112 Part II: Winning Friends and Influencing People
In terms of building rapport – you are the message. And you need your words,
image, and speech all working in harmony. If you don’t look confident – in
other words, as if you believe in your message – people aren’t going to listen
to what you’re saying.
Rapport involves being able to see eye-to-eye with other people, connecting
on their wavelength. A large percentage of the perception of your sincer-
ity comes not from what you say but how you say it, and how you show an
appreciation for the other person’s thoughts and feelings.
When you have rapport with someone, you can each disagree with what the
other says while still relating respectfully to each other. The important point
is to acknowledge other people as the unique individuals that they are. For
example, you may well have different political or religious views from your
colleagues or clients, but you don’t need to fall out about it. People prefer all
sorts of different foods to eat for supper, and yet you manage to agree to differ
with your family on that point.
Hold on to the fact that you simply differ from the person’s opinion and that
this difference is no reflection on that person. Flick to Chapter 11 to read
about logical levels and how NLP makes a distinction between beliefs and
values at one level, and identity at a higher level. People are more than what
they say, do, or believe.
Matching and mirroring
When you’re out and about in bars and restaurants (or even the staff cafete-
ria, if you’re lucky enough to get meals at work), have you noticed how two
people look when a rapport exists between them? Without hearing the details
of the conversation, you can see that the interaction is like a dance: people
naturally move in step with each other. A sense of unison informs their body
language and the way they talk – elegantly dovetailing their movements and
speech. NLP calls this situation matching and mirroring.
Matching and mirroring is when you take on someone else’s style of behaviour
and their skills, values, or beliefs in order to create rapport.
In contrast, think of a time when you’ve been the unwilling witness to an
embarrassingly public argument between a couple, or a parent and child, in
the street or supermarket: not quite a punch-up, but almost. Even with the
volume turned off, you soon notice when people are totally out of sync with
each other, just from their body posture and gestures. NLP calls this situa-
tion mismatching.
