7 Rapport Building Techniques

Of all the techniques available to people who work with others, building rapport is perhaps the most powerful. It can transform impossible situations into ones with potential and can allow you to connect instead of being like ships that pass in the night.

Here are 7 rapport-building techniques:

1. Harmony

When two people hit it off, they find themselves on the same wavelength, they see things from the same point of view, and they feel in tune. They have rapport. Rapport is a semi-conscious feeling of being in harmony with others which makes you feel at one. In natural friendships, it happens spontaneously. In interactions in business, it is something you should learn and master.

2. Resonance

If you strike a note on a tuning fork and hold it near another tuning fork, the second one will vibrate to the same pitch, even though they don’t touch. The same happens with us because, whether it is a tuning fork or people, we both send out energy vibrations.

These can be low and negative vibrations which are sluggish and slow. Or faster, higher, positive vibrations which will influence others more quickly and powerfully. Resonance is the secret behind the law of attraction, that like attracts like, or behaviour begets behaviour.

3. Mirroring

If you are interacting with someone and want to make them feel more comfortable, mirror them. This means reflecting back what they do. You could copy their body language, for example, sitting when they sit, leaning back when they lean back, and folding your hands when they fold theirs.

You can go even further than superficial body language. You can mirror their breathing patterns, their thought patterns, their feelings, and their beliefs. The secret to successful mirroring is to do it in a way that is barely noticeable, for anything too obvious can easily be mistaken for mimickry.

4. Representational Systems

A person’s representational system is their main way of experiencing the world. For some of us, it is visual; for others auditory; for others, through touch; and for others it is neutral. Some psychologists suggest that you can create greater harmony by detecting a person’s predominant representational system and then adjusting your own to match it.

So, if someone uses mainly visual language, – for example, you hear them repeatedly say, “I see what you mean” and “Let’s take a look” – or visual cues, for example, they move their eye pupils up and right to remember something, – then use similar language and body language to be more like them.

5. Sub-Modalities

Just as we can detect another person’s way of looking at the world from their representational system, so we can detect many of their other ways of looking at the world from their preferences.

For example, do they prefer to see things from their standpoint or other people’s? Do they like to see the big picture first or the detail? Do they like to focus on the things that are working or the things that are not? These more subtle preferences are known as “sub-modalities”. Matching other people’s sub-modalities is a powerful way to build rapport with them.

6. Bonding

You will often have to bond with people instantly particularly if they have come to you with a problem and want you to sort it out. Here are 7 things you can do to create a closer bond with others.

a. smile at them. This makes you seem less intimidating and more friendly.
b. use some small talk to get things going.
c. slip their name into the conversation. People love to hear their own name spoken.
d. empathize with their situation.
e. repeat back some of their key words and phrases, particularly adjectives.
f. find something that you both have in common.
g. reinforce the connection with phrases like, “Yes, I agree” and “You’re so right”.

7. Pacing and Leading

For many people who work with others, such as sales people and customer carers, the skill of building rapport allows us to do two things. First, we can create the effect of immediate liking. Second, once we like them and they like us, we can subtly move them where we want them to go. That’s because, when people like you, they find it much harder to say No to you and much easier to trust you. Just one thing.

Make sure that you use the technique of pacing and leading to take someone to a place that is beneficial for them. To take them somewhere else is both manipulative and deceitful and your actions will come back to haunt you when they find out what you have done.

Most of life’s successful relationships are based on finding rapport with others. Whether you do it for the length of a phone call with a customer or for a lifetime with friends and loved-ones, learn the skill. It will never let you down.

– Eric