All groups undergo continual shifts in how people relate to each other – the group dynamic.  Ideally, we notice and work well with issues of ego, power, bullying, victimhood, life scripts and patterns, however these present themselves, including from within our inner world.  Whether relationship dynamics are explicitly the work we are engaged in, or whether they are just ‘getting in the way’ a knowledge of core models from Transactional Analysis is helpful to all facilitators.

After a brief introduction of the theory of scripts and ‘games people play’, we will look at how participants (and facilitators) adopt and shift roles to give us power, rationalise issues, make us feel better about ourselves and fundamentally maintain the underlying ego- based script that we are attached to. Simply becoming aware of the roles that we and others are playing in the drama triangle, shifts us towards empowerment and away from drama. In the contrasting empowerment triangle, roles are dynamic, self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing and represent a positive form of the group dynamic and a positive way of being.