Jonathan Tullett

A definition of rapport: Rapport is one of the most important features or characteristics of unconscious human interaction. It is commonality of perspective: being “in sync” with, or being “on the same wavelength” as the person with whom you are talking.

I spend quite a bit of time studying social dynamics, human interaction and I dabble a little in the psychology behind people’s actions – quite a fun game to play, and one you improve at as as your intuition increases.

I also love interacting with strangers, there’s something intensely satisfying about going to an unknown quantity and conversing. It improves a number of skills eg: confidence, improvisation, listening, and importantly, building rapport.

If you have good rapport with someone, conversation flows freely, you feel at ease, and most often it’s thoroughly enjoyable. On the other hand, if you either don’t establish rapport, or deliberately break rapport, situations can quickly become uncomfortable or awkward. On the positive side, in a social interaction, if this occurs, you can just walk away.

There are some things you can do to build incredibly quick rapport with people – going from meeting a complete stranger (male or female) to getting contact details within a five to ten minutes with a mutual desire to meet up for further interactions (rather than getting fake numbers, emails, etc).

Conversations I’ve had with a few people recently have been about the ethics of doing such a thing. Eg. is it wrong to deliberately exhibit manorisms, perform actions or behave in a way which you know quickly makes people feel at ease with you (fall in rapport).

I’m definitely of the school of thought that anything which improves social intuition or calibration is a good thing. If you have the ability to make interactions with you easy, and, most importantly, enjoyable, for others, it’s a good thing. And everyone, I believe, has that ability, if they’re prepared to practice enough and push themselves outside their comfort zone.

I would even go as far as to say that these kind of social skills are perhaps the most important skills anyone can learn in life, as without them, opportunities may not be so plentiful, eg, who hires the awkward interviewee vs the one who’s chatty and you connect with?

The other school of thought is that it’s manipulation of someone’s feelings and therefore, by default, a bad thing; that rapport is something which needs to be built over time and shouldn’t be rushed.

What do you think?

Footnote: For the purposes of this post, the assumption is that rapport building is for a mutually beneficial purpose, eg to build a true friendship, not utility (where the benefit is a service provided or offered to one or both parties) or entertainment (the friendship is built around activities and doesn’t extend beyond that) friendships – to use Plato’s categorisations.