ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how people sometimes play psychological games in order to maintain their scripts. The Drama Triangle is described as a framework for understanding the game roles people take up. This framework helps coachees understand their repetitive unhelpful patterns of behaviour and acknowledge the positive intention behind it and use that more consciously to build positive, empowering relationships. It also gives coaches an awareness of their potential game patterns and how, with awareness, to stay out of the Drama Triangle and communicate from the Winner’s Triangle to invite agency and autonomy from the coachee. The distinctive feature of a game is when one thing is said on the social level but there is a completely different message on the unsaid psychological level.
