In the parts one and two I introduced the concepts of rapport and congruency. Today I will introduce you to the basic skills you will need to improve in order to build stronger rapport easily. You will learn what you must pay attention to as well as how body language, speech patterns, and tone of voice affect others.
Building relationships would be much simpler if each person we was exactly the same as the last and we could react to every person in exactly the same way. In reality, every person we meet will be different in some ways, even if the differences are subtle. It is these subtleties that we must learn to observe in order to improve our rapport building skills. What we observe about the people we are relating with is every bit as important as anything we can do ourselves because our observations will dictate the way in which we should interact with the person.
If you attempted to do the “homework” from parts 1 and 2, you have already begun to learn to observe certain aspects of the people you are conversing with. When you are in a conversation, always take time to note the posture, body language, vocal tone of the other person as well as the speed of their speech. Notice how fast or slow the person speaks. Notice the posture and position of the person you are speaking to. Specifically note the positions of hands and feet, the angle their body is at, and whether they are sitting or standing. Notice if the person’s attention is on you or if it is drifting to something else. Eventually you will be able to notice all of this transparently during every conversation you’re involved in, but for now you’ll want to slowly start paying attention to more and more so that you can continue to devote your attention to the interaction at hand. You probably already react to some of these “signals” unconsciously, but one begin to notice their significance, you will be able change your own non-verbal cues to control how you are being interpreted.
One very important signal that we all send is eye contact. You have most likely heard that you should always maintain eye contact while speaking, but you may not know why. Our eyes can say quite a bit during a conversation. For instance if you are speaking to a person and notice that she is often looking up at a clock, you can probably assume that she is either bored, or nervous about being late for something. If the a person were rolling their eyes, you could probably infer that he was annoyed by something. You may then be able to infer further what is annoying, or why the person is bored based on the conversation or other cues. For instance if the person appeared to be sweating more than normal, you might also consider that they may be nervous. When you are building rapport, you want to communicate that the other person has your attention. Maintain eye contact when they are speaking as much as you possibly can.
Another think to look for is the other person’s posture. If you mirror the same posture, you will find that the other person will be instantly more open to you. This happens because it creates an instant commonality between you and the other person that can be identified with. From here you can begin to make subtle changes to your posture that will affect the other person in the ways you would like to affect them. For instance if the person is in a stiff, nervous posture, you can slowly shift to a more relaxed posture, and they will likely follow and be more relaxed at the same time. Speech works in much the same way.
As with mirroring posture, you should also attempt to mirror speech volume, tone, and speed as best you can. If you do this, they may follow you as you shift them to the state you want them to be in whether it’s more confident state, or a more relaxed state. In most cases this means you will gradually make vocal changes in steps over time allowing time for the other person to follow in between. Combine your speech with eye contact and pattern matching and you will be much better at building rapport.
Now that you have a good idea of what it takes to build rapport I have one more “assignment” that will help you to notice how these techniques work. If you want to, before reading Part 4, I want you do a little experiment while you are talking to someone. Initially match the speed of the person’s speech. After you’ve said a few sentences to each other at that speed slow down slightly and then continue speaking at that rate. Do this a few times, and pay attention to the speed of the other person’s speech. Now, after speaking back and forth a bit more, speed the speech back up slowly, and notice the effect this has on the other person’s speech.
Be sure to come back soon because in part 5 I will begin to discuss the use of everything you’ve learned up to this point in various situations that you may find useful.
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