Rapport is the second pillar of NLP helping us connect with other people so that we can be more influential and more influenced.
Rapport is nothing new or special. We grow up immersed in a social world having to interact one way or another with a huge variety of people. Just about everyone has rapport skills to some degree or another.
Most people think that good rapport skills are an innate gift of a select few. NLP takes a different stand and assumes that rapport is a skill, something that we learn and is learn-able.
One of the many dimensions of rapport is known as matching and mirroring. When we are in sync with someone else we tend to match their body postures and gestures.
You’ve probably seen couples in restaurants who are obviously very much in tune looking like mirror images. One person reaches for the glass, the other does the same, so quickly it looks like just one movement. One leans in the other follows. One leans back the other does the same. If you look closely you will probably see that they are even breathing in rhythm.
In this context the matching and mirroring comes from a deep rapport, which leads to matching and mirroring which leads to still deeper rapport. It’s a virtuous cycle.
You may also have noticed in restaurants couples who are obviously not getting along, their postures are radically different, they are having stilted conversation or none at all. Not a happy sight.
We take all this for granted, it’s natural or innate. However what would it be like if you developed this natural ability so that you could enhance rapport between yourself and your partner, family, students, patients, colleagues and all the other humans that you meet?
In NLP trainings we teach people how to develop their natural rapport abilities through specific exercises. If you can develop rapport intentionally then you can be much more influential.
Here are some examples of communication where I think it might be useful to have better rapport.
- Parents helping their children grow up and thrive
- Teachers helping their pupils to learn effectively
- Doctors being able to listen to and help their patients
- Partners, spouses, friends wanting to understand and be understood
- Therapists and counsellors being able to listen to and help their clients.
- Managers wanting to connect with their workers
What about all the people who want to get you to do the things you don’t want to do, won’t rapport training make them more manipulative?
First. Most people have pretty good BS detectors. A skilled manipulator may get away with things at first but after a while most people will smell a rat.
Second. If you have developed your rapport and calibration skills in an NLP training then you will know what is going on. Learning how to do rapport consciously makes you very aware of people who are using rapport ‘techniques’ on you.
On our trainings you learn how to gain rapport you also learn how to break it when you need to. There are lots of ways to sabotage people’s efforts to misuse these techniques.
Our next Introducing NLP training is on Saturday June 19th and Sunday June 20th in Newcastle. We introduce rapport skills on the first day with a lot of exercises and supervised practice. We also cover a lot of other skills and processes all for the princely sum of just £95.
To find out more click on this link, to book online click here.
Suggestions
When you are in a public space look around and notice who is in rapport (matching posture, gesture, tone of voice) and who is out of rapport. Rather than trying to analyse what their body language means just observe and notice the flow (or not) of the non-verbal interactions between the people.
When you are in a talking with somebody, notice something about their posture – crossed legs, head tilted, leaning forward or back, etc and very gently start to adopt parts of that posture as you are talking.
What happens does it help the flow of conversation or hinder it?
Tip: Be gradual about it, if you suddenly leap into the same posture they will experience it as mimicry rather than rapport (they probably wont appreciate you for that).
Photo courtesy of soupermanultra
