rapport

When building a rapport with other people there are a number of mistakes that can be damaging to the developing relationship.  Three of the most common mistakes made when building rapport are

1. trying too hard

2. being too nice and

3. wanting something too much. 

All of these rapport-building misakes are easily remedied.  The key is being able to recognize the mistake, know the solution, and implement it!

When refining the skill of building rapport the first of three detrimental mistakes you can make is to show a lack of genuine interest.  This is shown through signals given off by body language.

When you are focused and genuinely interested in what another person is saying your body responds in ways others pick up on a subconscious level.  These signals range from a change in body language and pupil dilation to your actual focusing signals. 

If you are bored or showing disinterest people will often respond by turning off.  They may show you that they are annoyed with you or simply lose interest as well.  Two people having a conversation where neither is interested will damage rapport to say the least.

There are two solutions to this first problem. 

One is the idea of ‘tracking back’.  Track back is similar to active listening.  In track back you repeat the same words back to the speaker, in the same language they used.  This shows you are interested, keeps your mind on track and clarifies what is being discussed.

You can also apply a track back frame in this skill.  This is simply a set of words that frame the exact phrase you are repeating back.  “So what you’re saying is…”

Active listening is different in that you repeat back what the speaker has said using your own words.  The dilemma with this is that when you change the words and language you will often change the emotional meaning and tone of the words. 

All language has a neurological effect on people and when you change the emotional meaning of a phrase you can accidentally change the entire meaning.   If you change or lose the meaning of what your speaker is saying it may appear that you weren’t listening at all.  Again creating the idea that you are disinterested in your speaker’s thoughts and ideas.

The other solution to this problem is to take the advice of Carl Rogers.  Rogers was a great psychologist in the early 1900’s.  Carl Rogers said that you should always have a high regard for the other person. 

No matter what you think of them under other circumstances, if you are trying to build a lasting rapport you must find a way to convince yourself 100% what they are saying is worthy of respect.

When you accomplish this you will accomplish the task of opening up your speaker.  You are saying with your body and subconscious signals that they will not be criticized or attacked; you are in a safe place.  In order to develop rapport your subject needs to feel safe in order to share feelings and ideas with you.

The next horrible mistake you can make while trying to build rapport is to play the wrong role within a relationship.  When two people are building rapport their relationship can fluctuate.

There are three different roles you can take on in every relationship you are creating.

 These consist of a high status, low status and equal status.  This has nothing to do with your annual income it is merely a place within a relationship.  For example an instructor usually has the high status in interaction with a student, and the student has the lower status.

Now it seems that status would naturally fall into place within conversation, right?  The problem with this is that there are people who are unable to take on different status themselves.  They need to be led into a new status. 

If you are dealing with a person who only likes to be in a high status and you attempt to take away their role for yourself they will not be comfortable.  In fact this will usually result in them disliking you and distrusting you.

You must learn to be a flexible communicator.  If you have the ability to take on whatever status is necessary you will be able to open communication with anyone and start a rapport.  Once you have done this you can slowly change your levels as they follow your lead and adapt to you.

Keep in mind the ‘pacing and leading’ principal here.  You can only travel through the different status roles as quickly as your subject will comfortably follow.

The final vital mistake you can make in your rapport building is to neglect a wide rapport and build only a deep rapport.  A deep rapport is when you base your entire interaction with a person on one subject, interest or environment.  This type of rapport will get you deep in that area alone quickly. 

It is in your better interest to have a wide rapport so people can relate to you on many different levels.  A wide rapport gives a person many different experiences of you in many different environments, interests and subjects.

This is important as it does not limit you.  Your subject can feel comfortable talking with you in many places about many different ideas, feelings and thoughts.

There are two ways to create wide rapport. 

One is to meet in different locations to conduct your interactions.  This could be enjoyable but time consuming.  The other is to develop wide rapport through story telling.

Story telling offers you an endless amount of places, topics, themes and ideas you can open your subject up to.  The more sense of your complete personality they have the more comfortable they will be in building rapport.

As you continue to talk about different topics your subject will eventually be willing to open up to you about anything.  There are many different techniques and uses for story telling that you will learn throughout your hypnosis training.

Now that you are aware of the common mistakes and pitfalls of building rapport you can use the simple solutions provided to refine your skills.  Always keep in mind that the better your rapport building skills the better you will be in the act of hypnosis. 

Now go forth and build elegant and beautiful rapport with everyone you know!

Building rapport is integral to becoming a master hypnotist and powerful persuader. As you improve your rapport skills, you will find that your ability to bring people under your spell becomes stronger, and your powers of influence grow. As such, it is important to avoid common mistakes made building rapport.

The ability to have great rapport with your subjects is one of the first tools you will need to exert influence and control.  Common mistakes made in this area are hard to identify as ‘mistakes’ unless you are aware of what they are.

Common Rapport-Building Mistake #1

The first most common mistake made is simply trying to be too nice.  Of course you should be nice to people.  But there is a point in time in certain relationships when the line must be drawn. 

In order to develop a deep rapport with people you need to have full communication.  This means that everything that needs to be said must be said, even if it is unpleasant.  Not having full communication can disable you from sharing important thoughts, ideas and feelings.

The basic rule to follow here is to be nice but not at the expense of real communication.  Say what needs to be said.  If you do not the rapport will break down and a barrier will start to go up. 

Most people have experienced one end or the other of trying to be too nice.  One example is we are often too busy with politeness to show our true selves. 

The other end of the spectrum is we encounter people who are trying too hard to be nice to us.  Either way you look at it, a wall is constructed and these people remain casual acquaintances.  We often have the same exact conversations with these people and never truly build a lasting rapport with them because there is no real communication happening.

Common Rapport-Building Mistake #2

The second mistake that is often made when attempting to build rapport is trying too hard.  Yes this is closely related to the first mistake.  When we try too hard we send signals of desperation.  It shows that we are too eager to please or desperate for company.

No one likes to be surrounded with desperate people.  The air of desperation often causes those around it to feel obligated or under a lot of pressure.  Both of these feelings can completely shut down communication.

Trying too hard is a mistake that can lead to the “Law of Reversed Effect”.  The “Law of Reversed Effect” means the harder you try, the more likely you will fail.  This is because you are actually interfering with the unconscious process.

When you try too hard you are not falling into a gentle rhythm where rapport is produced you are trying to force a relationship that is not ready yet.  Maintaining a sense of what needs to happen to create rapport is essential to your success.

 Once you recognize what needs to happen you should let your unconscious take over and implement the steps itself.  ‘Instant rapport technique’ will help with this later in another article.

Common Rapport-Building Mistake #3

The third mistake that is common in hypnosis is to want something from someone too much.  This mistake is again closely related to the first two mistakes. 

When we want something too much we often become pushy and overwhelming, especially so to the subconscious.  Once an individual has pushed too much their counterpart will back off or become disinterested.  Salesmen encounter this often. 

There is a solution for this.  ‘Fractionating rapport’ will help you to pace yourself in the amount of intimacy you seek.  In fractionation you work on building a little rapport and then leave it alone for a while.  Let the subject come and re-engage you.  Each time you repeat the process you will be digging deeper and deeper into a comfort zone and building a strong rapport with the person.

This technique keep people in their comfort zones, and you are only stretching that zone a little each time you go through the motions.  Soon conversation, give and take, push and pull will become a natural and familiar habit.

Being too nice to people, trying too hard and wanting something too much, all have simple solutions to help you become successful.

If you are being too nice to your subjects, stop and remember there is a point at which you must stop being nice to save the rapport.

If you are trying too hard with your subjects implement the ‘instant rapport technique’.  This will allow the unconscious to send the normal rapport signals to you through your subject.

And if you want something too much, stop doing it and use fractionation.  Soon over a small amount of time you will have built many steps to great rapport.

Being aware of these three common mistakes in building rapport will help you to not only avoid them but to improve you hypnosis skills further.

In the art of hypnosis, building rapport is a highly valuable tool. When you learn hypnosis you need to really focus on this skill to create the best rapport possible with your subjects. This will help you on your way to becoming a great hypnotist.

Understand what makes up a good rapport between two people and this will help you to create the type of deepened relationships you require as an effective hypnotist. Rapport will build trust and comfort between you and the recipient of your persuasion techniques.

What is Rapport?

Put simply, rapport is…

“the close relationship that you will develop with your subjects.”

It is a harmonious relationship including two or more people that understand one another’s feelings and ideas. Rapport also includes the important skill to be able to communicate those feelings and ideas thoroughly.

You already know how to build rapport

A fact about rapport is everyone knows how to develop rapport in a traditional sense. As long as you live outside of a cave, you do it daily.

You have a rapport with your co-workers, clients, friends and family. Those rapports may differ; in fact they should be different as the relationships with each are different. These rapports are the basis for the comfort you feel in interacting with these people on a regular basis.

Traditionally you build rapport with others by finding common interests, being nice, complimenting another as well as the similar experiences you share. These are all good ways to develop rapport on a normal basis.

Knowing how rapport works will help you in nearly every rapport building situation. Many do not understand how rapport works and use traditional rapport building means during inappropriate times. This can cause the relationship to backfire and sometimes fail completely.

When you are looking for rapport in any situation it is paramount that you remember that other people enjoy being around people like themselves.

The idea of experiencing a similar situation as another really works here. As this creates a connection on a deeper level, experiences are important to people. They are what make up our lives, a series of experiences linked together.

This creates a safe environment for most individuals to open up within.

To be able to create a safe and comfortable feeling for your subject is fundamental. After you have successfully started the rapport in this way the quicker you will be able to dig deeper into the relationship. This technique will make the relationship stronger and more trusting.

However, developing a rapport in hypnosis is anything but traditional.

Here you are looking to achieve a deeper relationship much quicker than developing a normal rapport with an acquaintance.

Refining the development of traditional rapport can make this a valuable and powerful skill for your practice in hypnosis. Fractionating, wide rapport, story telling and ‘matching and mirroring are ways to build rapport with in conversational hypnosis.

Fractionate rapport helps your subject work to keep the rapport going. In this skill you give your attention full to the subject. Then take it away, get distracted.

If the person tries to re-engage you, you have successfully founded the beginnings of a rapport. Then you start the process over again. Each time you give your complete focus the person will develop a deeper trust and comfort with you.

Another way to strengthen rapport is through wide rapport.

Wide rapport is when you offer a subject many different experiences of you in different environments. This can be done literally by going to different locations to see one another. It can also be accomplished through story telling.

Story telling

Story telling is a great way to build rapport with someone. Through the telling of stories you can create many different realities in which your subject becomes comfortable interacting with you. This builds trust and allows them to open up their mind to you more quickly. You can use story telling to develop a wide rapport with each person you meet.

Another way to improve rapport is to know how to use Matching and Mirroring. This is a technique that when done correctly, will help your subject feel more comfortable very quickly.

Matching and Mirroring is when you mimic the actions, body language, hand gestures and signals to create an unconscious connection with another person. This needs to happen on an unconscious level for it to work.

Once a person realizes on a conscious level that you are mirroring them it can cause them to feel annoyed and uncomfortable around you. They may even feel that you are making fun of them. This is not a good way to build rapport and can be damaging.

On the other hand if you are successful in matching and mirroring, and your subject is unaware on a conscious level that you are mimicking them it can build a very strong connection with the person quite quickly.

Remember this technique works only when it is unconsciously perceived, outside normal awareness.

See how Derren Brown uses this technique to take people’s wallets. (I do not condone doing this for real.)…

Matching and mirroring studies have shown that when the participants included in the study did not recognize the imitation a strong rapport was created. Those who discovered they were being mimicked were less persuaded by the entire presentation, and the rapport was damaged. So be careful!

The key here is to learn to match and mirror unconsciously. If you do this you will be more likely to go undiscovered by the other person you are interacting with.

Matching and mirroring is a powerful technique for building rapport and therefore a powerful technique in improving your hypnosis. However, it does have limitations and you should have other means for developing rapport as well.

Hypnosis is a very different form of communication. It requires different techniques to develop a substantial rapport that the relationship can firmly stand on. Building the rapport with your subject through fractionating, wide rapport, story telling and matching and mirroring is fundamental.