Developing rapport

Personal skills are the skills you need to enable you to set personal goals and to achieve personal empowerment. You can build a strong and effective skill-set through personal development, and these will help you to make relevant and positive choices and decisions in the future.

As per Oxford dictionary, rapport is defined as:

A close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each other’s feelings or ideas and communicate well.

It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in or what position you hold – knowing how to build rapport can bring you countless opportunities. After all, when you have a rapport with someone, he or she will usually want to help you to succeed.

Rapport can develop naturally, but anyone can also nurture and improve rapport, just as they can any other skill.

Rapport Basics

Rapport forms the basis of meaningful, close and harmonious relationships between people. It’s the sense of connection that you get when you meet someone you like and trust, and whose point of view you understand. It’s the bond that forms when you discover that you share one another’s values and priorities in life.

When you have a rapport with someone, you share:

  • Mutual attentiveness: you’re both focused on, and interested in, what the other person is saying or doing.
  • Positivity: you’re both friendly and happy, and you show care and concern for one another.
  • Coordination: you feel “in sync” with one another, so that you share a common understanding. Your energy levels, tone and body language are also similar.

Rapport isn’t just a tool for building relationships, though; it’s often the foundation of success. When you have a rapport with someone, you’re better placed to influence, learn and teach, particularly as the trust that you’ve built up means other people are more likely to accept your ideas, to share information, and to create opportunities together.

Why Rapport is needed at work?

With that definition in mind, it becomes obvious why rapport carries weight in the workplace: It’s the foundation for positive, beneficial relationships that allow you to be more effective (not to mention happier) at work.

People naturally want to work with people they like and trust. Rapport can establish both likability and trustworthiness. By building rapport deliberately and more deeply, you can often build teams faster and deliver better quality work with more power.

When we develop rapport and a connection with our customers, colleagues, and employees we develop trust. When there is trust, we know that we can count on them and that they have our best interest in mind.

These positive, closer-knit relationships at work have been tied to numerous benefits, including:

  • Higher engagement
  • Improved job satisfaction
  • Increased productivity
  • Greater employee retention

Needless to say, rapport means big things, and it matters for all of your relationships. However, Mayer states that it can be especially helpful in situations where differences are present that might keep a team or an individual from connecting with you.

By taking a few minutes to build rapport with them, you can put everyone a bit more at ease, which then enables you to control the meeting and get everyone focused on decision making and problem-solving.

Building Rapport in the Workplace

Rapport offers plenty of positives. But the question remains: How do you build it?

First of all, it’s important to recognize that rapport—and a relationship in general—is a two-way street. That means rapport isn’t something that you can foster all on your own. The other person needs to meet you halfway.

Step 1 – Be an astute observer

Rapport is often established by finding some common ground with another person—a shared interest, value, or perspective, for example.

So, finding something—large or small—that you share is an important first step in establishing rapport. However, those potential common threads aren’t always things that are immediately obvious to us. This speaks to the importance of being observant.

Step 2 – Ask questions.

You think you’ve found some sort of shared ground between you and that other person. Now what? Should you jump right in and start rambling about how much you have in common? Not exactly. Asking questions is a far more effective tactic for getting a conversation started.

Questions highlight your shared interests right off the bat while opening up a friendly, two-sided conversation.

Of course, the questions you ask don’t (and honestly, shouldn’t) only relate to what you have in common. Broaden your focus to ask other questions about them and their passions—both inside and outside of the office.

Step 3 – Provide your undivided attention.

We’re constantly bouncing around between our phones, computers, tablets, and live conversations. We’re in an ever-present state of distraction that’s making it far too difficult to focus.

But it’s important to realize that not giving someone your full attention quickly sabotages any rapport that you’ve established.

Make the commitment that when you’re dealing with a human being, especially someone that you manage, never ever multitask on them.

Step 4 – Be patient.

In the majority of cases, be aware of the fact that building rapport will take some time and patience. Additionally, it’s important to recognize that rapport isn’t something that you can set and forget. You need to maintain it by continuing to be trustworthy, dependable, and invested in other people’s interests and lives.

While it is possible to rebuild rapport and relationships, it’s far easier to never jeopardize them in the first place.

Other tips to build rapport

Check Your Appearance – First impressions count, and your appearance should help you to connect with people, not create a barrier. A good rule of thumb is to dress just a little “better” than the people you’re about to meet. However, if you arrive and see that you’re overdressed, you can quickly dress down to suit the situation.

Always remember the basics of good communication –

  • Be culturally appropriate
  • Relax
  • Remember people’s names
  • Hold your head up and maintain a good posture.
  • Listen carefully and attentively
  • Don’t outstay your welcome.

Create Shared Experiences – Rapport can’t grow without human interaction, and a great way to interact is to create new, shared experiences. Shared experiences can be as simple as attending the same conference session together, or as complex as cooperating on a new management process. Working collaboratively to define problems, devise solutions, and design strategies, for example, can help to bring you and the other person closer.

Be Empathic – Empathy is about understanding other people by seeing things from their perspective, and recognizing their emotions. So, to understand and share another person’s perspective, you need to learn what makes him tick. As we’ve already mentioned, many people enjoy talking about their likes and dislikes, needs and wants, and problems and successes, so ask open-ended questions and give them space to talk.

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