"My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me."
- Winston Churchill

Communication Skillbuilding Module 254:
Rapport Building for Fun and Profit

When it comes to interpersonal communication, how do we get more of what we do want, and less of what we do not want? If you believe that investing a few minutes reading an article with some tips and resources relating to rapport building would benefit you, this article may be just what you need.

As professional communicators, whether we are coaches, facilitators, consultants or trainers, much of what we do consists of establishing and maintaining rapport with our clients, colleagues, friends and other relationships. Enhancing our rapport building skills makes sense interpersonally. It is also simply a solid business skill. Without the ability to establish and build rapport masterfully, your success in business and in your personal relationships will be very limited.

In this article, you will become familar with the art and science of building rapport. You will be invited to practice what you are being reminded of here, and you'll enjoy additional resources for further study and skill building.

What is Rapport?
Rapport is the presence of agreement or alignment. This can exist intrapersonally or interpersonally, and can easily lead to impressive outcomes. None of us are born with powerful rapport building skills, these are learned, and you can mater them, leading you to an extraordinary life.

In Jerry Richardson's book, The Magic of Rapport (published by Meta Publications and available at Amazon.com) you will be reminded of the "secret" of establishing and maintaining rapport...pacing.

What is Pacing?
Pacing, a practice we have engaged in for many thousands of years, was developed to an art form by a famous medical hypnotist, Milton Erickson. Defined by author Jerry Richardson, pacing means meeting the other person where he or she is, reflecting what he or she knows or assumes to be true, or matching some part of his or her ongoing experience.

One easy thing to do is to find out what is going on for the other person. What is going on in that busy mind of theirs? What are the priorities? How can you connect right now? What do they need? What would make their day? How can you be there for them?

Pacing involves looking for ways to connect with them. Nonverbal communication is 70% to 80% of all communication. Are you making eye contact? What is your body and mind doing to connect with theirs? What is your body language saying? What is your self-talk saying? What are your voice tones suggesting? Are you matching this person's/group's style in body and soul?

Calibration
Another thing to think about is calibration. Continuously checking in with what you are doing and saying, and who you are being, and asking yourself, "how's it going?", "what is working and what needs to change?" It really is a lot of work to really connect with someone. It is always worth the effort, even if it's just for the sake of practicing your skill.

Sometimes you'll feel rapport slipping away, regardless of what you are doing. At times like this, STOP whatever you are doing and try something else. Ask checking questions to determine where you are with this person or group, so you can get the information you need to recalibrate.

Practice Practice Practice
Establishing and maintaining rapport is a process that is learned through continual practice. Start where you are. Take inventory. What are you doing that works? What are your challenges? Who will coach you? What will you work on next? When will you practice? How will you know you're improving? How will you reward yourself for your accomplishments?

You are hereby challenged to make a commitment to work on building rapport with everyone, every day. This means you get to practice every minute. If you really want to get powerful with this, make a commitment right now to be conscious of how well you are establishing and maintaining rapport every minute, in every situation. Sure, you'll fall short of perfection. That's life. You can restart your commitment anytime, with anyone, for any reason. When something isn't working the way you want it to, when a situation isn't working out just right, ask yourself what you can do to build rapport, and get to it.

If you take up this challenge wholeheartedly, be prepared to be amazed as even your wildest dreams become reality.

For Further Reading
If you would enjoy learning about, practicing and developing your rapport building skills, consider picking up a book on NLP. One specific resource you may want to consider include:
The Magic of Rapport, a book written by Jerry Richardson.

Links to relevant articles
Here is an article describing research relating to three women who consistently demonstrate the ability to establish credibility and rapport with clients. The common thread in all of the women studied is their advanced skill with neurolinguistic programming (NLP) technology. If you are very serious about developing your interpersonal skills, you'll want to learn more about NLP.

Here's another article on rapport, which mentions NLP.

What is NLP?
NLP is a technology explaining how one becomes masterful at anything. Passionately and persistently applying the technology of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) will allow you to do whatever you want to do masterfully.
There are many resources relating to NLP on the web.
Here is a page with links to some of these resources.