I’ve seen a lot of articles about good allyship that all mention roughly the same things: following the leadership of marginalized folks, listening to marginalized folks, doing your own research, and calling out injustice when you see it. (If you do want a refresher in some allyship basics, you can check out this short but great article on how to be a good ally.) Those are all absolutely integral parts of being a good ally, but I’ve noticed that there are crucial allyship skills that pretty much all good allies do, but nobody ever talks about. So I’m going to talk about those here.
Read MoreThe tool I want to mainly discuss here is something I call: The “We’re On The Same Team” sandwich (AKA the WOST Sandwich). It’s a technique designed to help both parties think in a more collaborative mindset instead of a competitive mindset, which is much likelier to yield higher quality solutions as well as just being more pleasant and connecting overall. The other thing I like about it is that it helps you still get your point across while giving you as good a chance as possible of feeling heard by the other person.
Read MoreWith any relationship that engenders enough vulnerability and closeness, conflict is usually bound to come up. So one of the best approaches, I’ve found, is to be prepared for it and have a plan for how to handle it when conflict arises.
There’s already tons of literature about how to fight well, but I’ve found one trick that you might not be familiar with.
I call it the “emotional right-of-way.”
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