Establishing Rapport

PRACTICE GUIDE – Presence

What is Rapport?

If the tone is aggressive, it’s not about you then replying in an aggressive manner, but being assertive in your voice tone and using more empathetic language. Seek first to understand.

People like people who are like themselves.

Rapport is essential for any meaningful communication to take place, to engage someone’s attention. Just because you are telling someone what to do, doesn’t mean you are communicating. The more you get into the “style” and “pace” of the other person, the more you will understand what their motives, attitudes, values, beliefs and feelings are.

So What does it mean?

Rapport will come in handy when you are trying to:

• Pacify an angry boss or colleagues
• Persuade a colleague or client who is skeptical
• Get someone to take an issue more seriously or more light-heartedly
• Bring a meeting to order, or to a close without causing offense
• Persuade a group on an important matter
• Get someone to be more enthusiastic
• Get a change of mental or emotional state

Pay attention to the smallest of changes so you can observe more subtle patterns of body movement that are associated with a change of thinking. When you know your own values and observe how you react when looking in a mirror, it becomes easier to see it in others.

Notice how people use sensory language. What preferred sense is suggested by the words they use and try to match it.

For example:

SIGHT PEOPLE – “I see what you mean”, “I have a blind spot on that”, “It appears to me if . . . ”Show me”, “In my mind’s eye . . . ”Shed some light on this for me”, etc. They use their visual sense and tend to speak quickly in a higher pitched and shallower breathing, tending to look upwards.

HEARING PEOPLE – “In a manner of speaking”, “It rings a bell with me”, “Loud and clear”, “On the same wavelength”. “Who’s calling the tune ?”, “What makes her tick ?”, etc. They use their auditory sense, often speak more slowly and resonantly with more rhythmic body movements and looking sideways.

EMOTIONAL PEOPLE – “Hold on a second”, He’s a cool customer”, “She is a warm-hearted person”, “Thick skinned”, “They had a heated argument”, I feel it in my bones”, “I will be in touch”, etc. They use their kinesthetic sense and tend to speak slowly and ponderously, breathing slowly and looking down more. Rapport is easily broken when you don’t match another person’s attitudes. For example, rapport can be lost when there is:

• Extreme self-consciousness as this stops you maintaining the rapport process. As a result, you will be led by the other person all the time and find it difficult to break into the conversation, fearing that you will not be valued.
• An overwhelming need to be liked means you hold back on challenging others. This feeling arises from fear and a lack of self-confidence. You will tend to keep profound disagreements to yourself and therefore select friends because they agree with you, always sharing your opinions and prejudices.
• Judgement often takes the form of toxic waste, you try to bury it, but it inevitably ‘seeps out’ in our body language, comments, and attitudes, imposing your values can overwhelm others, even to the point where they withdraw from the conversation. Placing restrictions on the other person will only cause them to please you to get a favourable response or shut you up. This can severely damage a relationship.
• Preoccupation with your own life’s events can make it difficult for others to make a contribution to the conversation.
• Unawareness of getting stuck in particular ways of talking and communicating. For example, asking leading or closed questions. Not matching the other person’s energy level or pace in the conversation.

Now what?

Try this simple self-test yourself and ask your team members to do it too. It will stimulate conversation about what you and your colleagues can do to develop their ability to establish a good rapport with each other. Rapport requires you to think about and make an effort to understand others before asking for what you want. You are driven by your own wants, but to connect with others you need to get close enough to find out what their wants actually are. This provides insights into what might motivate them to act.

Practices

• Are the majority of people you meet pleased to see you?
• Do your social groups say they miss you when you are not around?
• Do people immediately understand what you say and mean?
• Do you find it easy to communicate with people you have just met?
• At meetings, are you usually invited to contribute your arguments?
• Do people turn to you for help?
• Do people find you approachable?
• Do you usually get your own way?
• Do people willingly do what you ask of them?
• Are you able to remove the heat from an argument?
• Do you have a wide and varied circle of friends?
• Do you have an even wider set of acquaintances?
• Would you describe yourself as persuasive?
• Do people readily accept your ideas?
• Do you find it easy to sustain eye contact with someone?

2. Listen with your whole body and focus 100% on the other person. How do you feel about being with this person? Notice their demeanor, breathing rate, eye movements. Rapport is a state of being with someone so closely that you feel you are entering their world.

3. Think back to a relationship in which you felt a strong sense of connection. Describe how it felt in your body. What were you reacting to? How did you pick up their mood and body state? Next time take a “body scan” and notice gestures and postures and energy level to mirror.

References