize these as I go through them. Are we ready, Skot? Do want me to go through them?

Skot Waldron (06:48.00)
Hold on. Yes, I think so. Yes, I’m getting warmed up. I’m getting warmed up. Here we go.

Frankie Kemp (06:54.00)
Okay, then I’m going to tell you a story about how this has panned out with one of my clients, because you will see this at work. Whenever you’ve got a problem with somebody at work, they’re probably on the drama triangle. Right?

Skot Waldron (07:04.00)
Yeah, I see it often. Yeah, please go ahead.

Frankie Kemp (07:07.00)
Okay, persecutor. It’s never their fault. Nothing is ever their responsibility. They’re finger pointing and they’re blaming. It’s you, you’re the problem. You’re the reason why I can’t do this. Very simple. That’s the persecutor. They never take responsibility. They’re never accountable. And they’re very similar to the victim.

The victim, “I can’t do anything about this. It’s just the way I am.” They’re quite stuck in their own sense of, “it always happens to me. It’s always me. Why are they always saying this to me?” Right? Again, it’s a lack of accountability. But the first phrase I said, which is, “this is the way I am. I can’t change.” So, that is very much a victim characteristic.

Then we have the martyr who’s always running in and saving other people. Now, I’m not saying that we want a society where we don’t help each other. No, I’m not advocating that. But it gets to the point where you’re shooting yourself in the foot, where you’re not helping yourself. And you’re left with this resentment that turns you into either a persecutor or a victim. Because martyrs have problems with boundaries. So already these are very clear characteristics that I’m sure, as soon as I say this to people, go, “oh my God, no, right, yeah.” And it makes so much sense to them in their personal and professional lives. But the problem is that as soon as you’re dealing with somebody on the drama triangle, you have to be very conscious that you don’t react as if you were also on the triangle.

So, when I remember the first time I came across this was in years ago, so like 20 years ago in some sort of like one of those very, it was very fashionable at the time to stick you in an unaired locked conference center for a weekend and do these mind shifting exercises. And one of the ones that we did, it was run by actors who were also therapists and it was the drama triangle, and we had to put ourselves in different triangles. And what you found is if somebody turned into the victim, you would very easily, you could either echo their victimhood back or you would, it’s like an unconscious, uncontrollable reaction that you turn into the persecutor. So as soon as you realize that other people are on the drama triangle, you must make sure that you don’t step on the triangle because you’re going to perpetuate it. I’ll talk later about the other options, but for now, it’s extremely important just to be aware of what the drama triangle is and when other people are on it.

Skot Waldron (10:07.00)
Okay, I want to know you’re going to go into a story, right? Because I want to see how these interact. Like how do these play off each other?

Frankie Kemp (10:15.00)
So, I was working with a clinical director in pharmaceuticals. And I was brought here originally to work with the group – consultancy. And I came in; they asked me to work with improvisers as well as clinicians. So, we got this team together and we worked with the whole department. And it was a wonderful experience that made consultants much more, it helped them to build rapport and sell without selling and enrich their consultancy with prospects. But then a couple of people were coming to me individually and saying, could you help with certain interactions that we’re having at work? And one of them was a clinical director.

So, I was working with this clinical director, and she was having tremendous problems with a colleague that she was managing. He was off joining every committee that you could think of because he knew the visibility would get him noticed and therefore up for promotions. Lovely. Very good. Very strategic. Except he wasn’t doing the job that he was currently being paid for. This was a bit of a problem. Hence, she was CYA-ing him all the time, meaning, cover your ass. She was covering his ass all the time. So, if he wasn’t in a meeting or she would create some excuse, like, he’s out seeing clients or whatever, he wasn’t. He was off at some committee meeting or whatever it was.

And in the end, to cut a long story short, he had that there is an opportunity for promotion and there were two people who are in line. He was hungry for this promotion, but he needed her to sign off. She wouldn’t sign off for obvious reasons. So, she, you could say, was playing the martyr. At this point, he starts to play the persecutor, and he’s determined not to abide by any of the KPIs that she sets him. He attacks her at meetings. His resentment is palpable every time they meet. She would make a suggestion; he would bat it back. They were stuck on this drama triangle.

Then there are situations where I’ve worked with tech teams, for example. I’m thinking of one where I worked in a large charity and the fundraising side wanted the tech team to create a completely new CRM. Now they already had a CRM system. But they weren’t using it. The fundraising team weren’t using it correctly. They weren’t using all the facilities within the capabilities within the CRM. The IT people were explaining this. There’s no need for us to build a new one. We’ll sit with you and we will show you how to use the current one. Then they’re labeled as the persecutors because they’re seen as obstacles.

So sometimes we place these roles onto people’s metaphorical foreheads. And either we can step into that, or we can try and reason or find other ways of getting out of that, which is something I was in fact dealing with last night when I was at a client who is in public office and dealing with a very tricky customer who is a persecutor through and through and trying to control all the interactions instead of collaborating. And she’s not going to solve any of the problems with the tech team because she refuses to collaborate with them. But what she does like doing is screaming in the office about how incompetent they are. And when they turn and when the head of IT turns around and goes, “I’m going to sit with you. I’m going to help you.” “I don’t have time for this. I have urgent work to do with the government.” You know, he’s spent half an hour shouting instead of doing urgent work. Persecutor through and through.

Skot Waldron (15:17.00)
So, I mean, I honestly don’t think people, you know, stay. They may fall into the role by accident maybe, or from some reaction to something or whatever. I don’t think people stay in these on purpose or stay in these roles by accident. That’s what I’m saying. They don’t stay in these roles by accident. They’re getting something out of it. They get something out of playing the victim or playing the martyr or playing the persecutor? What do you think they get out of it?

Frankie Kemp (15:50.00)
Oh. Well, if we think of the victim and the persecutor, you don’t have to change. You don’t have to take responsibility. If you’re a victim, you can have people saying, poor you, and that’s quite nice. If you’re a persecutor, you can get a sense of control that you might not have in any other area of your life. So that could be a compensation. These are just suggestions. There might be many other reasons.

There’s also the habits that we bring with us from growing up. I love my parents dearly, but my mother has the most terrible persecution complex. And for about, she’s stopped it recently because we’ve made her, but she would sit down and every time, I am not joking, for about 20 years, our life is harder than everybody else’s. Bad things always happen to us, not your cousins. I love her dearly, but she’s trapped by this. A lot of it comes from even further back, right? There’s an intergenerational script that pours through. And I know it’s not her fault, but I’m not going to say that because then she’ll say, “yes, you see, what happens to me.”

Skot Waldron (17:13.00)
But that sounds like victim mentality.

Frankie Kemp (17:17.00)
That’s completely victim. But then she will lash out to people, you know. So, because she’s on the triangle, it’s very difficult. So, some people, I don’t think for her, there’s a security in the familiar in our lives, even when it’s uncomfortable, which is why some people just go back to bad relationships because at least you know what you’re dealing with. And likewise, we stay sometimes in this mental rut because firstly, it’s familiar. Our brain just takes us there along this rationale. Often, nobody has even pointed out that we’re habitually thinking like this. Thirdly, we don’t know the alternative. Fourthly, if we do, we don’t know how to get to the alternative.

So often, I find myself working with the people who get sucked into the drama triangle by people already on it. Or it could be, I firstly need to make people aware of how they’re stepping onto other people’s triangles. So, for example, this clinical director. I explained the triangle to her and she went, “oh my God, I’m playing such and such a role.” And I went, “yeah.” And then I showed her the alternative. It’s a combination of that and setting boundaries, which is exactly the kind of advice that I gave last night to this client.

So, for example, this client who was in public office is dealing with a very tricky person, who I say everything is evidently about her. It’s not what I say. It’s like everything was all about her. Massively fragile ego. So, I said that bearing that in mind, you would need to bolster her ego, but you also need to make yourself less available because the more available you are, the greater, you’re giving her more opportunities to say, you’re not helping me. And it’s very interesting what happened today when he sent me a text, because he’s made himself less available. And at first, she didn’t like it, now she’s beginning to back off, because he’s not fueling the fire. Now that’s not always the advice I would give, because it depends on the character.

Skot Waldron (20:10.00)
So, let’s talk about the, so going off of that, what advice would you give to a leader that has somebody playing each one of those roles? So, if you could have some quick advice for, you know, somebody that has a martyr on their team or a persecutor or the victim or what’s going on there, how would you advise that leader?

Frankie Kemp (20:36.00)
Yeah, now that’s an interesting one because if I take the IT director in public office and then I take the clinical director in the pharmaceutical company, I gave them both slightly different advice because one has to look at the undercurrents of the behavior. Why is that person like that?

So, the first advice would be recognize what’s happening and recognize what’s happening to you. Because you can’t necessarily, well, you can’t change other people’s behavior until you change the way you are when they’re in it. That’s the thing that we have control of. We have control of the way we are in the interaction. And that’s the first thing to do is to be aware, oh this is the drama trying, they’re playing this, okay, what do I play?

Now, if we look at that, there was a gentleman called David Emerald who gave the alternative to the drama triangle. So, if people go onto my blog, they can see this and they look under the drama triangle, frankiekemp.com blog, and I’ll show you this, you see it, like visually.

So, the persecutor. You give, the persecutor needs a greater sense of control and responsibility. We don’t enable that by being able, they click their fingers and you run, no. You give them a greater sense of control. So, this is a broad sweep because we also need to look at the nuances under the individual’s behavior.

Again, the victim. The victim, you need to coach the victim, not enable the victim. So, you give the victim the tools, it’s up to them to work out, what to find the motivation to pick the tools up. It’s like, I’ve given you the capabilities, you have the ability, okay.

And the martyr needs boundaries and they often need to see the price that this is paying. Now sometimes, and again, these are the nuances and there are many differences, many reasons why people behave the way they are. But sometimes the martyr is spending their energy on saving people because they’re not clear about their own ambitions and they don’t have to deal with their own ambitions if they’re helping other people. It could be, they’re very clear about that, but they don’t understand how they’re going to do it, how they’re going to get there, their next first step. So, they’re looking for a distraction. They’re looking for a project.

Skot Waldron (23:35.00)
I’ll bet you that stung a lot of people right there.

Frankie Kemp (23:38.00)
It’s avoidance, right?

Skot Waldron (23:40.00)
Yeah, I mean, as long as I am helping everybody else, I don’t have to worry about my own pain. It’s our brains escaping the discomfort of pain, of making that next big decision or whatever. And if I can avoid that, then I can be comfortable doing this stuff that actually, they get that dopamine hit, they get a little bit of a, you know.

Frankie Kemp (24:10.00)
Yeah.

Skot Waldron (24:11.00)
Proud like I’m doing something good and productive and at the same time they come back resenting everybody because they didn’t end up working on their own stuff when they probably could have been or should have been. So, the boundaries thing plays in there. Yeah, I see that.

Frankie Kemp (24:31.00)
It could be that, and I’m thinking of something that happened again today on a personal level with a friend. And I’m thinking that also people want to jump in and save others, sometimes because they want to look or seem useful when they don’t know any other way to help, and they exhaust themselves in doing so. They get involved in a project that doesn’t need to exist. I mean, I let there be a silence because people might be thinking, “oh gosh, I think I’m doing that.”

Skot Waldron (25:10.00)
That’s what I’m saying. I think it stings a little bit for some of these individuals for sure. I can see, okay. So, I can see that whole martyr mindset rolling around and how that’s really impactful and can do a lot of damage for the person themselves.

But I see some of the other ones, like even the, like the persecutor damaging the culture, damaging others, probably a little bit more. I’m saying all of them can damage the culture. All of them can have some effect on us personally, but I almost think like there’s a, you know when you look at the martyr, it’s like, that’s probably going to be a lot more personal than it is outward and culture wise, although it’s going to affect both.

But the persecutor, I can see it like you’re pointing fingers and people are feeling blamed and everybody’s getting defensive and I can see a lot of vibing happening around that.

Frankie Kemp (26:17.00)
I’m so pleased you mentioned that because I had a client who he asked me, I’ve done an interview training with him for director level. And then he said, “I need your advice. So, I’ve gone to this interview and I’m getting, I’m not sure whether this is an opportunity or whether this is something I should completely avoid.”

And he told me about the interview with the owner who was very bombastic. He was in his late 70s, and it was his business and he built this highly successful international business in transportation. But highly bombastic and extremely combative. And I got the feeling that because also he’d picked people on the senior team, then he would be picking people in his like. And when my client went to meet the senior team, he found this to be true. I said, what’s going to happen is this, there will be, and there always is, there are these little power bases, especially in enterprise, right? People playing politics and the territorial-ness, it all comes with the game. But I said, this is going to be heavily accentuated because the owner is like that. I would say he was probably persecutor and he was casting people in his like to take power.

So, there’s all these little triangles all over the company. A year in, he said, if I don’t get out, my mental health will be shredded. So, he left and the lawyers are in now because of maltreatment, of bullying. I mean, it is so rife that they’re being dragged through the courts now. I mean, the red flags were flying after this conversation with the owner. So, what you see is a lot of companies, and you see it sometimes just in a department. It might be isolated to a department, but you can just see if somebody is on that triangle at the top, it’s going to spill down. And it takes one person. Even if you just have a team member, and particularly with the persecutor, particularly with them, one person, and it might not be a manager, it could just be somebody in your team. And it could be that they’re not necessarily on that all the time.

So, this is the other thing. Sometimes when we are all under stress, we might find ourselves as very fully self-aware people going onto a point of that triangle. There was a somebody I met, it was after a keynote talk that I gave on this. And she came up to me afterwards and she said, “I got promoted above one of my colleagues. I had to manage her.” She became the persecutor. And she was never that. She was a great friend of mine. I went, “oh, I don’t envy you. Being promoted above your peers is a very difficult situation to handle. All the more when that happens.

Skot Waldron (29:59.00)
That’s rough. I hear that. I hear that often. I hear sometimes from the leader side, sometimes it’s not, I don’t hear from the, you know, the team side. But I hear from the leader side of the imposter syndrome sits in, or they feel guilty now being promoted or they feel they are now in this role and it’s hard for them to now ask others to do things when they were before their colleague or their equal on level, right? What’s the danger of that person and where can they fall?

Frankie Kemp (30:45.00)
The danger of which hasn’t…

Skot Waldron (30:48.00)
That leader who gets promoted and all of a sudden they’re “above all the other,” you know, their past team members that they were leading. I mean, that they were working with last week, last month. Now all of a sudden, they’re, you know, asking them to do things and they feel like they can’t.

Frankie Kemp (31:06.00)
I know and you need to feel like you can. You have to get over it and you’re going to lose people. Perhaps you lose people?

Skot Waldron (31:15.00)
Which part of the drama triangle do you think they fall into the most?

Frankie Kemp (31:19.00)
They are martyr because they want to save them, because they feel guilty, like you’ve mentioned. So, they end up taking on a burden because they don’t want to deal with difficult behavior when it’s come from a work friend. And I’m saying that quite intentionally instead of colleague, because unfortunately, they’ve become work friends.

Now, I know that there’s research that having a friend at work is very much related to how satisfied we are at work. I would advocate finding, especially if you want to become a leader, finding a friend that’s not in your department. Because if you do have aspirations, you don’t want to get too close. I’m not saying you can’t open up to any degree, but I think to get matey, pally, or let’s say buddy-ish with your colleagues when you have those kind of aspirations puts you on a back foot because you’re going to have to maybe let people go anyway or pull people up on behavior or give them extra responsibilities that they might not want to do. And it’s going to make it very difficult for you if you regard each other as friends.

Skot Waldron (33:03.00)
Yeah, it’s going to be tough. I mean, I wouldn’t at the same time, I’m going to say if I’m working with that person all the time and we have, you know, we’re going to lunch and we’re doing other things, it’s going to be hard for me not to become friends with especially if we click well and other things. The ball’s kind of rolling already at that point, which might make it kind of difficult not to be that, you know, at some point.

Frankie Kemp (33:26.00)
I think it’s always difficult if you get on with people to do that. But you know, I remember having an experience when I was working on the Eurovision Song Contest because I was directing the… When I worked on TV, one of the jobs was to direct presenters for the Eurovision Song Contest, which is an international song competition for those who don’t know. And it was a global broadcast. And I realized that my job was a hell of a lot easier if I could just get the respect without the friendship. And that might be that I have somebody screaming at me, but they’ll do what I want them to do. Which is, in the end, I had to do that. Because otherwise, I had producers coming down on me going, if you don’t stop this, we’re going to get pulled off air. They cannot speak like this on air.

And, I had to go in and lay the law down. That wasn’t appreciated. Okay, whether it was appreciated or not, you can’t do it. And it was really hard. That is not an easy position to be in because I was extremely friendly. I was going around to their houses. I was having meals with the presenters. I was going away with the presenters. And I was seen as a bit of therapist as well, I think, an on-call therapist by one of them. So, there was this sense of trust and I, you know, I need you with me because you’re going to support me and shield me and I’m laying down the law. And of course, now this is seen as a great betrayal. And I said, “look, in the end, we’ve both got a job to do.”

Now that put a great distance between us, but that’s something you some, you just have to sacrifice that now it’s not easy. I’m not saying I didn’t, I had to have support to get through that because it was psychologically very hard for me. And that’s why leaders need a coach or they need people like you, Skot, because it’s difficult to cope with being maligned for doing your job.

Skot Waldron (35:45.00)
That is tough. That is tough. OK. Can I take a sidetrack? OK. I’m totally getting distracted for a second.

Frankie Kemp (35:56.00)
Actually, provides one. Happy with sidetracks.

Skot Waldron (35:58.00)
Are you? OK. The Eurovision movie, I know you’ve been asked about it million times. Accurate, not accurate? Will Ferrell’s vision. Did you see it? You did see it? Okay. Okay.

Frankie Kemp (36:18.00)
Oh my gosh, you’ve given me homework now.

Skot Waldron (36:20.00)
I’ve given you homework. Everybody needs to, you know, go check the movie out. I’m so curious now. I can’t believe you’ve never seen it. Okay, that’s your homework. Go watch Will Ferrell’s the movie that he’s in.

Frankie Kemp (36:35.00)
Okay, do know what I’m going to do is I’m going to watch it this weekend and then you can share the answers with the listeners. This is what Frankie thought of the movie and how close it was. All right, I’ll do that.

Skot Waldron (36:48.00)
I totally want to know because it looks completely ridiculous. Now it’s a Will Ferrell movie. So, he’s ridiculous anyway, but I still want to see how accurate it is.

Frankie Kemp (36:59.00)
If you say ridiculous, we’re talking about behind the scenes.

Skot Waldron (37:05.00)
No, I mean, I’m talking about like, the production is like, insanity. And I’m going, is this real? Like, is this like a real depiction of the show? I think it kind of is because I went and watched some YouTube clips. And it does seem like that elaborate.

Frankie Kemp (37:25.00)
Yeah, yeah, it’s probably underplayed.

Skot Waldron (37:30.00)
That’s crazy to me. Oh my gosh, that’s crazy to me. Okay, well thank you for letting me go sidetrack there. Okay, that’s your homework. Go watch the movie.

All right, we’re going to do, let’s do a quick exercise here for a second. I’m going to ask you, I’m going to give you a couple of questions and or phrases or statements and you like put short punchy answers, okay?

Which role do you think is most dangerous long-term?

Frankie Kemp (37:59.00)
Victim.

Skot Waldron (38:01.00)
Why?

Frankie Kemp (38:03.00)
Yeah. You stay stuck. I also do think the persecutor because neither of them take accountability.

Skot Waldron (38:13.00)
Okay, which then the others look at that and say, there’s no accountability. I hear that so much. There’s no accountability. And I just hear teams complain about that a lot.

Okay, which world do you think is most dangerous short term?

Frankie Kemp (38:30.00)
Oh martyr.

Skot Waldron (38:33.00)
Really? Okay, go for it. Tell me why.

Frankie Kemp (38:35.00)
Martyr, because you, I don’t know, martyr, but then persecutor. I’m going, okay, can I change that? Persecutor, because if you, thank you, Skot, thank you so much. Persecutor, because if you’re suddenly doing that, you can lose relationships and end up saying things that you can’t take back in, because you’ve said them in a moment of anger. And you can lose a lot of credibility.

Skot Waldron (39:01.00)
Agree, agree. Okay, one phrase that signals a victim. You’re talking to a victim.

Frankie Kemp (39:08.00)
It’s just the way I am.

Skot Waldron (39:10.00)
Okay, one phrase that signals the rescuer or the martyr.

Frankie Kemp (39:16.00)
Okay. But they need help.

Skot Waldron (39:22.00)
Okay, which one signals the persecutor?

Frankie Kemp (39:25.00)
It’s not my fault.

Skot Waldron (39:29.00)
Do they blame the others? Do they say, it’s not my fault, it’s theirs? Do they point the finger?

Frankie Kemp (39:33.00)
Yeah. I was about to do that, but I was also sticking to the rule, which is to keep it short and sweet.

Skot Waldron (39:40.00)
Okay. That would have made it way too long, Frankie.

Frankie Kemp (39:43.00)
See, I love rules. I keep to them.

Skot Waldron (39:46.00)
Alright. You follow the rules? I didn’t think so. Oh God. Okay.

Frankie Kemp (39:52.00)
I pretend to.

Skot Waldron (39:55.00)
Let’s finish this sentence. People stay stuck in drama because…

Frankie Kemp (40:01.00)
It feels so familiar.

Skot Waldron (40:06.00)
Oh, it feels familiar. Tell me more.

Frankie Kemp (40:12.00)
Now, it could feel familiar in this relationship with this person. I’m not saying that that person is a persecutor with everybody all the time. It could be in certain interactions or contexts. For example, when I’m stressed, I know that I can become victim. Like, oh, why do people do this to me? Because I’ve got this martyr thing going on. And I’ve had to learn very consciously to put down boundaries.

So, I think that I might not say even, subconsciously, I’m not actually going, oh, this is familiar. But there is an undercurrent of that. Like, oh, but this is what I do. This is what is expected of me with the familiarity is inferred. This is familiar for me to myself.

Skot Waldron (41:11.00)
And we like to be comfortable with that.

Frankie Kemp (41:10.00)
And as James Clear said, you know, habits and identity are completely interlinked.

Skot Waldron (41:16.00)
Yeah, for sure. Okay, so I’m sure that people listening are going to be eager and it’s really easy to label somebody else. Like, that person’s this way, that person’s this way, that person, you know, it’s really good. There are people who really good at that. But for those of us that are, well, most of the listeners of this show obviously are so into bettering themselves and so into understanding themselves more. Maybe they’re realizing after listening to this that they’ve been living one of these roles. What is, do you think the first, next small shift they could take tomorrow to be better?

Frankie Kemp (42:08.00)
First thing is awareness, and they are now aware. And be very aware when you’re in that role. Now, we did talk about the David Emerald paradigm. And I’ve got something which is very helpful on my blog. Actually, I’m going to stick a link into it from the Drama Triangle article. And it will take you out, it helps you do that David Emerald shift. So instead of going into problem frame, which is who can I blame? Why is it my fault? You can slip into a much more enabling frame. And when I found out about this, for me, it was transformational.

So, I wrote books of plays, which I took on tour through Turkey because it was about how to teach English through drama. And I’d written all these plays to teach teachers how to use drama to teach language to children. So, and my communication, even though I speak Turkish, was through email with the organizer. And I go over there to Turkey and we’re driving around and we’re 40 minutes from what I thought was a two-hour seminar on how to use drama to teach English to teachers. That’s what I thought, two hours. I thought that’s what we’d agreed, and I had prepared for that.

So, he’s in the car and he asked me, what are you doing for the first hour? So, I told him. What are you doing for the second hour? He says, and I said, well, the same as the first hour, right? Because it’s two one-hour sessions that we agreed. He went, no, it’s not two hours. It’s one two-hour session. Now this is a bit like if you go to a conference and you’re doing a keynote in front of 500 people and somebody tells you something like that, you think where my nap is or diapers, as you would say, right? I immediately went in to, in my head, in fact, actually verbally, I said, why didn’t you tell, and I could hear it. Why didn’t you, in your email you, then I thought, you just learned about the drama triangle. You haven’t got time for this crap, right? Deal with it.

Okay, what were we going to do? How? And I remembered this alternative way of communicating, which took me into an immediately a more constructive mode. And it meant he didn’t go into defense. There was no finger pointing. And I’d managed to shift the conversation. So, it became extraordinarily useful for me. And we worked together to overcome this misunderstanding. And then the second round was much easier because I was already prepared for it.

So, I’m going to link to that in the blog. But the first step is once you’re aware of it, that’s a big step. I would say 80% of it is awareness, 20% is this paradigm that I will put right now in that blog post, get into that and that will help.

Skot Waldron (46:01.00)
Brilliant, I love it. Thank you so much. This has been really enlightening. I’ve never talked about this on the show, and I think that it’s really interesting. We have such a simple framework. Many of us have heard about the drama triangle but never really kind of dove into it like this before? I think that’s really cool.

So, thank you for sharing your knowledge and your smile with all of us. So, if you’re not watching this, at least people will hear it because you can hear your smile. So, thank you, Frankie, for being on. I appreciate it.

How do people get in touch with you, for further to them to the website and the blog, for sure. Do you like to be contacted other ways?

Frankie Kemp (46:42.00)
Yeah, sure. I’m sorry. So, what did you say? Through the Eurovision?

Skot Waldron (46:49.00)
No, don’t contact you there anymore. Unless you have a feather hat on. I don’t know, whatever else they wear. No, I carrier pigeon. Frankie, we use carrier pigeon.

Frankie Kemp (46:58.00)
Oh, carrier pigeon sounds so traumatized. I keep on thinking of that.

Skot Waldron (47:04.00)
No not that.

Frankie Kemp (47:06.00)
Frankiekemp.com. And what you’ll see is when you go into that, there’s all these links, or LinkedIn. LinkedIn with me on frankiekemp. I’ve got a YouTube channel again, frankiekemp, with an ie. They’re all ie.

But with frankiekemp.com, you’ll see all those links, and you see the blog. And also, if you go into contact, there I do a 15-minute free no-strings-attach discovery call to see if we can work together.

Skot Waldron (47:42.00)
Cool, love it. Love it. Thanks, awesome. I love talking to you. It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you and keep doing the good work.

Frankie Kemp (47:52.00)
Thanks Skot, I’ve really enjoyed it. Thanks very much for asking me good questions.

Skot Waldron (48:00.00)
The persecutor. The persecutor, no accountability, point fingers. Is that you? Is that somebody you know?

How about the victim. They, you know, woe is me, everything’s happening to me. It’s a little bit of that. Is that you, maybe, sometimes? Is that somebody else that you work with? How about that one?

How about the martyr? The martyr is you know kind of saving everybody. They’re out there suck ‘em, like taking it for the team and putting on the badge and is that you? Maybe the boundary issues. Like I know a lot of people like this. I coach a lot of people like this. And they believe in their soul and their hearts, they’re doing a good thing. And you know, for the most part, they probably are. It starts out that way. It just doesn’t end that way. When it happens over and over and over and over again, we end up hearing about it and that’s when it becomes toxic for all of this.

But I liked it when we talked about the alternatives, when we talked about what do we need to do to empower these individuals and go into Frankie’s blog. I think you’ll read more of that and see more of that there. And I think that that’s really, really helpful for us.

For the persecutor, how do we give them more control over a situation, help them feel like there’s some ownership there. For the victim we coach, we don’t enable. Coach, don’t enable. So, this is really important. We don’t just go in and fix everything for them because then maybe we become the martyr of the victim. Okay? Let’s not do that. Let’s coach them up.

And then the martyr, how do we create more boundaries? How do we help them establish some boundaries, healthy boundaries? It might be, well, it will be, not might be, it will be very uncomfortable for them. It’ll be very uncomfortable for all of these different personality types to adjust, but that’s what it takes to grow. We all need a little bit of discomfort.

And I often say this in my presentations that the comfort zone is lined with defensiveness and excuses for why you should stay there. Bomb drop. That’s right, y’all. It is, it’s lined with that. And until we overcome some of those things and start to, like she said, become self-aware of our triggers and what’s happening to us, we’re going to exist in that space and let’s not do that.

If you want to find out more information about me or check out the show notes where there’s going to be more information and links to the things referenced in this episode, visit skotwaldron.com. And lastly, I’m asking for a little bit of love, just a little bit. So please take a moment, follow, rate the show. The algorithm is like that; it helps me get the word out. I really appreciate it.

Thank you. And until next time, stay Unlocked.