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.