The Most Common Rapport Building Mistakes

by Peter Saks on May 8, 2009

Hi,
In previews articles I have showed you how to build rapport with other people and why it's so useful, however before you will be able to call your self master of rapport you have to know few rules.

First thing is, these rapport building techniques are so effective because you are bypassing conscious mind of the person which allows you to deal directly with the unconscious mind. Therefore if anyone will spot what you are doing, in majority of cases it will lead to opposite effect, the other person will become very resistant to whatever you will do.

The area where most of the people get caught is while trying to mirror the other persons movements, or body position. It happens because they feel weird about manipulating others and their lack of experience affects the way they behave.

There has been a study done that was supposed to determine what is the optimal delay between the person changing body position and you mirroring it. Researchers found that everything above 3 seconds minimalizes your chances of getting caught.

However my advice is to mix the delays, you shouldn't allow the other person's brain to notice pattern in your behavior. This can sabotage your attempts. So, if you started with a 3 second break, make your next one 5 seconds long, the one after 8 seconds long etc..

The other very common mistake made by beginners in this matter is, acting weird while trying to match other persons body language. Most of the people change it too quickly making it look unnatural and attracting conscious attention of the other person. It is very important that you stay calm while you change your body position, do not do any unnecessary gestures, sounds or facial expressions.

I have noticed that a lot of people makes weird eye contact while they switch their body position. I understand they do it to distract you and take your awareness off what they are doing, however it doesn't work. Do not look at the other person in a weird way or keep a fake smile. We can unconsciously recognize if someone is forcing a smile. There is a muscle on our face that we use only when we genuinely smile. You are practically unable to spot it if you do not know where to look, however our unconscious mind notices such details and makes you feel that there's something wrong with the person.

Another method to distract the person you're talking to, from what you're doing, we owe to magicians. Just like them, you can direct attention of the other person to something else while you change your body position. You can do it either by pointing at something or changing the subject. Good method is also telling a story that requires the listener to imagine something, this will give you a short moment to do whatever you like, without getting noticed.

As you can see, building rapport is not as straightforward as most of the people imagine. Actually majority of people that gets introduced to this information, makes common mistakes listed above. When they don't get results they have expected, they give up, thinking it doesn't work. However you have just learned more than 99% of human population will ever know about communication, so I trust you will have more success. See you in the next article.