The Importance of Rapport

What is rapport?

Rapport is often described as:

• A sympathetic relationship or understanding

• The process of making a 2 – way connection with someone else

• Experiencing a genuine sense of trust and respect with another person

Building rapport is the ability to build a bridge of harmony or trust between people.

People like people like themselves

When we meet people we typically seek out commonality and build rapport through similarity. Excellent communicators are able to adjust their communication style to match the person with whom they are relating. That person receives the message "this person is like me."

Strategies to Build Rapport

1. Matching / Mirroring Body Position

Adjust your body to approximate the other person's posture (easier if they sit down first). Match the upper or lower portion of the other person's body. Note the way the other person uses their face - raise their eyebrows, wrinkle their nose, etc. Match characteristic poses the other person offers with their head and shoulders.

Matching is to have your physiology in the same way as the other persons, if the person has their right leg crossed over the left leg then you sit the same way.
Mirroring is to match back the person's behaviour as a mirror image. So that as the person looks at the practitioner, the person sees is a mirror image of themselves.  Either way is better.

2. Matching Key Gestures and Movement

You can match and use people's key gestures, which are repetitive gestures that occur usually to emphasise a point and are frequently accompanied by a shift in their voice volume. Match their key gestures so that when you make a point you can use their gestures.

3. Matching Breathing

Adjust your own breathing to synchronise with the other person's breath rate and location.

4. Matching Vocal Qualities

Listen for the tone, tempo (speed), volume and pauses of the person with whom you are interacting, and as accurately as possible, matches back these elements in subtle ways. For example, if someone speaks slowly, a skilled practitioner slows down the rate of his speech, if the person talks loudly, then the expert adjusts his volume to match that volume. Match tone, tempo, volume, intensity, pitch etc. Note and match in your own language the repeated phrases or stylised grammatical use of the other person.

5. Matching Key Words and Phrases

Key words and phrases are repetitive and are given special emphasis (analogue marking) by a subtle but noticeable shift in volume or rate increase and are often accompanied by a key gesture. Youth culture is continually developing new key words as part of defining their identity – in this case rapport can be about the practitioner recognising the words but not necessarily using all of them.

Student: "Doesn't my painting look mint when it is hung on the wall?"
Teacher: "Yes! It looks really mint."

6. Matching Values

Values are the things in life a person invests their time, money and effort to achieve. For example: fun, freedom, honesty, love, friendship, or leisure time are words used to describe what people value. By aligning with their values, or by discussing things in terms of the individual's hierarchy, the same unconscious message that "you are like me" is sent. If the person's values are very different than yours, you DO NOT have to lie to them. Keep in mind that there is always 1% that you can agree upon 100% of the time; start there!

Client: "It love to go sailing on the weekends. "
Salesperson: "What is important to you about sailing?"
Client: "When I go sailing, it feels so free - I get a great sense of freedom when I'm out there in the open waters."
Salesperson: "1 can totally understand that, when I go running it just feels so free to be out in nature.