This is a long post, but for me the subject is important. Rapport=Harmony. So what is harmony? In music, it’s the deep, resonant concord between at least two separate notes. When you get agreement between two identical notes, that’s called unison. By analogy then, rapport in humans is the concord between two separate people who, in deep, usually subconscious ways, resonate with each other.
“Rapport” is also an exhaustively studied psychological term that describes the congruence between two people’s largely unconscious living “rhythms” – such as breathing, vocal tone, and body posture. This study evolved into Neurolinguistic Programming – an ugly term, and a practical disaster when untrained people attempt to use it.
So when I hear “rapport” denigrated as the “social chit chat” that precedes the “serious” business conversation, I get a little troubled. Do some people prefer to “skip the chit chat” and get right to business? Sure. Do some people wait until they feel emotionally comfortable with a stranger before they’re willing to discuss anything serious? Sure, again. Do some people engage in social pleasantries but still operate behind a wall of professional reserve until they believe they can trust the other person? Right the third time. Do some people bury their feelings because they believe "business" should be about logic, facts, etc? That too. (But of course, something buried usually rots.)
The fundamental differences in people’s preferred style of being and interacting have been analyzed since Carl Jung, yielding an alphabet soup of different instruments that measure how we are both unique and similar: DiSC, MBTI, FIRO, etc. When I work with salespeople in social style workshops, the overwhelmingly constant response is acknowledgement – “I am like that. And we’re different, in ways that matter − or similar.”
We run the risk of both misusing and misunderstanding rapport when we view it solely through our value system and style preferences (which seems to have been happening in some of the previous posts.) “Drivers” (to use Larry Wilson’s terms) see “rapport” as irrelevant to the purpose. “Amiables” see it as essential. With a “Driver,” I’m crisp and business like. With an “Amiable,” I’m looser and more sociable – because that’s what makes them comfortable and starts the process of developing trust and rapport.
Then this final thought (and apologies, again for a long post.) Play with the idea that we like people whom we feel (subconsciously) like us. We trust people whom we feeltrust us, and we are open with people who are open with us.
Thanks for reading
Tom
