Your voice: boundaries, changing your mind and standing up

Friendships are great, but they can get tricky. Someone wants to post a photo you hate. A friend keeps borrowing your stuff. A joke goes on too long. Knowing how to speak up, and how to listen, keeps friendships strong.

Three ways to respond

An I-statement helps you be assertive: 'I feel embarrassed when that photo gets shared. I need you to delete it, please.'

Ask first, and accept the answer

Asking permission shows respect. Ask before you borrow something, post someone's photo, add them to a group chat or tag them. If they say no, that's the answer. People are also allowed to change their mind, even after saying yes. Keep asking or pushing after a no and it becomes pressure, which is disrespectful and can become harassment.

In te ao Māori the head is tapu, or sacred. Ask before touching someone's head or hair, and keep things like combs and hats off tables where food is served.

Banter or bullying?

Banter is friendly joking where everyone is in on it. It has turned into bullying when only one person is laughing, when it shames or embarrasses someone, when it targets things like race, religion, gender or disability, or when it keeps happening. Being deliberately left out of a chat can hurt too.

Being an upstander

A bystander sees something happen. An upstander does something safe about it:

If you got it wrong, fix it: delete what you can, apologise simply, and think about what you'll do next time.