As in all relationships, whether business or personal, building trust in relationships is must for success.
Since building rapport is about building trust, what are the key elements for building rapport?
Finding common interests are the key elements in building rapport.
When people are like each other…they like each other. One of the ways to do this is by listening to the other person’s language (their words, the speed and tonality in which they speak) and matching these are all part of building rapport with another person.
Walk Your Talk
Besides matching the words, speed and tonality, it is important to walk your talk. Walking your talk is simply standing by what you represent to others. For example: you build rapport with a new customer by matching their language, but your service you provide doesn’t match what they wanted. For this reason it is ultimately important to maintain rapport with clients by providing them the service you said you will provide. If you don’t, all the rapport you built will be broken.
The same applies to personal relationships as well. If you build rapport with someone on a personal level based on common values and you break those values you also break rapport. Values are words like honesty, fidelity, consideration and commitment. Matching your values or the other person’s values must be matched to build trust in a relationship and kept in order to maintain the relationship. In my opinion, it is the strongest and most lasting rapport of all.