Building a Relational Map

 

Instructions:

• Sit facing each other –

• One of you pick a card and read the back out loud and answer it in terms of your friends world.  The partner can then say Yes that’s right or NO good try – Here’s the right answer –

• This is not to be competitive

• Be gentle if correcting your friend’s answers

• Then exchange roles.

• This exercise is a great way to get to know more about your partner/ friend – be gentle and each other.

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Part A – Maps

1. Name your partners/friend’s  TWO closest friends

2. What is your partner’s favourite musical group composer or instrument?

3. What are their hobbies

4. What stresses are facing him/her in the immediate future?

5. When is their birthday?

6. What is their fondest dream which is as yet unachieved?

7. What is their worst fears?

8. What makes them feel most competent?

9. What is favourite food?

10. What is their favourite way of spending an evening?

11. What kind of present would s/he like the best

12. What personal improvements does s/he want to make in their life?

13. What was their favourite holiday?

14. What was their best childhood experience?

15. Who is their greatest source of support (other than you)?

16.   What does s/he like to do with their time off?

17.   What is one of their favourite weekend activity?

18.   What is their favourite getaway place?

19. What is their favourite movie?

20.   What are some of the important events in your friends life and how do they feel about these events?

21.   What are their favourite ways to exercise?

22.   Who was their best friend in childhood?

23. Name one of your partners major rivals or enemies?

24.   What would be the ideal job for partner?

25.   Who is your partners most favourite relative (excluding immediate nuclear family)

26. What is your friends favourite kind of reading?

27. What are they currently most sad about?

28. What medical problems concern your partner the most?

29.  What is their worst childhood experience?

30. What is their most embarrassing childhood experience?

31. Which people do they admire the most in the world? Name two.

32. Who is their least favourite person you both know?

33. What is their favourite desserts?

34. What is one of their favourite novels?

35. What is your spouse’s favourite romantic restaurant?

36. What are two of your friends aspirations, hopes or wishes?

37. Does your friend have a secret ambition? What is it?

38.  What foods do they hate?

39.  What is their favourite animal?

40. What is their favourite song?

41. What is their favourite tree?

42. What is their favourite colour?

43. What is their favourite TV show?

44. Who is their favourite poet?

45. What is your spouse’s favourite side of the bed?

46. What is their most embarrassing moment as an adult?

 

Part B - Asking Open-Ended Questions

Did you call the plumber today?  Is not a question that tells you much about your partner’s internal world.

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Try asking open ended questions – “If you had all the money in the world, what would your dream house be like?

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1. How do you see your work changing in the future?

2. How do you feel about our physical home? What changes would you like to make? (Architectural?  Design? cleanliness?)

3. Parents – as a new parent how would you compare yourself to your own parents?

4. What kind of person do you think our child(ren) will become? Any fears? Any Hopes?

5. Is our child like anyone in your family? If so, who?

6. How do you feel about your family right now?

7. Have these feelings changed lately?

8. How do you feel about your work right now?

9. What do you find exciting in life right now?

10. What are your biggest worries about the future?

11. How do you think we could have more fun in our life?

12. Whare your best allied and close friends right now?  How have they changed?

13. How have your friendships changed lately?  Have you grown closer to some friends? More distant to others?

14. Who in your life is more stressful for you? Why?

15. What do you need right now in a friend?

16. What things are missing in your life?

17. How have you changed in the last year?

18. Have your goals in life changed recently?

19. What are some of your dreams now? What goals do you have for our family?

20. What goals do you have just for yourself right now?

21. What is one way you would like to change?

22. What legacy do you want our family to take from your family?  From your culture?

23. What are some unfulfilled things in your life?

24. What would you change about y/our finances right now?

25. Where would you like to travel?

26. What adventures would you like to have before you die?

27. How has your outlook on life changed in the past two years?

28. If you could like one other persons life, whose life, whose life would you choose and why?

29. IF you could live during any other time period in history, when would you choose to live and why?

30. If you could choose any other career or vocation other than what you do now, what would you choose and why?

31. What were the highlights and low lights of your adolescence?

32. If you could wake up tomorrow with three new skills in which you excelled, what would they be and why?

33. If you could re-do any decade of your life, which decade would you choose & why?

34. What kind of year has this been for you?

35. Tell me the story of your proudest moment.

36. What relatives have you felt closest to and why?

37. Who has been the most difficult person in your life (Other than a partner or spouse) and why?

38. If you could change into any animal for 24 hours what would it be and why?

39. Who was your childhood hero or heroine and why?

40. If you could live in any other country, which would you pick and why?

41. If you could experience being any other person for 24 hours, who would you pick and why?

42. If you could be a genius in any art, music, drama or dance, which talent would you choose and why?

43. If you could be a superstate in any sport, which sport would you choose and why?

44. If you were the richest person in the world, what would you do with your money?

45. If you could look like anyone else in the world, who would you pick and why?

 

PIT STOP - GOAL in this

• Seek first to understand before being understood

• Me related experiences - don’t immediately relate it back to your experiences without giving the proper spotlight to their story.

• Don’t turn their story into your experiences

• Goal is CONNECTION by validating their FEELINGS.

• Listen for feelings.

 

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