One way to define rapport is as a 'close and harmonious relationship in which two or more people understand each other's feelings and ideas, and can communicate well'. Now to some extent everyone knows how to build rapport; because you've done so with other people. You've built rapport with your friends, your family, and even with your working colleagues. So what is it that people traditionally do in order to build rapport? Well, the traditional view is to just be nice to someone, maybe a little complimentary, and then to find common experiences which you can share - maybe a shared interest in sports, or perhaps you went to the same university, or came from the same town. Let's have a look now at the 6 most common mistakes that people fall into when they try and build rapport with someone else.
Rapport Mistake Number 1 The very first thing that people do wrong is they try and be nice to people. Now, I'm not suggesting that you go out there and start being nasty to people or stop being nice. It's fine to be nice, but only to the extent that it doesn't break down your ability to share or communicate thoughts, ideas and feelings with someone else. The trouble with being nice is that sometimes people are nice at the expense of the real communication that needs to be happening, which actually then breaks down rapport. It's stops helping and starts becoming a barrier. Let's give you an example of a school teacher. A school teacher who wants to be nice to the pupils may let them get away with anything they are doing, and thereby, bit by bit, she starts losing respect, stops being able to present ideas in a way that students will listen and, at the end of the day, it starts going horribly wrong. The same thing can be true of a client. Let's say we have a lawyer talk to their client. There are some things the client needs to hear upfront which are not necessarily pleasant; which will not necessarily be nice. But if the lawyer does not have the courage to turn around and say, "Hey, this is how it is and you'd better sort something out", then he's doing his client a disservice, because he stops communicating fully. Now, everyone has actually experienced this when they talk to someone, and maybe you have friends yourself, that you've been kind of - I don't know -casually acquainted with for many years. It's almost like there's a social veneer that you can't get past. Why? Because you're too busy being polite, too busy trying to be nice, to actually get through to the real person; and to allow the other person to see the real you as well. So,
Rule Number 1 is... Be nice only to the extent that it's not interfering with the process of communicating feelings and ideas with the other person.
Rapport Mistake Number 2 Now the second mistake that people with typically make is that of trying too hard. The problem with trying too hard is very much related to being too nice to someone else. If you try to hard you sub-communicate - you send signals out -that you're desperate; you're desperate for the company, you're eager to please. Now, the problem with being desperate is very few people actually like to have desperate people hanging around them. Somehow it makes them feel obligated or under pressure. But, for whatever reason, it actually begins to shut down communications again. So, if you're trying too hard to establish rapport with someone else, the other thing that can happen is you activate what's called The Law of Reversed Effect. The Law of Reversed Effect says 'the harder you try to do something, the more likely it is you'll fail'; because you're consciously interfering with an unconscious process. So, when building rapport with someone else, the idea is to fall into this rhythm where rapport happens: to maintain a sense of, "these are the things that I need to do to make it happen", and then get out of the way to allow your unconscious mind to make these things actually occur.
Rapport Mistake Number 3 Another reason why trying too hard tends to put people off is related to the third common mistake that people make when trying to build rapport. And that's wanting something from someone else too much. The problem of wanting something too much is seen easily when you think back to a time when you walked into a store and you wanted to buy maybe a stereo or something. The salesman comes up and starts talking to you, but the thing is they get a little bit too pushy.
They want you to buy too much. They want you to like them too much. And because they want something from you; because they're pushing you too far down the process too quickly, you begin to back off. Now, the solution to this is something called 'fractionating rapport'. In fractionating rapport, what you're going to do is you're going to build a little rapport and then back off. Then you'll build a little bit more rapport, and back off, a little bit more, back off, a little bit more, and back off.
The Law of Fractionation is something that we'll look at a little more when we cover hypnotic principles. But basically, every time that you do something it's the equivalent of dipping your toe in a bucket of cold water. At first just the big toe goes in, then you might have all the toes, then you pull it back out again. Then you'll put the foot in; you'll pull it back out again. And every time that you come back to this experience, it's easier and easier to go deeper and deeper, because it seems familiar to you. So fractionating rapport is a technique where you build a little rapport, and you take it away again, so that the people are constantly in a comfort zone. And that comfort zone's always being stretched a little bit at a time. So, to sum up the first 3 most common mistakes that people make - and they're all interrelated - it's first of all 'Trying to be too nice', second of all 'Trying too hard to establish rapport', and third of all 'Wanting something too much from someone else' (becoming a little bit too pushy to either build rapport or get a certain result).
The solution to these 3 problems is very simple.
Rapport Mistake Number 4 The 4th most common mistake is a lack of genuine interest. The thing about 'interest' is that, when you feel an interest inside and your focus is actually on the ideas that someone else is presenting, your whole body language changes. You begin to sub-communicate, at a very subtle level, signals of interest; your pupil dilation will change, your level of focus will be changed, your movements will be different. And these are things that other people will read very carefully at the unconscious level and be influenced by. So if your own signals, which are going out, are saying "I'm bored, I'm disinterested, I don't want to know any more", well the other people will respond to those signals by shutting down, or getting annoyed, or just losing interest in the conversation themselves.
So there are two simple solutions to this problem.
The first solution is what a great therapist, called Carl Rogers, called 'having a high unconditional regard for the other person'. Now, no matter what you think of that person normally, whilst you're building rapport with that person you must, inside your mind, convince yourself completely and 100% that whatever the other person is saying is worthy of respect. Now I happen to think that that's a good way to view people anyway. But to have a high unconditional regard for someone else will help them to open up, because suddenly all the signals coming from you are saying, "Whatever you say, you will not be criticised, you will not be attacked", which makes them feel safe enough to begin to share the feelings and ideas that actually characterise rapport in the first place. Another, and slightly more obvious way of doing this is what's called to 'track back'.
Track Back is similar but different to 'active listening'.
In active listening you're told, "When you listen to what someone says, then repeat what they've said to you in different words so that they know that you've heard them". Now there's a big problem with active listening; and it's that language has a neurological effect on people. There's a difference between someone saying, "The baby was in my arms", to someone saying, "I was holding the infant". Whilst the information may be the same, the actual emotional tone is very different. It actually fires different parts of the neurology, and is understood differently on an emotional level.
So, if someone says, "Well, I was holding my baby in my arms", and then you reply [in very formal voice] "Well, so you were holding the infant", the problem is at that point the person feels that you've somehow misunderstood (because you've missed the emotional undertones of the conversation).
The solution is to 'track back' - to actually use the same words and the same tonalities that someone else has been using.
Well, let's give you an example. If I say to you, "Well, I was walking down to the shops and, you know, a person just jumped out at me and scared me"... A Track Back might track that same information and say, "Oh, so you were walking down to the shops, and then suddenly someone jumped out and they scared you."
Notice that I'm using the exact same language and reflecting it back on to them. This goes back to the idea of 'matching and mirroring' someone, but I'm doing it in a conversational style so that it fits the context of what I'm doing. Another way that you can actually employ a 'track back' frame is to say something like, "Oh, let me just make sure I've got this right. You want to do this." And then you repeat the exact same words back to them.
Rapport Mistake Number 5 The fifth most common mistake is playing the wrong role inside of a relationship.
Now, when two people relate to each other, their relative status will always be fluctuating. To some extent, someone will be a higher status, someone a lower status, and sometimes they'll be of equal status.
Now, when I talk about status, this is not a value judgment. Someone who's higher status does not necessarily mean that they are better people. It's a role that's being played.
For example, a teacher and a student: the teacher needs to have the higher status in order to be able to teach the student. The problem is that some people are inflexible, and they can only really relate to someone who is in a particular status.
So some people are maybe so frightened that someone will look down on them that they can only ever be in a high status role. So if you try and take your high status role from them, they'll start distrusting you or disliking you for it. So, to be flexible in your communication, sometimes you'll play the underdog, sometimes you'll play the equal, and sometimes you'll play the charismatic or authority figure that leads the way forward. Now, the trick is to help someone create more flexibility by perhaps starting at the level that they require, and then slowly changing it so that they need to adapt to you.
But remember, the 'pacing and leading' principle means you move only as quickly as the other person can keep track of what you're doing, and actually follow along.
Rapport Mistake Number 6 Now, the final mistake is something that very few people actually ever realise. This is the difference between what I call 'deep rapport' and 'wide rapport'. Deep rapport is what everyone tries to establish. They try and drill down to the depth of a shared experience.
Let's say that you and the person that you're talking to both like motorbikes. And you spend hours and hours and hours talking about motorbikes and motorbike conventions. Now you would think that that was a good thing; that that now you would have a good relationship going.
Well actually, believe it or not, you've actually just shot yourself in the foot. Let's take an example. Let's imagine that you had a great teacher at school - someone that you really got on well with. And you loved going to this person's lessons.
Now one day you're in the supermarket, shopping with your mother, or perhaps you're out with your friends, when this teacher - let's call him Mr. Smith - comes along and starts talking to you, but outside of a school environment. Maybe he's at a party and you're at the same party.
How do you feel?
Well, if you're like most people, you'll feel a little bit awkward talking to this teacher, maybe in the supermarket or at a party.
Why?
Because the rapport you have is contextualised; it only fits in one specific place. So, when you see the out of context, it somehow feels wrong, or unusual. This is a mistake that people make time and time again: The boss at work, the person working with clients.
The solution to this mistake is to create what I call Wide Rapport. In wide rapport, you actually give them many different experiences of you, in many different environments.
The way to create wide rapport is essentially one of two things. Either you meet them in lots of different locations, so that every location creates a new set of memories of you two interacting together. And that creates a wider set of contexts in which it's okay for you guys to interact.
Another way to create wide rapport is through your use of storytelling. The more stories that you tell about different types of topics/themes/ideas, the more they get a sense of your entire personality and actually build rapport with that.
So you don't get limited to just one track. You have all these different tracks. And after a while, when you've opened enough topics, the other person will spontaneously assume that they can talk to you about anything.
When we get to the storytelling, or hypnotic storytelling part of this course, we'll give you plenty of exercises and loads of ideas of how to actually tell different kinds of stories that will allow people to build rapport in different ways.
Hypnotic storytelling goes much further than just the ability to build rapport, but it's very, very important within this context as well.
So I hope you learned something valuable and essential to every hypnotist (classical or covert) so you can get better results with hypnosis.
