rapport.
Non-verbal matching is far more powerful than verbal agreement. We set more store by a person’s non-verbal behaviour than their words. When the two conflict, we tend to believe the non-verbal part of the message. For example, ‘That’s lovely!’ said with a sneering voice tone or ‘I am interested!’ while looking at your watch will give the opposite impression to the words spoken. You can verbally disagree with someone and keep rapport if you match their body language as you do so.
Be careful, however, of matching body language too closely. You can get good rapport simply by making sure you do not mismatch. In other words, adopt a posture that is similar but not exactly the same. Give the same amount of eye contact as the other person, though, because this is what they feel comfortable with. Lots of eye contact is not necessarily a good thing!
We do body and voice matching naturally and unconsciously. Some very interesting research was done by William Condon in the 1960s into what he called ‘cultural microrhythms’. He analysed short videotapes of people talking together and broke them down into thousands of frames. What he found (which has been confirmed by subsequent researchers) was that the gestures were harmonized and so was the rhythm of the conversation. Volume and pitch fell into balance and the speech rate – the number of speech sounds per second – equalized. The period of time that lapsed between the moment one speaker stopped talking and another speaker began (the latency period) also equalized.
You can match:
key words and phrases that designate values (for example when you summarize to check for agreement)
words that show how a person is thinking
These are called predicates. They show that a person may be visualizing, hearing mental sounds or voices, or paying attention to feelings. By matching predicates, you show the other person that you respect their way of thinking.
Matching behaviour needs skill and respect. It must be done out of an honest desire to understand another person’s model of the world. Simply mimicking body language is indiscriminate copying without respect and will lose you rapport very fast indeed as soon as the other person notices. And they will.
Often the best way to gain rapport at the behaviour level is simply to avoid badly mismatching (e.g. do not stand if the other person is sitting, do not talk quickly if the other person is a slow speaker, do not speak loudly if they have a soft voice). Be comfortable and congruent yourself when you match other people’s behaviour. Do not match anything that you feel uneasy about.
You can match one aspect of a person’s body language with a different part of yours if this feels more comfortable. This is called ‘crossover matching’. For example, you might match the rhythm of a person’s breathing with a small movement of your hand.
Capabilities
This level of rapport comes from shared skills and interests. Sporting competitors, teammates and fellow professionals can all have rapport at this level. When you are good at what you do, others in the same field will respect you. This particularly applies to professional situations. Environmental and behavioural matching will go so far, but then you need to demonstrate that you are competent in order to build and maintain rapport when there is a shared task to be done.
Beliefs and Values
You build powerful rapport by respecting and understanding the beliefs and values of another person. You do not need to agree with them, only respect what is important to them.
Values are not logical, they cannot be justified with reason, but they are not unreasonable. Do not ask anyone to justify why something is important to them unless you have good rapport already and are in a situation where they feel safe to explore.
Identity
To gain rapport at the identity level, you need to understand and respect another person’s core beliefs and values, and pay attention to them as an individual, not as a member of a group. You need to be genuinely interested in who they are in themselves, and be willing to share some of your own beliefs and values. Hidden agendas and manipulation prevent rapport at this level.
Beyond Identity
At a social level, this comes from a shared culture. At a spiritual level it comes from realizing that you are part of humanity. This is where you are most yourself and most connected to others.
It is possible to have rapport at some levels but not at others. Generally speaking, the further you go up the neurological levels, the greater the degree of rapport you can achieve. Mismatching at a higher level is liable to break rapport that has been established at a lower level.
Mismatching is a useful skill, however. You can mismatch body language to end a conversation in a natural way. The more rapport you have built up through matching, the more effective this will be. You can end overlong telephone conversations by mismatching voice tone (for example speaking more loudly and quickly) while saying something like ‘Sorry, I have to go now. . .’ The other person gets the message on both the verbal and non-verbal level.
ACTION PLAN
1 Watch people talking in shops and restaurants. Can you tell who is in rapport and who is not?
2 In a telephone conversation, begin by matching the other person’s voice – talk at the same speed with the same volume and the same latency period. Notice the quality of the conversation. When you want to end the conversation, mismatch. Talk more quickly and loudly and change the latency period. Can you close the call without actually saying something like ‘I must go now . . .’?
3 In conversation, be interested in the other person. Imagine they have great knowledge and wisdom. Review the conversation afterwards. Did you have rapport? Did you match their body language without even thinking about it? If you can get a friend to observe the conversation and tell you about it afterwards, that would be even better.
4 See the film Don Juan del Marco on video, even if you have already seen it. There are two main characters – Don Juan, played by Johnny Depp, and the psychiatrist, played by Marlon Brando. Who paces and leads whom?
5 Is there anyone in your life you cannot seem to get on with? If you do want to get on with them, think about which neurological level you are mismatching on. Match at that level. What difference does that make?
