The master skill of coaching: building rapport

The main skill of coaching is to create a good relationship; without it, all other abilities become increasingly redundant. When building a relationship, it’s helpful to think of a three-step process: getting to know you, liking you, and finally trusting you. This is as true in coaching as it is in sales; as ultimately we are all interested in selling our ability to influence others.

Are you aware of establishing rapport, especially when meeting new people or working with a client? How is the report built? What steps do you take?

KNOWING THAT

Start with the body: smile, introduce yourself and what you do, and then thank them for taking time to talk to you. That sets up a scene to ‘meet you’. Clearly, how you present yourself is critical: one has to think about not overloading people with statements and ‘I’ claims designed to inflate one’s self-importance; but, more importantly, to spark curiosity about you and what you do, or let them see how talking to you will benefit them. The principles of physically meeting someone so that one can say they ‘know’ them are also true online: we create a persona online and this too must be welcoming, warm and more about the customer than about oneself.

LIKE YOU

For them, the customer, then, to like it, there are five triggers that can increase liking. First, physical attractiveness, or what has been called the halo effect. We attribute other virtues (mental, emotional, moral) to people we perceive as attractive. Attractiveness, however, is not something ‘fixed’, or that we are simply born with (or not!). Hence the importance of clothing, personal grooming and image-conscious management. Second, similarity or resemblance: we tend to love people more if we perceive that they are like us. Some aspects of this, where we were born or raised, may be out of our control, but things like body language, tone of voice, and the way we dress are quite malleable. Third, people like us more when we give them compliments; not rudely, and not flatteringly, but when we genuinely notice and express appreciation for some aspect of them, their possessions, achievements or qualities. Fourth, we increase our likeability when we are familiar to the other person. Familiarity happens when they are exposed to us and our name more often, through repetition, through cooperation; And when we think about it, that’s exactly how we make friends: by spending more time in their company. And, to extend this even further, it may be because they have read about us, or viewed our website or blogs, etc. Finally, we come to like others more if we can associate them with good experiences. This good experience can be physical (we play golf together), intellectual (you make me think in new ways) or emotional (I consider you very supportive). But ultimately we all prefer to be with people who give us good experiences, and these can be very simple things: like giving them a good quality cup of coffee or tea when they visit you!

Which of these 5 triggers do you usually use, whether consciously or not, to establish a good relationship with people? Which, perhaps, could you use more? How do you intend to improve your ability to build rapport in the next 12 months?

TRUSTING IN YOU

So, they know you, they like you, and critically, to build a true relationship, they have to trust you. All serious relationships are built on trust, and without trust no serious job or business (or relationship) can be done or function. The trainer then must build trust in the client. Trust is built over time; because everyone, until full trust is established, is always asking, ‘Can I trust this person? Can I trust what they are telling me? Is there a secret agenda?

Confidence arises when we are consistent: we practice what we preach, we do what we preach, and we do what we say we are going to do repeatedly. Confidence also comes from first impressions: then we go back to how we appear; and especially our body language and eye contact are critical. It is not a coincidence that in the English language we have words like ‘shifty’, which indicate that someone cannot be trusted, because people intuitively grasp the fact that the body and the words are not in harmony.

But finally, here we come full circle, as the last, and perhaps critical, aspect of building trust, thus building rapport, leads directly to our other core skill: questioning and listening. The listening component of the ability to ask questions is critical to trust. Real listening is indeed an act of love. Almost everyone experiences the feeling that nobody listens to them or takes them seriously; we all want to demand attention, and as children we get something from our parents, but probably not enough; and then from friends and teachers, but we invariably ask ourselves, ‘Is anyone really listening?’ the only person who will listen to us. Of course, when that fails, it is extremely distressing and debilitating for the individual. They talk about ‘falling out of love’, but most of the time, before they fell out, they weren’t. Oddly enough, coaching someone, really coaching them, is loving them, and that really builds rapport!