Get a Girlfriend or Boyfriend, or just want to gell with people,then you need to learn how to build rapport - or do you?You may want to get a girlfriend or boyfriend or even want to increase your social or business networks. Consequently to might have heard that you need to learn how to build rapport. It may come as little surprise to you, but you already do it! Without setting out to get a girlfriend or boyfriend, how many times have you walked into a room full of strangers and gravitated towards one person in particular and immediately struck up a conversation. After a very short time any eavesdropper would conclude that you were long lost friends. Some people you just “click” with don’t you? Why do you think that is? If you were to consider the representational system of your “long lost friend”, you’d often find that you were unknowingly matching their body language, breathing, speech patterns and even eye movements. There are five primary ways that we humans experience the world; seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling and tasting. In assimilating each one of these inputs they are transformed into something different from the original stimulus. What we actually perceive are representations or models of what our sensory organs transmit to us. We each have our own model (map) of the world and tend to behave as if our map of the world is the real world. Since we are all unique, so are these models with our preferred systems.
V - Visual People who are predominantly visual often sit with their eyes up and breathe from the top of their lungs. They memorise by seeing pictures and may have trouble remembering verbal instructions. They are interested in how something LOOKS.
A - Auditory People whose system is essentially auditory often move their eyes sideways and breathe from the middle of their chest. Often known for talking to themselves they can be easily distracted by noise. They learn by listening and memorise by steps and procedures and like to be TOLD how they are doing. They are interested in what people have to SAY about things.
K – Kinesthetic People who are kinesthetic often talk slowly and respond to physical rewards and touching. They breathe from the bottom of their lungs, may also stand closer to people than the visual person and memorise by doing.They are interested in something which FEELS right to them. Ad – Auditory Digital People in this category spend a greater proportion of their time talking to themselves and want to know if something MAKES SENSE. They can also exhibit characteristics of the other major representational systems. What does this teach us? One approach I use in my mentoring and confidence coaching, whether it’s for Chief Executives or their management teams, is based on Solutions Focus. Solutions Focus embraces, amongst other things, the concept that by identifying what is working with an individual or in the business context, within a team, you can amplify this to make useful changes. Very simply by identifying what works and doing more of it and stopping doing what doesn’t work, you can bring about positive change more effectively. Just think of it for a while, in this instance, in the context of rapport building. Let’s try to be a little more aware of what’s working. We’ve already demonstrated that:- When people are like each other, they like each other
That’s fine, we can recognise and build on what works then do more of it, you may want to get a girlfiriend or boyfriend, but you don’t always “click” and don’t always like each other immediately, what can you do then? Well, how would it be if we were to adopt some of these representational systems to our advantage by mirroring the behaviour of some of those we are wanting to establish a relationship with?
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