In our daily lives, whether we know it or not, we build rapport with the people we meet. What is meant by building rapport is building a relation of trust between yourself and another person or group of people. Successful customer service people are very adept at building rapport. The doctor you feel comfortable with and trust, or the clerk at the clothing store whose opinion you ask for. And on the other hand you have the people who, for some reason, are not as good at building rapport and solicit a feeling of distrust in you. For instance the salesman you feel is trying to scam you or the person you just met in the bar and is setting off alarm bells in your head.
As students at the Northwest Hypnosis Institute we’re learning how to successfully build rapport with other people using various techniques. These techniques have many different elements which we practiced in class with each other. The three basic elements involved being body language, voice and behavior, which are broken down into more specific areas.
Reading body language is something we do everyday. It’s how we know a co-worker is stressed out. We read their stiff posture and tense shoulders. When we meet people we read their body language too. If they have an open posture with their arms relaxed at their sides, we do the same to build rapport. By mimicking their open stance and appearing non-threatening, you’re encouraging them to remain calm and not go on the defensive. You’re building trust. People are comfortable around the familiar and by gently copying a person’s body language you are like them, and there for are familiar and able to be trusted. Like wise if you encounter a person who’s taken on a defensive posture with their arms crossed over their chest, you can help put them at ease by approaching them with an open and non-threatening posture which can relay trust and diffuse their apprehension.
Another technique hypnotherapists use to help build trust and rapport is through the use of their voice. By pitching the tone and volume of your voice as close as naturally possible to the client’s and matching their talking speed, you can also project familiarity resulting in their relaxing and trusting you. And like using your body language to put someone at ease, you can do the same with your voice. Keeping it gentle and non-aggressive, you can make someone feel safe and again, trust you.
Your behavior also contributes to your ability to build rapport with someone. If you show an interest in subjects someone else finds interesting, they will open up to you. Just like if you go to a sporting event, people who cheer for the same team will congregate together and feel at ease with one another since there is that commonality and shared interest. They feel accepted and therefore at ease.
While in class we broke off into groups of three to practice these rapport building skills. One person would say something and one person would mirror or mimic that person’s body language and voice while the third acted as coach. The coach would tell us how successful we were at mirroring the body language and voice and how we could improve. Then we would change rolls so each of us acted as speaker, mirror and coach. What we all discovered was that when you do mirror someone you have to be careful how you do it. If you’re too obvious about it, it can be creepy being the person mirrored. But if you’re subtle enough to get your actions past the conscious mind, you can be very successful at building rapport.
If you are interested in learning more about rapport, hypnotherapy & NLP -visit our Hypnotherapy School description page.
