Rapport
Rapport is the ability to connect with other people in a way that creates trust and understanding. This is the ability to look through the other person eyes and talk in the same "language". Or in other words, get "in sync" with the person.
You don't have to agree or like the way the point of view of the other person, but you can make him understand you. This makes any angel of communication better.
Good communication depends on our ability to create and maintain Rapport. In a surprising way, we make business and financial decisions based on rapport and not logic as we would like to think. There's a higher chance we will buy, agree or support someone if we have a rapport with him. I'm sure you knew that already if you worked in sales.
Similarities
People like people who are like themselves, or who are like how they would like to be, they don't like people who are not like themselves!
Is there a person you like? Is he similar to you in some way?
Is there a person you don't like? How similar is he to you?
We draw ourselves more to people with similar style, with a similar taste, who talks like us, who think like us, who behave like us and of cause with a similar body language!
So, how does it help us? How do we build rapport?
Mirroring and Matching
Now that we know that similarity creates rapport, but what can we do with that information?
Mirroring and Matching is kind of self-explanatory, we "copy" the behavior of the person we interact with. I like to think of it as a dance, we move in accordance with the steps of the person in front of us. This dance allows us to understand the behavior of the other person and see the world through their eyes. The point here is to decrease differences between us in an unconscious way.
We can "dance" to every behavior. If the other person realizes that you are moving according to him it becomes copying. If you do it too clearly it will ruin the attempt to get close. A good matching is done unconsciously.
Once there is rapport you can influence the other person behavior. If you want to check if such matching occurred you can make a movement and see if the other person is following you. For example, you can scratch your nose and see if he does the same.
What can we mirror and match?
Verbal
You can match your tone of voice, volume and the wording of the other person. If someone talks slowly you can slow down too, If they talk loud you can match the volume.
Speaking Patterns
Matching the speaking patterns of a person is one of the most powerful of them all in my opinion. You match the key words and the descriptive words and they will feel like you feel them and understand. You have to listen to the key words, for example, if a person says "Bro" a lot, you can say it as well sometimes.
Body Language
Maybe the easiest of them all, you just match your body language (or part of it) to the state of the person. Make the same gestures, sit or stand in a similar way and have a wanted proximity (see how the person is reacting to the proximity).
Don't match his body language all the way! and don't match extremely uncommon gestures! They will think you copy them.
Breathing
Be attentive to the breathing rate of the other, if they breathe deep or not, slow or fast. This is not a good option if the person in front of you has breathing problems.
Check This
To summarize this I choose this Tonny Robbins video. The information he provided helped me a lot in the writing of this article!
What is NLP?
NLP Presuppositions
Breaking Down Reality
🙂Thank you for reading!🙂
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Glad to see quality NLP articles here.
Recently I finished my Master Practioner course .
I am particularly interested in business protocols.
As for rapport you can build it with almost anything. The difficult yet the most powerful way is breath.
True, for that one you need some practice. Thanks for the comment :)
Thanks for sharing the communication skills here.... Vary informative post....
Thank you :)
You are most welcome bro....
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I found myself asking recently; is using NLP and similar modalities with people who don't know it/of it ethical and does it infringe on free-will... i.e. how do you use it without being manipulative?... Wondering your thoughts... Also thought I already followed you before, but deffo am now...
When you try to convince anyone about anything and even when you are just talking you are using persuasive techniques whether you like it or not. You are doing it in this comment :), are you doing anything wrong? Is it wrong to be better at it? Is it wrong to use it in benefit of others like Tonny Robbins or Milton?
There is 100% nothing wrong with being better in communication, I would recommend anyone to get into the subject, it's crucial in this world, at the end the people who lack social skills hurt themselves mentally... I was one of them.
We can lie to ourselves that we never try to convince anyone to do anything and we never argue for our ideas beliefs... we are doing it... right now :)
Have a good day my brother.
Well said... agree totally...
I'm happy we see eye to eye now 🙂
still there is the dark side on it - with greater power comes greater responsibility...
It is one thing to be able to take control the other thing is, to recognize when one should not. Basicly because limiting the others free will.
So I mostly agree, and I've fallen into the trap myself to not dare to take control to communicate deeply into the other person but more outwards of me, because of the hope we will synchronize on objectivity. ^^
Still even knowing I hurt myself, it is not completely wrong.
As in Everything the most benefit is to recognize the polarity - explore both poles, and then train the dance to turn from one into the other as it's most fitting to the current situation.
Free will is an illusion... everything happened, happened through pre-existing conditions. If you want to be any kind of Leader, Spokesman, Salesman, Therapist, Social worker, Teacher.... almost anything, you are going to influence people... and you better do it good!
You are handling fire, It can burn your house and hurt everyone around you, but it can also cook food for your family.
Yes agree, aaand exactly - illusion not delusion.
As same as the fire example I would directly instanciate the Example on general Illusions.
There exists the situation where one may cripple the other people's illusions which are responsible for a significant part of their further development. Or like some most entertaining movies create weird illusions about love and how things work which cannot be kept in real life and might have them then people "misadjusted" for the rest of their life. In this way also Art has this same kind of responsibility.
As one may oppose a version where we achieve cooperation in our illusion to help us mutually strenghen our most helpful ones.
And for the article, just the salesmen attitude is giving it some slight bad taste.
so true
I have had the same questions @darcturian
I turned to NLP to help me hack my own self out of self-imposed limitations and then started also recognizing how many people turn to NLP to essentially "hack" others to do what they want.
@paps I agree with you that learning to improve communication with others is a merit-worthy reason to learn about NLP.
I suppose it's the INTENT that's important... I personally use such techniques to get across the genuine me in situations... but I respect free-will... so if I said here, check out my latest post on beliefs here ... I'm not manipulating you to do so... but I'd be grateful if you gave it a read... my intent is good, although subconsciously I may using some sort of magick ;)
I agree with what you said. I also use techniques for improved communication with others.
I'll give your post a look. (But only because I think you are cool and make good points. hahaha)
@orginalworks
My favourite part of NLP is the blank looks I get from people when I talk about how amazing it is ;)
Totaly! people have to try it themselves in order to feel how well it works!
Ty for comment :D
NLP is like a deep wide ravine , you never really get to explore it all as the deeper you go the deeper and wider it gets , it's really a valid science in it's own right
One of my ambitions is to really make scientific research on NLP!
Yes! And by doing these things also allows the other people to become more relaxed and at ease, especially when the conversation is on the stronger side. I've had to learn to control my tone as it used to change dramatically when I assumed someone would automatically know the answer to the question they asked me. Well, if they knew they wouldn't have asked in the first place and why would my tone change to partial irritation? So I changed it.
Good! It's all about change and trying new things, see what works and what doesn't, see how the world reflects back to our actions ^^
Thank you for the comment!
Took me right back to my hypnosis sessions a few years back.
:D
It's all based on Milton Erickson's work, a famous hypnotist!
Thank you for the comment :)
Tried this article from my phone, and I'm very happy to say, your article looked excellent on mobile. I realized I do a lot of this stuff already, but I'll take more note of the speech patterns I have with people too.
Most of the stuff written, we do and we always did unconsciously!
Good to know it works well on phone ^^
Thank you for comment :)
Great information >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Thanks For Sharing........................
Keep It Up:)
Thank you!
cool long post! nice!
Done
great content! and thanks again for following!
My pleasure! thank you ^^
You make sense. upvoted and followed you. do the return. thanks
Great stuff and as I have mentioned before Anthony Robbins is my idol.
Thank you!
Nice post. Upvoted.
Great article!!!
Incredible post @paps! I'm no doubt following now! Thanks for the comment on my recent post as well!
I have a friend that let me borrow his book "Frogs into Princes" by Richard Bandler back in April of this year, and I spent a good month pouring over the information on NLP from that one source. This post was an excellent refresher on the forms of "rapport." I will be watching for more installments of this type!
Thank you so much!
Already posted new post and another one coming soon :)
The last one is on types of thinkers (visual, auditory and kino), might be another good refresher ^^
Thank you for following and commenting again!