Secrets of NLP: How to Build Rapport When Working Virtually

By Davide Costella
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​Imagine you are leading a global project for a large, multinational company. What might be your main challenges in terms of communication? One inevitable challenge is that you have to deal with stakeholders across the globe. This translates in different cultures, different personas, backgrounds, beliefs, conflicts as well as different communication tools such as email, face-to-face, Skype etc. This is what a client of mine, let’s call him Jack, was facing and struggling with on a regular basis. How can NLP help you to overcome the most difficult communication challenges?
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I asked Jack who his most painful stakeholder was. Who keeps him up at night? He answered without hesitating that this was Matt.

1. RAPPORT
First we identified how Jack could enter in rapport with Matt. Rapport is the basis for any interaction.

• Metaprograms: We began to analyze the metaprograms of this difficult stakeholder and noticed that look for differences was the predominate one. Knowing this, Jack was able to start building rapport by showing he could look more for differences than similarities which is a different metaprogram.
• Tone of voice: Jack was dealing with Matt only via phone, so we had to work on Jack’s tonality. I attended some calls they had and paid attention to the tonality, volume, pace, speed, pauses and breathing so Jack could also create rapport at this level.
• Linguistic: This is the most fascinating and fun part of NLP. We focused on the words, sayings, mantra that Matt was using and realized that “should” and “the bottom line is…” were the ones Matt used the most. Jack started to use these as well when he spoke to Matt, with elegance and caution of course! We went a step further and eliminated from Jack’s vocabulary the use of the word BUT. Instead, Jack used AND. A simple AND very effective secret to build rapport.

2. SUBMODALITIES
Even though Jack had managed to improve rapport, he still could not fully control his stakeholder. At the end of the day you need to be honest about what is really under YOUR control. This is why we decided to work on handling Jack’s anger that came up before and after some of the meetings. That anger was like an alarm going off at 5:00 am! Jack said,  “It kills my head” -- this is how bad he was feeling. The alarm metaphor was very significant since Jack was predominately auditory.   We worked a lot with, and . This helped Jack control what he COULD control, the way he filtered information. This helps you create a more helpful map of the world.

3. SLEIGHT OF MOUTH
We started eliciting Matt’s beliefs and practices on using great part of the models. Sleight of Mouth is a tremendously powerful tool, but it takes great deal of practice to master it with elegance and speed. This is why practice makes it all!
 
At this point, maybe you expect that Jack was able to manage every single interaction with Matt successfully. Well, of course that’s not really the case, but Jack was able to handle effectively the great majority of interactions with Matt, his most painful stakeholder. The good thing is that Jack had much more control over his feelings and this is what set him free.

Communication is very subtle. It’s easy to underestimate the power of even some small changes that might seem insignificant, but that in the end will make a very significant difference between getting what you want or not.

If you would like to improve your communication skills and make a real difference in any sphere, I am here to help you. Let’s set up an appointment to talk about it!