NLP Rapport Building and Sensory Acuity Part Two

By Rintu Basu NLP Rapport 2 Comments 22nd February 2012

In the last post we started examining a process that had been detailed by Marcus as a way to read people. I am going to suggest that by knowing what is going on inside people you are at the gateway to rapport.

Rapport Building without Matching and Mirroring

What you do with the information will determine how much rapport you get, but this is the start.

Developing a Rapport Building Process

Let’s have a look at the key points of that process again:

get into 360 expanded awareness
mentally take on their physiology
put their head on his shoulders
don’t judge what experience you get just feel what they feel

In the last post we discussed the whole 360 expanded awareness. In this post we will look at the other three points.

Physiology and what it tells you

Grossly over simplifying, here are a couple of assumptions that I make about the world. Whatever I am thinking and feeling on the inside will show on the outside. We are talking about your mind and body being connected and therefore your thoughts show in your body language. My assumption also works both ways i.e. the body language you choose to have will impact the way you are thinking.

I know these presuppositions are basically true through personal experience and observation. A few experiments with yourself and some observations of other people will confirm this for yourself.

The second presupposition I am making is that we are all built basically in the same way. Using these two operating presuppositions if I focus on “taking on your physiology” and notice how my mind is working I could have a good idea of what is happening in yours as well. The key point is I don’t know what you are thinking, I just know something about your emotional state and how you are thinking.

Developing Unconscious Rapport Skills

If you think about it there are certain times, situations and people that you do this with naturally. Think about the people that you are close to and have known for a long time. You seem to know what is happening inside their minds without them saying a word. This is because you have got so used to calibrating their physiology against their emotional state. I’m sure in some circumstances you can tell what they are feeling from just a quick glance, from how they stand or from their tone of voice. The trick here is to learn to do this with anyone in any circumstance. Additionally it would be worth being able to turn the skill on to auto pilot so you don’t have to think about it.

Developing the NLP Process

Now we know what is going on. The four line process above is a good summary of what you need to do. The peripheral vision sets you up to be in a externally focussed trance state that is fully observant of the person you want to read.

You then build a mental image of the person. This is you taking notice of the details you know of the person and setting your unconscious mind to start noticing the details. When you are ready mentally jump into this image of the person and experience the world the way that they do. The last line of the process is critical, don’t try to judge the situation or second guess what is going on, just experience the world through a different set of eyes.

Doing this a few times consciously will set the process up for you to do automatically. After a while just notice the more you do this, the more you are doing it automatically.

Other Applications

This process is an incredibly flexible one and has all sorts of practical applications. Variations of this process can be used to build rapport with people that you have not met before as advanced preparation for a meeting for example.

I use a version of this process just for fun when reading novels or watching movies. With good characters in good plots this enhances the experience. With poorly scripted or badly realised characters it really highlights the problems.

Accelerated Learning

When studying there are various forms of this exercise that I will use to, get into the mindset of an author for example; or someone that has already developed the knowledge or skills I am looking to acquire.

Whilst these things may seem a little odd, the reality is that all I am doing is going through a process that allows my unconscious mind to collect and process more data than I can consciously take in. The result of this is that you have a heighten sense of what is going on and can react to the situation even more effectively.

Further Information

There are a few people that I have looked at when developing these ideas and I still recommend looking them up and seeing what they have to say. The first is Kenrick Cleveland of Max Persuasion fame and the second is Tom Vizinni and Kim McFarland from Essential Skills. Tom and Kim have some great rapport videos that deconstruct this process.

All of the ideas I have discussed here are fully explored on the Advanced Persuasion Patterns Course. On the APP I show you ways of developing each part of the process and practice the individual components as well as how to develop the skills on an unconscious level. Click through now to find out more about these advanced persuasion techniques.

Coming up next

In the next blog post we will discuss how you can put this all together in a process to get total strangers to buy you meals. I will deconstruct the process I used to get exactly that result including:

Building massive amounts of rapport verbally and non verbally.
Elciting values and feeding them back to generate trust.
Time scrambling to make give you prospect the sense of always knowing you.
Using John’s Strategic Conversation Exchange to give direction to your conversation.
And finally getting fed by total strangers.

But if you want to get a head start learning these skills then the place to start is the Advanced Persuasion Patterns Programme.

NLP Rapport Building and Sensory Acuity Part One For any real persuasion process to work reading what is happening to people on a moment by moment…...
Why Building Rapport is not always good idea I am of a view that rapport comes in different flavours. Having rapport in a general sense is…...
Building Rapport for Networking Have you ever had this situation? You bump into someone either at a social event or at a…...

Tags: Accelerated Learning, Case Studies, Influence, Persuasion

If you enjoyed this article Sign Up Today and get email updates! (it's free).

Andrea

Great website. Not sure what this technique is but it worked beautifully this weekend with my husband. He kept accusing me of acting superior, competing with him and making him feel stupid. He said “I’m tired of being second class….no, I’m STEERAGE!” That was all I needed to turn it around.

I began telling a story about being on a passenger ship, I was in first class and I gestured by holding my right hand above my head, and I said second is below, and steerage at the bottom (all with accompanying hand gesture). I asked him to describe first class passengers. He said “educated, wealthy, successful…” and then I asked him to describe steerage…”stupid, uneducated, broke…” Then I asked him if first class passengers have to prove to steerage that they are first class. He said “Of course not. They’re first class. They are secure in who they are.” Then I lowered my voice and asked “Then who is doing the competing?”

He got very quiet and started crying. I put my right hand on his shoulder and said “Who is competing?” He said “Steerage.” I said “No Brian, you are competing with me.” Then I did am embedded command with the down turn.

“You need to ‘stop competing with me’”

It was a MAJOR breakthrough in our relationship. My husband is like a new man already. I also took the opportunity to use the passenger ship metaphor to explain that he and I are both first class that like to sneak down to steerage occassionally because it’s more fun.

Next up….using NLP commands and patterns to get a better job. I’ll keep you all posted on results.
http://www.cainfleming.co.uk/demos/1 Rintu Basu

Hi Andrea,
Thanks for taking the time to write this brilliant reply. I don’t know what the technique is either…but it worked really well and that is all that matters. Thanks for taking the time to post this.

Rintu

The NLP Company