NLP is very commonly associated with rapport building techniques. Well, let’s get some things right – rapport building techiniques were modelled in the therapeutic arena, but can be easily mapped across to other areas in life.
There are several areas to pay attention to. Rapport building is really a process of creating similarity. So, remember this mantra: increase similarities, reduce differences. To test if someone is in rapport with you, you simply need to make yourself slightly different (e.g. change your posture) and you will realize that others are actually “following” you.
The Law Of Similarity is actually the main reason behind this. If you didn’t realize, our body is controlled by the same regions in the brain. If we carried similar postures, we would experience similar feelings and possibly even see similar mental images.
We can create similarity in the following areas:
- Posture
- Facial expression
- Muscular tension
- Gestures
- Lower lip size
- Facial blush
- Eye movements
- Tone of voice
- vocal Inflectional patterns
- Predicate patterns (sensory language)
Actually, each of these has a specific training approach to it. We all have representational systems (visual, auditory, kinesthetic) and we tend to interpret the world through our senses. Hence, we need to develop proper calibration skills in order to be better at observing people in order to build similarity in body language, tone of voice and the words we use.
