Relationship Drama 3

In this week’s guest post Karen Wise shares a personal experience. How familiar is this for you and/or your clients?

Relationship Drama

by Karen Wise

My friend Rose called the other night. The conversation started like this:

“Karen, I really need to speak to you – I need your advice”

And then she started to whisper

“The thing is, I’ve been having an affair, and I don’t love my husband any more, and I just don’t know what to do”.

Rose and I have been friends for twenty years and she’s been with her husband for almost as long. She was one of my bridesmaids and both our kids were born weeks within each other. Rose has also lurched from life crisis to life crisis for the last two decades.

What I realised some time ago, is that Rose and I each have a role within, what psychologists call, the Drama Triangle (see diagramme below). Rose is always the “victim” with a crisis and I’m always there to rescue her.

victim recuer persecutor triangle diagram

Quite often we have more than one Drama Triangle in our lives, and with each one we’re playing a different role. With my husband, I have to admit, I frequently play the “Persecutor”. We can also find ourselves playing roles from the Drama Triangle at work, particularly during times of stress, when tight deadlines need to be met or mistakes have been made.

Most of the time, the Drama Triangle is useful in helping us manage day-to-day interactions. It might feel uncomfortable in the moment, but that tension makes either us or the other party shift their position to lead to a better outcome.

However, there are times when playing out the Drama Triangle isn’t helpful and could border on destructive. The negative behaviours can lead to a breakdown in trust, confidence and ultimately relationships.

If you find yourself in a Drama Triangle you have a choice. You can choose to step out of whatever role you’re playing. Don’t run away from the drama, but take a different approach to that of either a rescuer, persecutor or victim.

As I love my friend Rose, I’ve agreed to go out dinner this weekend to talk it all through with her. She has a major life decision to make, which won’t just affect her – but her husband and her two kids. I will help her through the most recent drama as for now, our relationship remains healthy and I’m happy to play the rescuer once again.

About the Author/Further Resources

Karen Wise, MCIPD is an Organisational Development Consultant and Coaching Psychologist, with over 12 years’ experience of working in Human Resources roles up to and including Director level within the NHS in the UK. Karen now runs her own consultancy and coaching business, with a particular interest in outplacement coaching. She has recently been awarded an MSc in Coaching Psychology from the University of East London. You can follow Karen on twitter (karenwise) and read her weekly blog on working in HR in the NHS at www.karenwise.wordpress.co

How much is your coaching worth?

The TV was on in a room I was in the other day and it was showing a daytime TV programme which involved 3 interior designers and antique experts each buying a house gift for a specific family. Each expert had a different monetary amount to spend buying their gift.

The family can only choose one gift to keep, which they do before finding out who brought the gift and how much that expert had to spend. As part of the show we got to see the families discussion about which gift was worth what price tag.

It was interesting to see what they valued in line with their lifestyle, personal preferences, tastes and needs. The value that the family was finding in each gift and their guess at a price tag was not in line with the actually amount that it cost.

So how does this apply to coaching? One of the things I often see coaches doing, particularly those just starting out, is deciding upon their price purely by looking at how much they want to charge per hour.

I’ve attended trainings in the past which taught that the way to decide upon your price is to decide upon the monthly/annual income you want from coaching and then the number of coaching sessions you want to carry out in that time. Dividing the financial amount you want by the number of coaching sessions gives you a price to charge per coaching session.

While this can be a useful piece of information to give an indication about the practicalities about the number of hours you want to be coaching for etc. I have to be honest, it’s not my preferred method of pricing a package.

There is lots that can be said about pricing and I want to focus primarily today on what value your coaching is worth. However, as I have mentioned the exercise above I wanted to briefly add an extra point. Interestingly, on the trainings I’ve seen this done there was no mention of being aware of what outgoings that you have in connection with your coaching. If you are planning on running a profitable coaching practice this information is useful to know!

However, as the family on the tv demonstrated with their house gifts, the “value is in the eye of the beholder.”

I invite you to consider the value that your coaching brings to your ideal clients, both emotionally, financially and practically. As well as what it costs them emotionally, financially and practically if they don’t choose to work with you.