With all the research I have done about the concept of ‘Rapport’ until now, I am sure I have a good understanding of what it is. But understanding is not enough: “only if you practice, you will be a practitioner.”

First thing I focused on was identifying when I automatically have rapport. Since I started writing my blogs, I started noticing several things that already happened:

• When someone passes me and greets me, I tend to use the same greeting and tonality as the other. For example, when the other says ‘hello’ in a higher pitched voice, I automatically match the pitch and also say ‘hello’. If someone says ‘hi!’, I also say ‘hi!’.
• With most people I know, there is automatically some level of rapport.
• It is difficult to describe how to recognize rapport. It is mostly a feeling of good connection. Matching their behavior is not the same as having rapport. It is a means to help you build it. However, it is possible to match the other as much as you want without having a notable level of rapport.
• When I don’t feel like talking to someone or I want to end a conversation, I automatically change my body posture to break rapport.

These are some of my observations. Rapport is build of small similarities and the more similarities there are, the more chance you have that there is rapport.

I also noticed, however, that my timidness kicks in whenever the rapport leads to too much enthusiasm. Considering that ‘people are not their behavior’, I have acted timidly for years and when I have rapport with someone who becomes enthusiastic, I start breaking rapport automatically. I tend to distance myself little by little and move into a blocking posture. If I want to build rapport more easily, this behavior is not productive. So before continuing with building rapport, I will try to reframe this blocking behavior. This will be my next blog’s subject.