How to Create Rapport Without Making It About You

There is a quiet pressure that accompanies any first professional meeting. Whether it is a pitch, a panel event or a first conversation with a new client, boss or colleague, the same question will be whirring in the back of the mind – how do I come across well?

In the heightened sensory environment of social media influenced culture, building rapport is often seen in terms of a performance. If the meeting is a planned then perhaps it has even been game-played through AI, complete with a chirpy list of bullet points listing key messages, along with reminders to sound ‘confident’ and ‘capable’.

My advice is to stick all of that ‘artificial’ intelligence into the bin and tap into your human side – authenticity trumps AI! Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Would you rather do business with someone who announces themselves with faux enthusiasm and an over explanation of their own attributes, or someone who is interested in you and what you have to say?.

Listening is an underrated skill, and taking the time to listen is tremendously undervalued.

In business and legal environments, professionals too often over-explain their expertise, lean heavily on achievements or fill silences too quickly. Far too often they are only half listening while half thinking about what they will themselves say next.

The result is an attention deficit. The speaker is spending almost as much time regulating and scoring their own performance as they are actually having the conversation. There is a real flaw with this kind of interaction (however unintentional), because if the focus is on what they’re doing then they are missing most of what the other person is doing.

Let’s replay this scenario, substituting the ‘target’ (for that is the kind of mindset we are talking about here! for someone less imposing. When we have normal conversations with new people we naturally give little away about ourselves and instead observe the other person. We’re picking up on body language, eye movement, the way they talk and most importantly listening to what they say before we react.

As we have this kind of conversation, we are also adjusting these aspects of our own behaviour. This is natural communication, authentic engagement and mutually beneficial. By not treating the conversation as if it is a route to a prize you are tuning into the other person’s perspective and their needs. You stop waiting for your turn to speak. You listen for emphasis. You notice what excites them, what frustrates them, and where their energy drops. Then you react accordingly and with empathy.

In professional environments, people are accustomed to being consistently managed, advised or sold to. As a result they are more guarded in the face of such an approach. When someone feels properly heard and has their language or body language mirrored, they tend to become more relaxed, candid and elaborative. In this way a conversation gains depth and this becomes a way of building trust and a positive association.

Trust your instinct and look for the signs. If there is a common interest, or a softening of tone, lean (but don’t jump) in and go with the flow. Also know when to back down. If you are being given short answers, polite but brief engagement, or witnessing any form of clock watching something isn’t working, so don’t keep pushing. We’ve all been in those uncomfortable situations and it’s fine to try a change of tack, but don’t ignore these signs or you’ll risk your first impression being negative as you come across as being ‘pushy’.

Reading the room is a skill. This is why an inflexible list of pre-prepared questions or bullet points doesn’t work. One or two thoughtful or well-made points on the other hand display depth. Again this goes back to listening and engaging in a two way conversation; if someone is saying one thing, but you keep defaulting to what you can offer, then you are speaking into a void of your own creation.

In the great rush to be noticed, what many people don’t realise about building rapport is that often you are noticed for what you don’t say, rather than what you do. If you are liked, if you are trusted, then however fleeting that first impression may be, it is a positive one and opens up the possibility of broadening a relationship.