In the book "We Need to Talk," Celeste Headlee writes about strategies to navigate complicated interactions and exchanges. When describing how to navigate these situations, Headlee provided five strategies; be curious, check your bias, show respect, stay the course, and end well. These five strategies are beneficial when navigating these interactions. One similar interaction included a situation with a group of my friends, where one of them was starting to create a friendship hierarchy and was excluding certain members of the friend group. These actions continued and became very frustrating. In this situation, I should have pulled her aside and spoken with her about why we were frustrated and why she was doing what she was doing. Instead, …show more content…
The first step I should have taken in a conversation with my friend is to be curious. According to the book “We Need to Talk,” the being curious strategy is to have “a genuine willingness to learn something from someone else” (Headlee, 46). Using this strategy would be helpful in the conversation with my friend because I can then learn about where she is coming from and why she was doing what she was doing. This way both of us are open to learning and understanding each other. Next, checking my biases is crucial to prevent undue blame from being cast against each other, helping to listen to my friend's side and gain a true understanding of her needs and experiences. The strategy of always showing respect, according to Headlee is “the cornerstone of any meaningful exchange of ideas” (Headlee, 49). Choosing to show respect, even when in a disagreement with someone, is crucial because it forces you to see the person as a human and deserving of respect. This pushes a person into having empathy for the person, allowing you to gain a better understanding and identity as a goal for the interaction. This would have been helpful in the situation with my friend because we both needed to understand each other to rebind the group and make us stronger