Before You Negotiate

1. Figure out what's at stake for you

Ask yourself the same kinds of questions that a mediator might ask. What are the issues as far as you are concerned? Specifically, what has the other person done that bothers you? Why does it bother you? What is important to you and why? What would an ideal situation look like for you?

What does the situation say about you? Sometimes the turmoil that you experience during conflict can be internal when the situation and your behavior don't match the way you see yourself. Maybe you see yourself as someone who never gets taken advantage of and you feel exploited by your roommates. Maybe you see yourself as a caring person and your roommates are accusing you of being inconsiderate. What does the situation or people involved represent to you? It could be bothering you because it represents a pattern that you perceive in your life.

Consider your feelings. The more aware you are of the feelings you're experiencing, the better able you will be to manage them. We often experience many emotions at once, but tend to glom them all into one category like, "I'm pissed off." Are you feeling hurt, guilty, betrayed, ashamed, angry, regret, hopeful, threatened and/or anxious? We can even experience seemingly contradictory feelings at once - "I'm feeling guilty about my contribution to the situation and I'm also really angry with you."

2. What's at stake for the others involved?

How might the other person see the situation? Oftentimes people will interpret the same set of events in a completely different way. You thought you were being helpful by rearranging the furniture, he thinks you're out to get him. You think it's normal to leave the dishes in the sink overnight, she thinks it's unsanitary. What might your roommate be paying attention to that you aren't? What bothers her most could be something you didn't even think twice about.

What might your roommate have intended in behaving the way he did? We are often quick to assume that the other person had bad intentions. Your favorite mug disappears and you assume your roommate must have taken it out of spite and you find it two weeks later underneath your desk. "He must have put it under there out of spite," you think. You might want to ask your roommate about her intentions without assuming that you already know the answer. As the authors of Difficult Conversations remind us, the negative impact we feel from someone's behavior is not necessarily related to her intent.

How might the other person feel? Thinking about the other person's feelings might give you some insight into the other person's reactions that seem out of proportion with what happened. What leads your roommate to feel angry, hurt or threatened might be completely different from things that upset you. You might want to ask your roommate about his feelings, if you're comfortable with it. If you're not, you can still glean a person's feelings by her facial expressions, tone of voice and body language.

What are you missing? We never have perfect information about what is going on for the other person. You might want to have some questions for the other person in mind before you start the conversation. What was the other person thinking and feeling in reaction to you? What is most important to the other person? Such questions can serve as a gateway into learning more about how the other person sees the situation.

3. Re-examine your assumptions

What assumptions do you hold that your roommate may not share? In growing up, we learn from our families and assume the way we do things is universal. A lot of these assumptions involve what is considered 'common courtesy,' 'appropriate,' or 'respectful.' In your family was it considered inappropriate to yell or burst into tears? Was it considered simply polite to ask before you borrowed something? It may not be that your roommate is trying to set new records for rudeness but that she simply is following a different set of rules than you are. The best way to manage assumptions that may be different from your roommate's is to be transparent about yours and to invite him to share his: "I'm assuming such and such. Is that the assumption you're making?"

Certain assumptions can be exacerbating the situation. Some problematic assumptions involve predicting the future with certainty (and the future is always bad), such as "if we have one argument, we won't get along for the rest of the year" or "Nothing can be done." You should question doomsday assumptions and inject them with some uncertainty, such as, "Just because we're in a rut now doesn't mean we're stuck forever" or "first impressions aren't everything." Other problematic assumptions involve how things ought to be, "we can't be good roommates unless we're good friends" or "you have to have a good relationship with your roommates to have a good college experience." With such assumptions, it's important to remember that there is no 'normal' or 'ideal' college experience. You decide what your relationship with your roommate should be and what it represents.