The #1 Thing About RAPPORT That You Must Know!

Hello everyone. Welcome to episode two. Today's video. We'll be talking about a very critical behavior called rapport. Would you call it behavior? Yeah. So I want you to picture a scenario, but before that I want you to hold this thought in your mind. Which one comes first, trust or rapport? So here's a scenario. Let's say that you want to meet an attractive girl at a bar. What is your strategy? So you walk up to the bar. What is the first thing you do? Questions. Why do we ask questions? Well, we want to find something that we common. And if we comment the, then we have rapport. But sometimes our conversation doesn't get very far so the commonality or the rapport dies down. So which one comes first? Rapport or trust? Peter, good to have you back.

Thank you.

It's a pleasure. So today is a very interesting topic.

Yes, it is, absolutely.

Tell me, what is rapport?

Rapport is the ability to get into somebody else's life sphere so that you understand what you what it is that motivates them, how that they operate and telegraph to them that you have that understanding. So that understanding means that you have a commonality. And I guess the quickest way of describing it is that people like people who are like them. And the operation on the word like is very, very important on that.

Exactly, exactly. Yeah. So why is that important?

Because it's creates a bridge for communication. In your example, there's a bridge for communication that needs to be established before you have the permission to ask the question, before you are allowed to ask the question with the trust that you might get a positive answer back. In any engagement, it is absolutely important that you have that bridge formed with people so that you have the permission to ask them or to engage with them with whatever that you're interacting with them at that time.

Okay. Often. Look, when I did nlp, many, many moons ago.

That's right.

One of the guys asked me, well, isn't rapport some form of manipulation?

Well, it's manipulation of self. And also it comes down to motivation, perhaps that your motivation in the bar is slightly different to the motivation that you might have when you're needing to create rapport. Because you need to convince a person for their own benefit to get past their wall of resistance so that you can actually engage with them and describe to them something or present them, something that will light up in them and say, oh my gosh, I really need that. Yes, I understand. Yeah, it's like I need petrol in my car about as much as I need this now.

Yes, yes. So can you just give us a high level view of what are the key elements of rapport?

Ah, well, it's a big study, but essentially it's language, voice, tone, it's also micro gestures, hand gestures, that sort of thing.

What he's mentioning is body language.

Body language? Yes, body language rapport means that we as the people who want to create rapport need to get out of our habitual patterns and move into the patterns of the person that we're trying to create the rapport with. That is a discipline, but it is also a learnable skill. And as for instance, if it's probably a bit funny, but if you are ringing somebody and the person answers on the other end of the phone going, hello, this is Bob and you go, hi, this is Peter and I'm about to do. You've immediately not created rapport by actually listening to a person and then measuring the pace and go, hi, this is Peter, I'm about to talk to you about so and so then all of a sudden you're telegraphing to that person that you are of their tribe, if you like.

Yes. You know, I received quite a few phone calls from, I won't mention which countries and they want to sell me something and there's such a lack of rapport. But actually what's, what's coming up more that I see now is on LinkedIn, for example, where you connect with a person and straight after you get a sales message, sales pitch, and they have no idea who you are, what business, what are your interests, what areas they could find, that's commonality or anything like that, straight away we want to do this and yeah, it's becoming quite offensive.

It is, yeah.

Any other examples of bad rapport?

Well, social media and also we do a lot of communication now with no visual cues. So whether you're looking at telephone, whether you're looking at LinkedIn, whether you're looking even at texting, I mean, we've all probably been in a situation where we've texted something to somebody and it's gone completely astray on the receiving end. Oh yes, that's because we've not actually created that rapport within the limited amount of communication that we have. So I mean, one of the things that telemarketers find very, very difficult is that one third of their communication capacity, which is visual, is no longer there for them. So they're now left with the language patterns and they're left with the inflections, how they can relate to a person just by voice. So yeah, that's interesting challenges.

Interesting challenges. Talking about challenges, how do you see it from a perspective of organization, especially like management and executives, how do they go about building rapport?

It's a conscious effort and I think rapport is an investment that creates a valuable return. Because as anybody within an organization, no matter what level you're at, we appreciate being quote, unquote gotten. I get you. And you're much more likely to open up and listen to a proposal by a manager or even by somebody who's a line manager under you, if you have that, gee, I really like this person. So I'm going to give them the time of day to listen to what they have to say. That in itself is a massive benefit to an organisation that can make that work.

Very true. I think most organizations are heavily discounting that idea of rapport. I think if you look at the levels of disengagement across the Western society, it's pretty. It's around 70% just to give you an idea. Which means basically people don't want to work and they're there just on a sort of check by check. And part of the problem that I've read and I've seen is that there's a lack of rapport.

Correct.

And there's a serious risk involved in that one.

Correct.

How do you see it manifesting? So, and I was going to add another Krishna Tova given with what's happening right now around the coronavirus and other situations, people or employees, people are highly tense.

Yes.

Anxious.

Correct.

How does rapport then manifest itself within the organization that you think?

One of the things that happens when people relate to each other on a positive basis is the. The anxiety level of that interaction goes down. So you're establishing a common base, an easy base for which to communicate. Once you've got that, it's kind of like clearing the lines of communication saying, okay, this is the wavelength we're speaking with. Like tuning your radio up and down into the wavelength that you want to talk to that then creates a lot more clarity. And clarity is probably the biggest feature of being able to create rapport so that you can speak clearly and with trust. With trust that somebody's going to listen to you.

Okay, so that you brought a very good topic there, which is the next point. Exactly. Now, so the early on I asked you, you know, which one comes first, trust or rapport?

Yeah, Peter, look, they are totally inbound. There is a difference. Rapport is something that you can learn, it is a skill. Trust is something that you earn incrementally. So a trust is a conscious flow of decisions. It's one after the other after the other. This was brought home to me early on in the piece by, I believe it was Jim Rohn who said that if you want to create trust with somebody who's never seen you before is you actually make and meet small commitments. The funny thing is it's small commitments that telegraph that you're going trustworthy for the commitments.

Correct? Yeah, correct, Correct. Okay, so what are some of the key takeaways for Rapport? How should organizations approach it?

I believe that there should be a rapport within those people, within the organization that allows them to create the kind of dialogue that you need to create. You need to be able to have a basis on which to have the hard and the good discussions. Many times you find that within organizations, everybody's happy at the Christmas party and then you don't see somebody for, you know, six months and they're a completely different human being. That kind of fracturing of perception leads to misunderstanding and sometimes internal antagonism from the people that are on the receiving end of that. People go, well, you know, you're just talking at me, not with me. That's the kind of problem that you can, that you can experience. I mean, we spend so much time saying we need to be good to the outside world, to whatever organization is with the so called client facing side of things. And you can see that these people are brilliant at that. And then they come back in and they're totally different people. So there is a respect inside of that as well too. So rapport is also respectful?

Very much so. Very much. Sometimes it can be taken for granted.

Correct, Correct.

With that, look, we've covered the, the basis of rapport. Peter does actually does a half a day training course specifically targeting businesses. That's correct, yep. Yeah.

So it's, it's a half day boot camp on Rapport and it will cover all of the grounds and give people some chances to actually model some of the behavior in class and see how we go.

Okay, so why do you think that's important for organizations to take you up? I mean, this is not a. Yeah, what is it for them? You know, how do you see that?

Organizations spend a lot of time investing in their people. So they do training, they do staff camps, they do all sorts of wonderful things. But investing in yourself so that you can reinvest that back into your, into your, into your people is probably more beneficial because everybody gets benefit out of that. The amount of input that you put within your community, which is your organization is directly proportional with the kind of output that that community creates for you.

Yeah. Excellent. We're going to have more details for Peter's course below, where you can reach him or reach me, and we can follow that up. Our next session, episode three, is going to be on something you just briefly mentioned called clarity.

Clarity.

So that's going to be interesting. So stay tuned. Episode three will be out. And now, if you haven't seen episode one, which is about behavior, I urge you to go and check it out. It's probably one of the most fundamentals. We'll call it the foundation.

Yes.

If you're building a house, you need to understand about behavior and why it could positively and negatively impact your business. And rapport comes pretty close to it. It's one of the pillars. So is clarity.

So is clarity. Absolutely.

Good. Again, if you've got any feedback, reach us. If you would like us to talk about a specific topic, let us know and we'll certainly entertain that idea. With that, I bid you, as one says in French, adieu.

Thank you.

Thanks, Peter.

Cheers.

Cheers.