We Should Not Be Friends: The Story of a Friendship

by Will Schwalbe

I try to keep the lessons he taught us in mind to this day, whenever anyone is telling me anything sensitive or personal. We were told that the most important thing was to listen, really listen, and to keep an open mind and heart. We weren’t to ask any questions until and unless we were invited to do so. We were told to be thoughtful about our questions—that they had to be genuine. It was fine to ask for more information or clarification if we were curious or didn’t understand what we’d heard. But questions were never to be used as challenges or veiled criticisms. We were warned particularly about “Why” questions. It’s hard to ask about motivation without implying that you would have handled the same situation differently. Far better to ask “How” and “What” questions (as long as the “What” was never a sarcastic “What were you thinking?”). Also, we weren’t to follow a person’s audit with statements of our own values, share our own stories in the guise of questions, or use queries to show how smart we were. Finally, no matter how gentle or well-meaning we thought our questions to be, the person who had presented was under no obligation to answer, or to give a reason why she or he didn’t want to elaborate or explain. This wasn’t an investigation or interrogation, the trainer said. It wasn’t a commission or a hearing. It was a chance to share our lives and thoughts with one another. One of us asked whether audit was really the right word, then, to describe what we would be doi...