Today I'm going to talk about how to build rapport. As you may recall, rapport is about "joining" another person's model of the world - respecting that their model is different and aligning with it by minimizing the differences. Rapport skills offer benefits far beyond your professional or work life. They may affect goals you set, especially those involving other people. 

The secret lies in matching (taking the same position as the other person) and mirroring (position as if looking in the mirror). People who get on well together tend to adopt the same body posture when communicating. Look at people locked in conversation and you will often see their silhouettes mirroring each other. After many years of marriage, some couples often almost seem to look alike. 

As well as overall posture, people tend to use similar gestures and mannerisms. This happens completely naturally and we hardly ever notice it. As soon as rapport is established we are more interested in the person or topic of discussion rather than any external physiology.

To begin learning how to match and mirror, take the time to watch other people interact. Watch children play, observe in restaurants, meetings and parties. Anytime you are near people who are interacting, notice how much mirroring is going on. Also, notice the quality of interaction that occurs when mirroring is absent.

After a short period of time in observer's position, you will know that people instinctively mirror each other. So to achieve specific outcomes you can start to do it deliberately. Start by mirroring just one aspect of person's behaviour while talking to them - like body position or gesture. When it becomes easy, add another one, like their voice tempo, then another and another, until you find that you are mirroring even without thinking about it. 

One word of warning though: always remember the importance of subtlety and respect. Don't abruptly change your posture or voice, or mechanically copy gestures. Make any change gradually and as far as possibly unnoticeably. Avoid attracting the other person's attention by your body language, but rather help them to achieve rapport unconsciously. 

When you are in rapport with an other person he or she feels safe with you, because they consider you to be just like them. And by mirroring it is possible to disagree with content part of your conversation and still remain in complete rapport.

Though mirroring might feel awkward at first, its value in achieving and maintaining rapport makes it worth doing whatever is necessary to become skilled. Although it requires an effort to learn how to do it effectively, with persistence and perseverance it won't take you long to see your communication skills and sale closure rates improve dramatically!

Elena Stern - NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Practitioner.

If you’d like to learn more on how to apply these strategies - go here now.

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