(Nothing like a grim weather forecast to catch up on some emails and rewrite an article which I posted last year).
Business networking is only as strong as the people within it. As we are all resuming networking with gusto with the New Year, how do you create rapport? Why is creating rapport such a tricky affair? What makes you “like” or “dislike” the person you are interacting with?
Have you ever considered how different personal and business communication would be, if people knew intuitively how to be “in sync” with each other, or “join” a person in their views or “walk in their shoes” or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking?
Creating rapport is one of the one of the most important characteristics of unconscious human interaction. As developing good relationships with other business people depends on creating rapport, it is a useful skill to master. But it is not always easy to “connect” with other people.
So, what is rapport?
Rapport is a process of responsiveness, not necessarily "liking". What does this mean?
Rapport begins when a person gets the sense that he is being understood that he and the other person are speaking the same language. It does not mean that both parties have to agree. They can in fact disagree on the outcome of a situation and still be in “rapport”.
What is important is the process, how the exchange between the parties happens, trusting that the content of what is being communicated comes from the best intentions.
Think for a moment about the people in your life, at work or at home, whom you consider to be influential. This ability to influence you and others is based mostly on the trust given by those who believe they are “understanding”. True, a business deal cannot be sealed unless there is agreement. But you can only have agreement between parties when there is a mutual trust based on the belief that each party is being understood by each other.
Being understood can be a difficult process, as some elements of communication are within our conscious control such as speech and gestures, and some are less obvious, completely outside of our conscious awareness, yet very powerful.
These unconscious elements, such as the values you hold, the beliefs you have, your purpose in life, or your own “emotionally-laden” experiences, act like filters, which go on “inside” each of us all the time. It is common to be confused and find ourselves having to “go inside” to understand what is being said. This is this ability to “tune in” which allows you to share and receive a great deal of information rapidly without needing to fill in all the missing pieces. This self-exploration is a valuable process because it assists you in gaining more choices in both behavior and perception, hence expanding the limits on how you feel and how you are understood.
So, how do you create rapport?
Creating rapport and having the ability to elicit the belief that you understand is not a lottery. There are a number of techniques in Neuro Linguistic Programming, you can explore to establish consistency in building rapport. Beneficial and relatively easy to integrate are learning how to match someone’s body language (ie posture, gesture and so forth); maintaining eye contact, and matching breathing rhythm.
The theory is that effective communication is an integrated process. Communication is 7% words, 38% tonality and 55% physiology. The words you use are important, of course, but the way you use your posture, your gestures, your facial expression when you speak, matter greatly. You may feel that the person you are talking to, may not "like you” or may not “like” the words in your sentences or the tone of your voice whilst in reality, this person may be "responding" to your physiology, to the frowning of your eyebrows, or the lack of expression in your face.
As always, the best way to test the theory, it is to put it into practice! Experiment by changing the tonality of your voice or your physiology and note the difference in the results you get or the experiences you have. Change the tonality of your voice by being more conscious of its volume (loudness), its speed (tempo) as well as its tone (pitch).
The thing to remember is when you talk to someone, the desired outcome to effective communication is to be able to establish rapport with the person you are talking to. It's not always easy to “connect” with other people, but creating rapport is a useful skill to master -- for your personal life as well as for your professional one. It starts with recognizing that each person is different, and by responding to these differences with greater awareness.