The quick guide to generating instant rapport

Very few things of value happen between people before rapport is established. What could you achieve if you were able to generate rapport, feel comfortable, with anyone you meet and do it almost instantly? Well you can, very simply, and by using what you already know unconsciously. I will show you how to in this quick guide. Think about this now. Have you ever seen a couple of people, in a restaurant perhaps, who you just knew were not getting along? You couldn't hear what they were saying, you could only see the way they sat but it was enough to know they were just not comfortable with each other. When you remember that kind of situation what do you remember seeing? In a famous picture used early on to demonstrate that the Charles and Diana marriage was in difficulty, the couple were shown travelling in the back of a car, looking out opposite windows with their bodies slightly turned away from each other. When you think about people you have seen who you could tell were not getting along, what do you remember noticing now? In general terms you probably remember that there bodies were angled away from each other, there was a lot of looking around, very little eye contact and, significantly, that their postures were entirely different. Let's now contrast that with people who are getting on very well, who are in rapport. When you have noticed people who are, what have you seen? The one significant feature of people getting on is that their posture is almost, if not, identical. Even their gestures are the same. If you were sensitive to it you would also notice in many cases that they are usually in the same emotional state, talking at the similar pace and in the same tone, discussing things at the same level of detail, even breathing at the same rate. In short, people in rapport mirror each other's behaviour. So given this happens naturally between people in rapport, it follows that if you generate the same conditions from the outset of any encounter you will immediately generate the same sense of rapport. So how do you do it? Start with posture. People in rapport mirror each other so adopt the posture of the person you are meeting, match the way they are sitting, standing or walking. If they gesticulate when they talk, do the same when you talk. In NLP terms this would be called 'mirroring' the other person. WARNING! When you do this for the first time you will most probably feel very strange and obvious. You might feel the other person will notice you doing this immediately, even think you are messing around. The fact is the other person will not notice it at all. Prove it to yourself in a safe environment with friends. Unconsciously, what the other person will notice is that you are behaving like them and we are all programmed to react positively to that. In our unconscious mind we think that people who act like us, are like us, and so we feel comfortable around them. If you want to be more sophisticated, think about your tone and tempo when you speak and match the speed at which the other person speaks at least. Also notice the level of detail they go into when they talk. Some people are into the fine detail others the big picture or something in between. Match this. Then there are the words. When we talk we do so using sensory language and we each have a bias towards one of the senses in particular, which also reflects the way we think about things. So for example a person might say something like, 'I see you are ....' or, 'Looking forward to the year ahead .....' or, 'When I think about him I keep seeing ....' and this would be described in NLP terms as 'Visual language' and be the language used most by a person who thinks about things in pictures. Another person may think about life as a series of feelings and their language would reflect this too. For example they would say things like, 'I have the strongest sense that .....' or 'This feels like .....' and so on. To deepen the sense of rapport, use the same sensory based language as the other person. Now of course you also have your own sensory bias and so it may take a bit of practice if you need to talk in another but the practice will be well worth it. Wishing you an outstandingly successful life.