How will you structure the meeting?
What will be your fallback position if necessary? For example, a possible response would be ‘I want to get agreement on my proposal and maintain the good relationship I have with the other person. I’ll know I’ve achieved this when the contract is signed, when I’m hearing the words of agreement and seeing a smile on the other person’s face. I’ll be friendly and relaxed and I’ll start off by summarizing what has happened in the past and making my suggestions for the future. If this doesn’t work, I’ll agree to rethink my proposal and represent it at an agreed date.’
What advice would you offer the ‘you’ in the chair?
Is there anything else you would like to say to yourself?
What advice would you offer the other person?
What is the likely outcome of this meeting at the moment?
Will both people get what they want? If not, what would have to change?
ACTION PLAN
1 Think about your experience in the meeting exercise.
Which of the three positions was easiest for you to adopt?
If you had a preference for one position, make a list of the benefits of that position.
Then make a list of the drawbacks. For example, if you have a strong first position, you know your own mind, but might be considered opinionated. A strong second position gives you great empathy, but can lead you to neglect your own interests. A strong third position gives you objectivity, but you risk appearing distant.
Then make a list of the benefits that you would get from developing the other two positions.
Develop your weaker positions. Make a point of taking them whenever you have a decision to make.
2 What do you associate with the word ‘learning’?
What sort of feeling does it give you?
What was your experience of learning at school?
What have you learned about learning from your life’s experience?
3 Who have been your best teachers?
What was it about them that made them stand out?
4 The next time a friend tells you about a problem, listen beyond the words to the neurological levels. Which level does the problem seem to come from?
5 Watch the film High Fidelity on video, even if you have seen it before. A lot of the film is told from first position. How do you think John Cusack’s character appears from the point of view of his girlfriends?
6 Look at the picture below. Which way do the stairs go? Can you make them go another way by looking at the picture differently? If you were walking up them, which black dot would you come to first, the one on the horizontal part of the step or the one on the vertical part?
 | How do you relate to others? How do you relate to yourself? If you met yourself at a party, would you want to strike up a conversation? |
We create our relationships by what we do and how we think. To be influential in any relationship we need rapport. Rapport is the quality of a relationship of mutual influence and respect between people. It is not an all-or-nothing quality that you have or not – there are degrees of rapport. A person does not have rapport until they build a good relationship with another person, so both have rapport. Rapport is natural. We do not need to create it as much as to stop doing what could be preventing it. NLP supplies the skills to build a respectful and mutually influential relationship by establishing and building rapport on different neurological levels.
Rapport is not manipulation. People who manipulate may look as if they are building rapport, but because they are not letting themselves be open to influence and because they do not respect other people, there is no rapport in their relationships. To be influential, we have to be willing to be influenced, so when we build rapport with another person, we are also willing to be influenced by them.
Rapport is not the same as friendship. Being in rapport is usually enjoyable, but you can have rapport and mutual respect and still not get on personally.
Rapport is not agreement, nor does it necessarily come from agreement. It is possible to agree with someone and not have rapport. It is also possible to disagree with them and be in rapport. Rapport can be built quickly and can also be lost quickly. The more quickly it is built, the more quickly it can be lost.
Rapport comes from taking a second position. When we take second position, we are willing to try to understand the other person from their point of
