Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

Building rapport
The first task in any conversation is to build rapport. Rapport is 
the sense that another person is like us. Building rapport is a 
pattern-matching process. Most rapport-building happens 
without words: we create rapport through a dance of matching 
movements, including body orientation, body moves, eye 
contact, facial expression and tone of voice.
Human beings can create rapport instinctively. Yet these 
natural dance patterns can disappear in conversations at work; 
other kinds of relationship sometimes intrude. A little conscious 
effort to create rapport at the very start of a conversation can 
make a huge difference to its outcome.
We create rapport through:
• verbal behaviour;
• vocal behaviour; and
• physical behaviour.
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14 Improve your Communication Skills
Of those three elements, verbal behaviour – the words we use – 
actually contributes 
least 
to building rapport.
Overwhelmingly, we believe what we see. In the famous sales 
phrase, ‘the eye buys’. If there is a mismatch between a person’s 
words and their body language, we instantly believe what the 
body tells us. So building rapport must begin with giving the 
physical
signs of being welcoming, relaxed and open.
The music of the voice is the second key factor in establishing 
rapport. We can vary our 
pitch
(how high or low the tone of voice 
is), 
pace
(the speed of speaking) and 
volume
(how loudly or softly 
we speak). Speak quickly and loudly, and raise the pitch of your 
voice, and you will sound tense or stressed. Create vocal music 
that is lower in tone, slower and softer, and you will create 
rapport more easily.
But creating rapport means more than matching body 
language or vocal tone. We must also match the other person’s 
words, so that they feel we are ‘speaking their language’.