Stop Trying To Get Into Rapport

On any NLP Practitioner training I've ever seen, students are taught how to get into rapport. Seriously, it's a total waste of time, and at worst, harmful to a normal working relationship.

We're a social species. Rapport is our default position. You don't have to do anything to get it.

You already know what rapport is. It's that thing you have with people you like, when you're on the same wavelength, see eye to eye and feel a real connection with them.

You can think of rapport as being a conduit for communication. Without it, it's very difficult to engage the processes of agreement and compliance, and you have to work harder to be understood. 

When you have rapport you can take a lot of shortcuts, such as asking a close friend to pass you “the thing”, and expecting that they’ll know you meant the TV remote control.

Let’s make a useful assumption: you already have rapport, so there’s nothing you need to do to create it. From the moment you walk into a room, you are already connected with the people in there. 

Some of them will be connected with the real you, some of them will be connected with their own mental models of what a trainer is like – their previous experience. And sometimes that previous experience will be helpful to you, and sometimes not, so there are certainly times when you don’t want to be in rapport with other people, so that you can avoid being drawn into their hallucinations.

If someone is reacting to you in an odd way before you have really started, the chances are they are reacting not to you but to their own expectation, so that’s a good time to stop and find out what is really going on.

As I said, we're a social species. Rapport is our default position, and while you don't have to do anything to get it, it is very useful to learn how to control it...

Want to know how? Join me for NLP Practitioner training in Spain in September 2015. 

And you can download my book NLP - Skills for Learning from Bookboon for FREE. Most of this post is an extract from that book.

Rapport

Watch two people, deep in conversation, and you will see a number of things happening. You'll see them touch their hair or pick up a cup at the same time. You'll see them laugh at the same time. You'll hear their conversation naturally ebb and flow, and you'll hear them talking at the same volume and pitch. It's as if they're in a bubble, separate to the rest of the world.

This is rapport.

Rapport isn't something you do - it's more like a measure of the quality of a relationship.

You can think of rapport as being a conduit for effective communication. In general, in most situations, it is more useful to have rapport than not. Most of the time, we get into and out of rapport with people unconsciously, so our beliefs and thoughts are revealed non-verbally, regardless of our efforts to hide our true feelings. Regardless of what people say, they will show you who and what they agree and disagree with.

When two people are in rapport, they are influencing each others' thoughts and feelings. When one feels angry, the other feels angry. When one feels relaxed, the other relaxes. When you're in rapport with other people, you are influencing the way that they feel - their state - and that in turn influences how they interpret and respond to their interaction with you.

In a therapeutic or counselling setting, rapport is vital to develop trust and open communication, yet the counsellor must always stay in control, otherwise the client's issues can easily transfer to the Practitioner.

One important thing to understand about rapport is that you can choose the people you want to get into rapport with. If you feel that a salesman is being a bit too persuasive, or that someone secretly disagrees with you, even though they say differently, then it's worth having a quick check of your own feelings and intuitions.

In almost all NLP training courses and corporate 'communication skills' programs, people are taught to develop rapport by 'matching' or 'mirroring' another person's posture and actions. There are certainly some interesting things you can learn from doing this, and in a counselling or coaching situation it can be very valuable. However, in other situations, this approach can be contrived and obvious and can do more harm than good. If you get on with someone, you'll be in rapport with them. If you're not in rapport, there's probably a reason for that and you should pay attention to what it is.

Don't waste time learning how to get rapport, because you're already good at that. Instead, learn how to manage rapport - far more valuable for you and your clients.