Balbir Chagger. Improving your Relationships. Balbir started by leading us all in a dance to get the day's stress out of the way and very soon we were all engaged in a free ranging discussion about relationships between men and women. There was much laughter and banter and the feedback forms reflect the fun that was being had. Balbir asked us to consider how we do communicate with each other and the list kept growing and included all the senses, telepathy, dance, music, e-mail, letters, photos, words, attitude, smiling, vocal tone, eye contact, facial expressions, art, grooming, dress, handwriting, gestures and more .... We learnt once more the value of attentive listening, in an exercise which demonstrated how difficult it is to truly listen to another person The greatest fun and group interaction came when Balbir shared with us a hierarchy of needs for men and women in a relationship. Women's needs;.            Men's needs; 1) Affection                       1) Sexual fulfilment 2) Conversation                2) Attractive Partner 3) Honesty & openness  3) Admiration & Respect 4) Security                        4) Domestic Support 5) Family Commitment   5) Friend to share leisure and companionship. These stereotypical and generalised needs are the product of research by a Dr Willard E Harley (an American), who clearly doesn't understand the British Male! :-) Through discussion we realised that both partners in a relationship need all of these to be met at some time by each other, whether the relationship is single sex or both sex. Changes in society, in Gender roles and in geographical location can change the list for each partner in a relationship so the Gender stereotype could be different from the list above. If we move the discussion to acknowledging our own male / female parts and the relative balance we all have individually between our inner and outer genders, our own list will become a unique mix of those above, plus maybe some requirements not listed. Despite the fun and laughter this is an interesting topic and we only scratched the surface. Maybe we could look to find another time to explore this more deeply, and using our NLP toolbox work out strategies that enable us to improve, enhance and understand relationships. Strategies and systems to help us become clearer about our own needs and the needs of our partner. Relationships can work at just a surface level but to become meaningful and to grow they need to interact at values and belief levels too. What will change if we also look at how our identity changes, or doesn't, in or out of a relationship. We didn't get this far in the evening and the feedback forms reflect a slight disappointment about this. But Hey what can you realistically manage in a scant two hours! Thank you Balbir for braving the repartee and for having the flexibility to ride with the tide, your handout would have taken us further if we had had the time. We had a real blast and hope you did too. For more on this or to contact Balbir visit www.directions4success.com e-mail: balbir@directions4success.com or phone Balbir on 0208 842 0837 Return to NLP-South main site