NLP and Rapport
Discover how to develop deep rapport skills with any relationship that will positively change your life forever...
Have you ever met someone and after 10 minutes of talking felt like you have known the person forever? Are there people you just naturally feel comfortable with and other with who you don’t seem to be able to hit it off? The main difference between these two is called rapport: with the first group you have naturally, with second, well, not at all. Rapport is a feeling of being “in-sync” with someone else, to be on the same wavelength and consequently to really understand and appreciate someone else and their opinions.
When you look at communication, we are taught to think that the most important are the words we say. Yet, the words, all in all, only form about 7% of the total communication between two people. That’s not really that much, is it? Roughly 38% are determined by how we say the words (voice qualities), and an astounding 55% by non verbal communication or body language. That means, it is not only important what you say, but how and with what gestures.
At first this might seem not totally believable, so let’s look at an example:
Imagine you present an idea to someone, and they, with a sarcastic voice tone and shaking their head say: “Yes, that’s a great idea!?” Which part of their communication will you believe the words or all the rest? As humans, we have the tendency for consciously computing the words, and unconsciously all the rest, and if the messages sent don’t fit together, we get a feeling of something not being quite right. In NLP terms you would say that the person is being “incongruent”
What do you need rapport for anyhow, I hear you say? Well, apart from unconsciously making the other person believe that you two are alike, it massively increases response potential. As a consequence, it will be easier for you to lead the other person to your point of view.
So, how you create it? Well, somewhere in the 1980s body language books were preaching the concept of mirroring, where you simply mirror all the gestures somebody does. While this is one possibility, there is a high chance this will be quite obvious, and as a result will make you look slightly strange, and the other person will feel quite uncomfortable.
Hence, what to do? As it goes, there are a few sneaky things you can do:
Matching the other person – matching means that you do what the other person does. So, if he puts his right leg over his left, you do too. This is already more subtle than mirroring, where you act like a mirror to the other person
- Cross over matching – you take one aspect and match it with another of yours. For example, they cross their legs, you cross your arms. How sneaky is that?
Of course, even matching and cross over matching might be noticed, if you only do it based on their physiology. So, if you want to be really sneaky, you can take it to a whole new level: match voice tonality, tempo, volume, breathing patterns, blinking rates, etc.
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