Thread: NLP Training 6 - Building Rapport

Transcript - Draft

Liam :So Michael, what is rapport?

Michael :Rapport - I describe it in two complementary
ways actually. Rapport is a good straight relationship with somebody -
and that you're paying full attention to me,
and by paying attention to me you're paying both conscious and
unconscious attention to me, in that you're not thinking of
something else, you haven't got any hidden agenda -
you're naturally paying full attention to anything that
I might be saying.

Liam : And when do you want to be in rapport with somebody?

Michael : I want to be in rapport with somebody
whenever I want to influence somebody or learn from them -
because as I say, it's opening a communications channel.

Liam : Are there any instances when you specifically don't
want to be in rapport with somebody?

Michael : I think that's very important, because if somebody
were to take it to an extreme and you had ten depressed people
that you had to speak to every day - if you had to get into rapport
with all of them you would both be influencing each other -
and they would certainly be influencing you. You might end up
being very depressed.

So it's important to realise that rapport can be a two-way
medium?

Liam : How do people like leaders and pickup artists use
rapport?

Michael :In different ways, but there are some similarities.
If you're a leader you tend to wait at least initially for people to
get into rapport with you. And interestingly if a group of people get
into rapport with you they will more often than not get into
rapport with each other.

And in terms of seduction - a bloke that wants to play around with
rapport will not get into rapport to quickly, because he doesn't
want to appear too easy. He won't get into it too easily.
And also he'll get into the dance of getting into rapport,
breaking rapport, getting into rapport; because if you're
effecting somebody it can be far more influential or
effective to break rapport, funnily enough, than it is
to make it.

But in a way it's like looking at rapport like a dance, one step
forward, one step back.

Liam : How important would you say that rapport is?

Michael : I would say that rapport is incredibly useful,
because if you get into rapport with somebody you do begin to
understand them. And to a certain extent, if you go into rapport
and you go over-the-top, you match them exactly, you get their
micro-muscle movements, you get their breathing - you do tend
to pick up things about them that you wouldn't normally expect.

And it's almost to the stage where if you get into really strong
rapport you -almost by some osmotic process - start to pick up
some of their skills. So in a curious way rapport
turns into modelling.

If I am modelling somebody I want to get into rapport with them,
I want to soften my gaze, soften my posture and absorb stuff -
and I'd actually start to pick up all sorts of unusual things from
them that I wouldn't normally expect.

Liam : Is there anything else that you'd like to reiterate or
emphasis about rapport?

Michael : As far as rapport goes - like a lot of NLP-type skills,
it's a balance. It's learning both sets of skills. It's learning so that
you can get into rapport with people easily and it's really enjoyable -
if you've got good happy people around, it's really enjoyable to be in
rapport with them.

But at times you also want to break rapport, so you can
almost make decisions without being too influenced by
the people around you.

It's like a lot of NLP skills - and it's very useful when you learn both.

Liam : Michael Beale, thank you.

Michael : Thank you.