How to Gain Rapport and Quickly Connect with Others
© Tim Hallbom and Suzi Smith, with Keith Johnson
Have you ever seen geese flying south in formation for the winter with their movements synchronized with each other or deer carefully following their leader up the side of a mountain? As animals strive for synchrony in their world, research shows that even before birth human beings strive for synchrony also.
Newborns will move rhythmically to the tempo of their mothers’ voices and will quickly adapt to the cadence of other voices they hear. This synchrony appears to be an innate human trait and forms the foundation for rapport.
Highly effective therapists, coaches, managers, negotiators and other professional communicators were quickly able to build high trust relationships by matching the other person’s behavior and experience. Other words for matching are mirroring, pacing and getting in alignment with. We’ll use these words interchangeably on the rest of this chapter.
The degree to which you pace the behaviors of others is the degree to which you’ll get into rapport with them. There are a number of behaviors that gifted communicators tended to match systematically, including posture and gestures, voice tone, tempo and volume, the words that people use to describe sensory experience and the rate at which another breathes.
In fact, all of us tend to pace the behavior of others that we’re comfortable with when we are really connected with them. By bringing this phenomenon into conscious awareness and consciously matching the behaviors and experience of others, you can gain rapport with even those who have been difficult to deal with in the past or those who tend to be very different from you.
Matching occurs in a number of different ways. One obvious way is dress. How do you feel when you arrive at a party dressed in casual clothing and everyone else is wearing dressy clothing? You may not swear in church, but you might with a group of friends in loose conversation. Whole books have been written on how to match table manners so that everyone can feel that they comfortably know what to do in the presence of others.
One of the easiest ways to begin to gain rapport is to mirror posture. When you mirror posture you will also begin to pace other behaviors automatically. There is a Norman Rockwell illustration of a couple of New England women leaning over a picket fence, obviously sharing some very juicy information with each other. Each is a mirror image of the other. Or perhaps you’ve seen an older couple sitting somewhere in the same posture, showing similar movements and even sounding very similar as they speak. Pacing posture requires some sensory acuity. You need to notice how the person is sitting or standing. When sitting, which leg do they have crossed? Are they sitting back against the chair or nearer the front, leaning back? What angle is their head leaning, if it is leaning at all? In our experience it is comfortable and natural for most people to be mirrored.
That is, when you match them you want it to be as if they are looking at themselves in a mirror. For example, if their left leg is crossed, you cross your right leg in the same position. If their head is leaning to their left, lean yours to the right. Remember you don’t want to mimic the other person. If you are mirroring movement for movement they will become consciously aware of it and may be offended, so mirror subtly. You want to emulate another’s posture, not play monkey see, monkey do. Use their gestures when you are talking.
Be aware of your setting. Your office or work area may be set up in such a way as to make achieving rapport difficult and will limit your flexibility.
Once we visited a bank president to discuss providing some communication training to the staff, and we were seated in some very low, soft shares. The bank president was perched behind his huge desk in a very high, oversized office chair looking down on us, vulture-like. Needless to say, the interview was made much more difficult for both the banker and ourselves until we could dislodge him to another setting.
Be aware of your own behavior and avoid getting into postures that preclude the other person’s ability to mirror you. For example, if you’re a man wearing slacks and you have your legs crossed, ankle resting on the knee, it would be very difficult for a woman in a skirt to match you. If she does it may build rapport but may not be the kind she wants. If you’re communicating with a child or someone who is noticeably taller or shorter than you are, sit down to minimize the disparity. We once watched tall Virginia Sat ir (the communication wizard who developed family therapy) skillfully maneuver a short woman during a conversation in such a way that Virginia was able to step down two stairs to gain eye level. If I’m mirroring you and you have your left hand up, then I’ll put my right hand up so that it’s as if you are looking at a mirror image of yourself. If I’m matching you and you put your left hand up, then I’ll also put my left hand up so that it looks opposite.
Occasionally you’ll find people who are reversed and prefer that you match them exactly rather than mirror them. In those cases if the other person has the right leg crossed you want to cross your right leg when facing them. If you are mirroring someone and do not seem to be gaining rapport, try matching the behavior instead. You can determine whether you’ve achieved rapport by first mirroring and then shifting your own posture and leading the other person. If they shift with you, you have rapport. If not, go back to matching.
Spend some time observing people in public places. Notice the degree to which they’re matching or mirroring and listen for the quality of their communication. In our experience the deeper the rapport, the more synchronicity of behavior, including posture.
Think of lovers sitting together in a restaurant, both leaning on the table the same way, both picking up their glasses and drinking together with precision. Notice for yourself in interactions where there appears to be rapport how long it takes for one person to move and the other to follow. It generally won’t be more than a few seconds.
Spend a week actively pacing the postures of other people, very consciously and systematically. Every once in a while mismatch a posture and discover what happens to the quality of your experience with that person. At the end of a week or two you will have built a habit that you don’t have to consciously think about. Remember learning how to ride a bicycle, how difficult and complex it seemed to you the first time you tried it? But once you learned rarely do you have to pay attention to that set of skills.
Pacing another person’s posture is only one behavior you can match. Another behavior to pace is the tone, tempo and volume of speech. According to linguist John Grinder, matching tempo of voice is more powerful than matching posture because what we hear, at least in the American culture, tends to be less in conscious awareness than what we see, so the matching is rarely obvious to the other person.
Matching speech requires that you listen carefully to what the other person is giving you to respond to. Voice tones have a tendency to be high or low, loud or soft. Tempos can be fast or slow, with pauses or without pauses. First, think of what it’s like for you when you’re not matching another.
Have you ever spoken to someone who speaks at a much slower tempo of speech than you?
For most of us, when we speak with someone who speaks in a slower tempo, our tendency is to speed up, finish their sentences and make gestures for them to move on in an attempt to get them to talk faster. However, that usually makes them go even slower and will confuse you both. Typically the experience of the slow-speaking person is that the fast-speaking person is not concerned about them.
On the other hand, have you ever talked to someone who speaks real quickly, at a much faster rate than you? And have you noticed how difficult it is for you to communicate with and understand and get on the same wavelength with someone who is dramatically mismatching your speech that way?
Listen carefully to the other person, and then begin to alter your tempo of speech to match that of the other person. If their tempo is very different from yours it’s suggested that you move in gradual increments so that the change is not so obvious.
A good strategy for building the skill of matching others voice tone, tempo and volume is to begin practicing with the radio and TV. Some commentators are exquisite at matching others, and you might want to begin by observing these highly-effective communicators on the radio, in particular, and notice how well they’re matching the tone, tempo and volume of voice of the person calling in to gain rapport.
Matching in the way that we’ve been suggesting is an excellent way to gain rapport over the telephone while coaching when the voice on the other end of the phone is all you have to respond to.
We would like you to consider the ways that you already match the speech patterns of another person. Have you ever spent time in another part of the country where the accent was very different from yours, and after a while you began to notice you were speaking the same way the local people speak with the same kind of accent? Or think about the last two minutes of a close ballgame where your team is about to win and everybody is excited. Most everyone will be matching the tone and tempo of voice.
Or think about a couple of lovers over a candlelight dinner, both speaking slowly, in low tones with lots of air in their voice as they look each other in the eyes.
This kind of matching is already occurring in the world on a natural basis, and you’re already doing that under certain circumstances.
Matching another person’s rate of breathing may be the most powerful method for getting on another person’s wavelength. Donald Moine and John Herd in Modern Persuasion Strategies, a book describing NLP methods for sales, indicate that they video-taped top-performing salespeople in action and discovered many of them were naturally matching their customers’ breathing without knowing it. When they pointed this out the salespeople denied it, but soon became convinced of its utility after viewing the video tapes. When you breathe at the same rate as another person it produces an unconscious bond and, in fact, will force you, through your own physiology, into representing information in the same system as the other person, thereby altering your voice, tone and tempo and the words you choose to describe your experience.
To practice matching others’ breathing, note that it is easier as a rule to see the breathing of most people from slightly to the side as opposed to facing them directly. Watch the diaphragm area, the shoulders and the back just below the scapula. When someone is speaking, notice when they inhale. This is generally audible even on the telephone. If someone has a respiratory problem or tends to hold their breath, do not match their breathing with your breathing. Instead, you can employ crossover matching by moving your hand back and forth subtly as they breathe, or sway your body slightly, as did Milton Erickson, who was generally considered to be one of the most effective psychotherapists of the last century. As with the other behaviors we have identified to pace, after you have consciously matched breathing for a couple of weeks you will begin to discover that you are beginning to match naturally without having to think about it as you interact.
Earlier we mentioned that you could gain rapport by matching the specific sensory words that people use. People report out literally which representation system they’re more conscious of in the context that they are in by the words they select in their speech. These words are called predicates, and include verbs, adverbs, adjectives (process words.) For example, if someone is most aware of the pictures they are making they will use words such as look, see, view, image, picture, bright, fuzzy, perspective, and so on. If they’re most aware of sounds or words you will hear them use words like say, tell, sounds, hear, click, buzz, discuss, explain, and other words describing sounds or words of speech.
Those most aware of kinesthetic experience will use words like feel, touch, grasp; words having to do with temperature, such as hot, cool, lukewarm; motion words like jump, hop, push; and texture words like rough, smooth and hard.
People will, in fact, report to you exactly how they’re thinking. When you hear phrases like, I just can’t bring this idea into focus, people are literally making an internal picture that is not focused. When you hear a comment such as, Fred is a bright guy, the internal representation of Fred will be a bright picture.
Matching the predicates or process words another person uses is a powerful way to gain rapport. In fact, if you are not pacing the other person’s language you are not matching their reality and their understanding of the subject at hand. They will have to translate your words to make understanding of what you’re saying.
TIM HALLBOM:
Listen, Suzi, I get down there on the job and I keep telling myself I ought to know what to do, but nothing rings a bell. Could you re-explain to me what it is you want me to do?
SUZI SMITH:
Well look, Tim, I stood up there and I put some great big pictures on the board with just exactly how I wanted things to look when we all got finished here.
TIM HALLBOM:
None of that really clicked for me, you know? I guess I just have some questions. Maybe, you know, if you come back down with me down to the site and, you know, we could talk about what’s happening the moment it’s happening it would be real helpful.
SUZI SMITH:
Well, I tell you what. I designed some marvelous charts and graphs that will show you to the Nth detail exactly what I want the final product to look like.
TIM HALLBOM:
I still – it’s all Greek to me, you know? Can you just tell me in plain words what it is you want me to do?
SUZI SMITH:
You don’t have very good perspective about this, do you?
TIM HALLBOM:
You never listen to me.
SUZI SMITH:
You’re not seeing it from my point of view.
They may as well be speaking Chinese and Swedish. There is no real chance for full understanding as long as they’re attending to different ways of representing the issues being discussed.
TIM HALLBOM:
Married couples’ communication problems often reflect that similar mismatch. Imagine you are the counselor and this couple has come to you for help.
He: Look, you know, this isn’t what I was looking forward to when I got married and got into this relationship. She never – she never tries to focus in on what’s really important in our marriage. Look at her now. See, she’s not even looking at me when I’m talking. If you had any respect for me you would pay attention to me when I was talking.
She:
Respect? Look who is talking about respect. When was the last time that you gave me a pat on the back for all the nice things I do for you?
He:
Pat on the back????
She:
Yeah.
He:
Look, I come in the house, and I see all this stuff laying around. Here’s a pile, there’s a pile. It’s distracting. It’s confusing. You know –
She"
Stuff? What are you talking about? You know, people like to come to our house because it’s comfortable, and they feel like they can just kind of lay around and be comfortable at our house.
He:
I can’t see that at all. You know what else she does? She’s always trying to paw me in public.
She:
Paw you in public? I like to be close. Same way as what happens in bed all the time. I roll over and try to snuggle with you and give you a hug, and you say get away, you know, it’s too hot in here.
He:
I can’t even see the TV when you’re trying to –
KEITH JOHNSON:
Listen to the following sentences, and pay attention to the process words of each one. Is the person saying the sentence more aware of visual experience, auditory experience or kinesthetic experience? Each sentence will be followed by a pause, allowing you time to generate a sentence containing process words in the same representation system. Match the sentences first. Then rewind the tape and mismatch the sentences. Determine how either matching or mismatching affects your experience.
I need to get a new perspective on this.
I don’t like the tone of this at all.
Something tells me I should listen to her more carefully.
Everything is unclear. I want to see what’s in store for us.
Walk me through this problem so we can move ahead.
I’m only going to say this once to you.
The bond between that couple seems to be breaking up.
I just can’t see myself applying for that job.
I get an uneasy feeling when I think about him.
Clear this up for me. The picture just doesn’t make sense.
You would hear me talking more positively about our marriage if you would tell me you love me once in a while.
Things just don’t seem to click around here anymore.
I really feel lukewarm about that idea.
You’re feeling upset because the boss never listens to what you say.
Notice that in the last sentence there are two different systems represented. To gain rapport, match both of them in the sequence that the other person used them. In summary, rapport is the ability to get on someone else’s wavelength and develop a harmonious relationship regardless of context, and it’s dependent upon your ability to pace or mirror the other person’s behavior and experience. The specific behaviors identified to pace include:
The posture and gestures of the other person, again not mimicking the other person, but instead emulating their posture.
The tone, tempo and volume of voice of the person you are talking with. You will be misunderstood and distrusted in some way if your voice is radically different.
Matching the breathing rate of the other person will create effective rapport, and again, maybe the most powerful way to get on another person’s wavelength.
Listening for and using the predicates or process words the other person is using will help assure that understanding will occur.
How to become really effective at getting rapport with most anyone?
There’s an old story about a tourist in New York City who was attempting to find Carnegie Hall but became lost. Finally, he spotted a man carrying a violin case. Assuming a musician would know where Carnegie Hall is located, he stopped the man and asked, how can I get to Carnegie Hall? The violin-toting man responded, practice, man, practice. To effectively utilize the material on this tape requires practice. Fortunately, all of it can be practiced any time you’re with another person. Remember, when first learning concentrate on only one skill at a time. Soon you will be pacing without having to think about it consciously, and your interviewing skills will certainly approve.
