„‚ CONDITIONS THAT HINDER EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

■ The Confidentiality Assumption: I will respect confidences that are entrusted to
me. 2
■ The Responsibility Assumption: I will share equally with you in building and
maintaining our partnership.
■ The Changeability Assumption: I can change and am willing to try. Our
relationship can change. We are not set in our ways.
Assumptions that hinder contract negotiations are as follows:
■
One (or both) of us “needs help,” is mentally disturbed.
■ Our relationship is poor, hopeless, doomed.
2
■ My partner does not know what he is really like. I am going to get him to see the
Truth about himself. 2
■ All of our problems are my partner’s fault. She is the one who needs to change.
■ My partner had better change, “or else.”
■ My partner has hurt me. Now I am going to get even.
■ We are the way we are. There is no sense in stirring things up.
It seems apparent, then, that an atmosphere of trust, respect, and understanding, in
which successful contract negotiations thrive, is most likely to occur when people are
willing to listen and respond to each other without feeling that they are taking the risk of
being manipulated or coerced.
The Product
When writing your contract, strive to avoid either extreme rigidity or excessive
generalization in your statement.
Try to determine your personal priorities before specifying your goals. Identify
your nonnegotiables early in the process so that you can work with or around them.
Very useful, especially during initial negotiations, is an outline format; it reads
easily and encourages succinctness and clarity.
In writing each section, go from a general objective to the specific steps that you
will take to realize it. State your action steps so that both of you can understand your
goal or purpose. Use specific behavioral examples to clarify what you mean. For
instance, if you are experiencing difficulty in managing conflict, you might state
“dealing with conflict” as a general objective. As action steps, you might list the
following: “Both partners will define the issue before pursuing the argument”;
“John/Margaret calls time out when he/she is no longer able to listen effectively”;
“Margaret summarizes what has been said before presenting new information.”
2
This assumption and several of the others in this listing are taken from The Interpersonal Game (p. 4) by K. Hardy, 1964, Provo, UT:
Brigham Young University Press.
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The Pfeiffer Library Volume 6, 2nd Edition. Copyright ©1998 Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer