What can you do differently in your behaviour with the second person to help you build a stronger relationship?
You may think that the first person (with whom you have rapport) is simply easy to get on with and the second (with whom you share no rapport yet) is just a difficult person. Yet, by being more flexible in your behaviour and in your thoughts about the second person, you may find that you can build rap- port through some simple actions.
You need to take time to get to know people and what’s important to them instead of expecting people to adapt to you and your style. Throughout this chapter we provide tips for doing just that.
Identifying people with whom you want to build rapport
By now you may be getting curious about the people around you – those with whom you work, share a home, or socialise. Perhaps you want to get to know some key individuals better, such as the manager of a project or your new partner’s family. Maybe you want to influence your bank manager, or the recruiter at that all-important job interview.
Below we provide a template to help you think about anyone with whom you desire better rapport. We ask you to write down your ideas to make you stop and think, and so that you can come back to revisit your notes at a future date. Good relationships take serious investment – time to build and nurture.
You can see that the questions require you to think about your needs and those of the other person. Rapport is a two-way street.
Sometimes you have limited information about the intended person. If so, use this situation as your prompt to go out and do your research. Get curious about what makes that person tick, and who can help you find the information you need. Maybe you have a friend or colleague in common that you can iden- tify with the help of a social networking site such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Is anyone in?
Do you ever meet a new group of people and then forget their names almost immediately.
Your intention is to concentrate and yet you find yourself losing focus. Or perhaps you say good morning to your colleagues and don’t have time to look them in the face.
Robert Dilts tells the story of a West African tribe and the way they greet each other:
Person A says: ‘I see you [name].’
Person B replies: ‘I’m here. I see you [name].’
Person A replies: ‘I’m here.’
Try this approach with a friend who’s willing to play! It just takes a few seconds longer than ‘Hi there, mate’ or ‘Morning!’ and has the effect of making you concentrate on that other person and make a genuine connection.
Name:
Company/group:
What’s your relationship to this person?
Specifically, how would you like your relationship with this person to change?
What impact would this change have on you?
What impact would this change have on the other person?
Is the change worth investing time and energy?
What pressures does this person face?
What’s most important to the person right now?
Who do you know that you can talk to who has successfully built rapport with this person? And what can you discover from this other person?
What other help can you get to build rapport?
What ideas do you have now for moving this relationship forward?
What’s the first step?
Having Basic Techniques for Building Rapport
Having rapport as the foundation for any relationship means that when tough issues arise, you can more easily discuss them, find solutions, and move on.
Fortunately, you can find out how to develop rapport.
Rapport happens at many levels and you can build rapport constantly through the following:
✓ The places and people you spend time with ✓ The way you look, sound, and behave
When rapport really matters
Fast-moving businesses breed stressful working conditions. Take the frenetic world of advertis- ing: highly competitive, new young teams, artistic temperaments, large budgets, and crazy dead- lines. In an industry in which people frequently work all night, mistakes are bound to happen.
In advertising agencies from London to Sydney, you can be certain that a number of client prob- lems are brewing at any one time. Media, such as newspapers and magazines, appear on the desks of executives the world over, and what happens when your client’s advertisement from last week’s issue appears in place of this week’s new message? All too often, anxious calls fly back and forth across the airwaves when the wrong ad appears in the newspapers, artwork goes astray, and computers crash mys- teriously taking with them the latest version of an important design.
One of our advertising friends once produced a customer magazine for a corporate client in which some of the main photographs appeared in black and white: they should have been in colour. In a hurry, he hadn’t checked the proofs carefully. When the print was delivered, he called the client, confessed the error,
apologised, and took full responsibility for a costly mistake. As he worked for his own agency, he knew that if he had to pay for the reprint, the bill for several thousands of pounds would come straight out of his own profits.
At the other end of the phone, the young cor- porate marketing executive’s first reaction on hearing of the error was that the whole job would have to be reprinted; she’d discuss it with her boss and get back to him.
Within an hour, the client called back to say that her boss’s reaction was that it was a genuine mistake. Because of the good working relation- ship, the company would accept the job and let it go out. The boss had remembered the times when our friend had gone beyond the call of duty to respond at the weekend and late in the evening, so that the client achieved a product launch on time. The boss also valued the time he’d taken to understand the company’s busi- ness, plus the advice and experience he’d shared on using budgets wisely.
And what’s the moral of the story? Simply that investing time in building the right relationships is just as worthwhile as getting the job done.
✓ The skills you develop
✓ The values you live by
✓ Your beliefs
✓ Your purpose in life
✓ Being true to your natural identity
Sharpening your rapport with eight quick tips
For starters, try the following immediate ways to begin building rapport:
✓ Take a genuine interest in getting to know what’s important to other people. Start to understand them instead of expecting them to under- stand you first.
✓ Pick up on the key words, favourite phrases, and manner of speaking that an individual uses and build these aspects subtly into your own conversation.
✓ Notice how a person likes to handle information: lots of details or just the big picture? As you speak, feed back information in this same por- tion size.
✓ Check how a person uses the representation systems with visual, audi- tory, and kinaesthetic language (which you can read more about in Chapter 6), and use similar words during your conversations.
✓ Breathe in unison with the person. You can do this discreetly by watch- ing their neck and chest to see when they inhale and exhale, and then matching your breathing to the other person.
✓ Look out for someone’s overall intention – the person’s underlying aim – as opposed to the exact things done or said. People may not always get it right, but work on the assumption that people’s hearts lie in the right place.
✓ Adopt a similar stance to another person in terms of your body lan- guage, gestures, voice tone, and speed of talking.
✓ Respect people’s time, energy, friends and favourite associates, and money. These items are important resources for you.
The next four sections contain some more advanced rapport-building techniques.
Viewing the communication wheel and developing rapport
Classic research by Professor Mehrabian of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) looked at how people receive and respond to live communica- tion. He suggests that when an incongruity exists between what you say and how you say it, 7 per cent of the message is conveyed through your words, 38 per cent comes through the quality of your voice, and a massive 55 per cent comes through gestures, expression, and posture (check out Figure 7-1).
Although opinion is divided on the actual percentages, most researchers are in agreement that messages aren’t just conveyed in words, but that the tone of your voice and body language has a strong impact. If you’ve ever heard people say that ‘everything’s fine’ when clearly they aren’t well, you know that the impact of what you see in the other person influences you more than the words spoken.
Figure 7-1:
The impact of your com-
munication.
38%
tone of voice
55%
facial expression, gesture, body
posture 7%
words
Clearly, first impressions count. Do you arrive for meetings and appoint- ments appearing hot and harassed or cool and collected? When you begin to talk, do you mumble your words in a low whisper to the floor or gaze directly and confidently at your audience before speaking out loud and clear?
In terms of building rapport – you are the message. And you need your words, image, and speech all working in harmony. If you don’t look confident – in other words, as if you believe in your message – people aren’t going to listen to what you’re saying.
Rapport involves being able to see eye-to-eye with other people, connecting on their wavelength. A large percentage of the perception of your sincer- ity comes not from what you say but how you say it, and how you show an appreciation for the other person’s thoughts and feelings.
When you have rapport with someone, you can each disagree with what the other says while still relating respectfully to each other. The important point is to acknowledge other people as the unique individuals that they are. For example, you may well have different political or religious views from your colleagues or clients, but you don’t need to fall out about it. People prefer all sorts of different foods to eat for supper, and yet you manage to agree to differ with your family on that point.
Hold on to the fact that you simply differ from the person’s opinion and that this difference is no reflection on that person. Flick to Chapter 11 to read about logical levels and how NLP makes a distinction between beliefs and values at one level, and identity at a higher level. People are more than what they say, do, or believe.
Matching and mirroring
When you’re out and about in bars and restaurants (or even the staff cafete- ria, if you’re lucky enough to get meals at work), have you noticed how two people look when a rapport exists between them? Without hearing the details of the conversation, you can see that the interaction is like a dance: people naturally move in step with each other. A sense of unison informs their body language and the way they talk – elegantly dovetailing their movements and speech. NLP calls this situation matching and mirroring.
Matching and mirroring is when you take on someone else’s style of behaviour and their skills, values, or beliefs in order to create rapport.
In contrast, think of a time when you’ve been the unwilling witness to an embarrassingly public argument between a couple, or a parent and child, in the street or supermarket: not quite a punch-up, but almost. Even with the volume turned off, you soon notice when people are totally out of sync with each other, just from their body posture and gestures. NLP calls this situa- tion mismatching.
Matching and mirroring are ways of becoming highly tuned to how someone else is thinking and experiencing the world: it’s a way of listening with your whole body. Simple mirroring happens naturally when you have rapport.
NLP suggests that you can also deliberately match and mirror someone to build rapport until it becomes natural. To do so, you need to match the following:
✓ Body postures and gestures
✓ Breathing rates
✓ Rhythm of movement and energy levels
✓ Voice tonality (how you sound) and speed of speech
Beware of the fine line between moving in rhythm with someone and mimicry.
People instinctively know when you’re making fun of them or being insincere.
If you decide you want to check out mirroring for yourself, do so gradually in no-risk situations or with strangers you aren’t going to see again. Don’t be sur- prised though if it works and the strangers want to become your friends!
When rapport helps you say ‘no’
Perhaps you’re one of those people who prefer to say ‘yes’ to everything, to be helpful and pleasing to the boss, clients, and family. You’re the first person to put your hand up in commit- tee meetings, the one who organises the school jumble sale or charity dinner, who drives the kids around, and you’re always the one who ends up having to do the tasks. Discovering how to say ‘no’ sometimes is one of the greatest skills for modern living, if you’re to protect your- self from being overloaded and then becoming sick with the stress.
At work, a manager can easily be tempted to ask the willing worker to take on more. Consider James’s story.
As a maths teacher who loves his job, James was finding it increasingly hard to say: ‘I’m not going to take that on.’ He felt he was let- ting people down by saying ‘no’ and was in danger of making himself seriously ill through overwork. He discovered that by simply match- ing the body language of his head of depart- ment, he was more easily able to smile and say very politely: ‘I’d love to do that, but my time is already fully committed. If you want me to take on extra responsibility, you must decide what you’d like me to stop doing to make time for this.’ In this way he refused to take on a greater load than he was able to handle.
Pacing to lead other people successfully
Building great relationships requires that you pace other people. As a meta- phor, NLP compares pacing people with running alongside a train. If you try to jump straight on to a moving train, you’re likely to fall off. In order to jump on a moving train, you need to gather speed by racing alongside it until you’re moving at the same speed, before you can jump.
In order to lead people – to influence them with your point of view – remem- ber to pace them first. This approach means really listening to them, fully acknowledging them, truly understanding where they’re coming from, and being patient about it.
To build rapport NLP advises you to pace, pace, and pace again before you lead. Pacing is how NLP describes your flexibility to pick up and match, respectfully, other people’s behaviours and vocabulary, and where you actively listen to the other person. Leading is when you attempt to get the other person to change by subtly taking that person in a new direction.
In business, companies that succeed in introducing major change pro- grammes do so in measured steps, allowing employees to accept changes gradually. People are unwilling to be led to new ways of working until they have first been listened to and acknowledged (that is, paced). The most effec- tive leaders are those who pace the reality of their people’s experience first.
When you watch effective salespeople in action you can see how they master the art of pacing the customer and demonstrate genuine interest. (By effec- tive, we’re thinking of those who sell a genuine product with integrity rather than the shark approach.) They listen, listen, and listen some more about what the customer’s needs are – what the person really wants – before trying to sell anything. People resent being sold to, but they love to be listened to and to talk about what’s important to them. An antiques dealer friend has perfected this art over many years, gently guiding his customers through his genuine affection for the articles he sells from his own home, and sharing his expertise.
When Kate bought a family car several years ago, she went to six different showrooms where salespeople rushed to sell the virtues of their car without showing any interest in how it fitted in with her lifestyle. At the time she had a young family and went on long trips with the children in the car.
The salesperson who was successful displayed superb interpersonal skills and presented a practical, family estate car. He paced Kate well, listening carefully, treating her with respect (unlike those who assumed the buying decision would be made by her husband), and trusted her with the keys so she was able to take it for a spin immediately. As she drove along, he gently gathered the information he needed to match the right model of car to her buying criteria, realising she wasn’t going to accept a hard direct sell. Within
half an hour she bought the car and became a firm advocate of the brand and the garage.
Building rapport in virtual communication
Twenty years ago, the Internet and email tools were confined to research labs and computer geeks. Regular business transactions involved cheques, letters, and faxes, mostly filed in hard copy: jumping in the car to visit sup- pliers and colleagues was all part of a day’s work. Today, life’s different. Of course, people still write and phone – the paperless office remains elusive – but the percentage of electronic transactions has shot through the roof.
People are tweeting, blogging, and managing their lives online. If you lose your computer connection or have no access to email, you can feel lost and helpless very quickly.
Virtual teams who hold virtual meetings haven’t just entered the workplace;
you’re as likely to join teleconferences for sharing information and speak- ing to social groups. People are comfortable with the virtual management of multi-cultural project teams that sit across global networks and work remotely thanks to technology – conference calls, email and videoconferenc- ing. Expecting to get to manage our finances online or through an interna- tional support system is the norm, instead of seeing local bank staff or postal workers.
In this environment of reduced face-to-face contact, you lose the nuances of facial expressions, the body language, and the subtlety of getting to know the colleague at the next desk as you work closely with others. At its best, the virtual team spells freedom and flexibility of working practices, diversity, and a richness of skills: at its worst, it’s lonely, isolated, and ineffective.
The challenge of building rapport through virtual working is now greater than ever. Little wonder that people are being recruited more for soft skills – the ability to influence and negotiate – than for technical competence.
Here are ten ways to develop rapport over the phone and in teleconferences:
✓ Make sure that all the locations are connected and can hear each other on the phone. Introduce and welcome people with a roll call.
✓ Work to a clear agenda. Set outcomes for the call and agree them with all participants.
✓ Check that you’ve had input from a mix of people. If necessary, encour- age the quieter individuals to take part; say, for example, ‘Mike, what are your thoughts on this?’
✓ Discourage small talk or separate chats at different sites: keep to one discussion, one meeting, one agenda.