Rapport can be described as a state of comfort, acceptance and exchange that exists between people who are relaxed, at ease in each other’s company where there are particularly good conditions of receptivity to communications.
Human beings are funny little animals. We like gravitating towards others like ourselves, i.e. like likes like. When in a state of rapport we have focused on (and possibly amplified) the similarities between ourselves rather than the differences.
Rapport skills serve us very well both socially and in business and there are many publications on the subject of developing the techniques of rapport. The trouble is that many practitioners take a very text-book, linear approach to implementing these techniques which on the other side of the handshake come across as highly contrived, artificial and can create more barriers from the outset.
One of the best ways to learn rapport is to watch it in action before you start to practise yourself. In social or work gatherings make a real effort to notice some of the markers of rapport generation. Don’t try to track them all at once, start with simple sitting positions or arm positions. While keeping up with what is going on in the room, give your attention to the posture adopted by the “leaders” of the group and notice who and when others begin to adopt similar body positions. The time lag between a leader shifting position and others following suit is important. If it’s done too quickly it becomes obvious and tends to “break the spell” and can if overdone become a pattern-interrupt and become very intrusive.
Just give yourself a chance to notice the gentle ease with which people find themselves being subtly influenced to change their posture. Once you feel confident enough you should be able to get a good impression of the pattern of change and be able to operate this yourself in a fluid manner. Give yourself a few weeks of practice in just this area before moving on to focus on another aspect, say voice intonation or patterns of speech.
What this gives you is practise at noticing more quickly the patterns exhibited by other people, which will be very useful when you visit prospective clients. Matching is a process of adjusting your own behaviour patterns to increase the level of rapport. This is a subtle process that should be out of the awareness range of your client. If you just try to “copy” what they do you will appear to be very artificial and can end up making the encounter very uncomfortable for both parties. The adjustments have to be soft, subtle and barely perceptible to the other person. You could choose just to focus on one particular aspect, say hand movements and practice over a period of time in matching gestures.
Once you become more self-aware and aware of others’ behaviour you can even use differences in viewpoint to serve as a nucleus for building rapport. For example, if there is an item of information that you don’t know much about but the other person does, you can drop into a pattern of open-questioning which elicits information for the other party. This subtly tells them that you are interested in their knowledge/opinions and gives you an extended opportunity to pace and match their dialogue to strengthen rapport.
With enough time and practice you will become better skilled at developing rapport with a very wide range of people. What often happens is that after consciously practising these skills, you start to operate them more easily and almost without having to give it much thought, having taken your learning from conscious incompetence (i.e. having to deliberately think about every step) to unconscious competence (doing it without having to focus much). At this point your rapport skills will appear to be very genuine and congruent with your personality.
Start practising today!!
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