- The limbic system, hard at work, constructs these various tags into a mixture of various emotions, in
this case, pleasure. - The amygdala generates a mild sympathetic emotion of pleasure. If it wasn’t for this function of
being able to “feel other people’s feelings”, we would be unable to truly tell how other people were
feeling.
In essence, when a person who we perceive to be “happy to see us” approaches, our unconscious
mind generates a genuine “happy to see them” feeling.
Quite often, however, our super-awesome frontal lobes decide not to show it back. Thus the cycle
ends. It feels good to us but the person has no feedback. If we do show the feedback of being happy to
see someone, it builds up and they get the feeling of “happy to see us”. This creates a genuine upward
spiral of pleasure, until one of us decides to stop showing it.
This mutual pleasure is the essence of rapport.
What Factors Help Me Build Rapport?
Rapport isn’t just about your facial expression - although that is clearly important. It seems a bit me-
chanical to build a list of factors that contribute to rapport, but I’ve never let that stop me before, so
here it is.
With some practice, you can set these factors on “rapport mode”, if that makes sense? In my mind, I
like to set my face to “rapport” to create what I call Rapport Facial Expression. You can do this with all
the factors outlined below.
Rapport Facial Expression
Facial expression should be non-threatening, and certainly not dominant or smug. Confidence should
be shown, but there should be no hint of judgement. In your mind you should say “I’m pleased to be
here, I’m pleased to meet you and everyone, I accept you all for who you are.” This should uncon-
sciously reflect in your facial expression. Smile genuinely at people when they approach; you should
be genuinely pleased to see them. Take a look at the two faces below.
Both men are wearing suits, smil-
ing. They are both facing slightly
to our right, and both smiling with
their eyes. Yet one is giving off
vastly different rapport facial sig-
nals than the other. If you were to
meet these men for the first time,
which one would you get along
with better?