We resist people we don’t trust. Gaining an unconscious connection with people will powerfully influence the speed towards your intended interpersonal outcomes.
You can create hypnotic rapport through imitating someone’s current behavior. This is commonly referred to as mirroring or pacing — and it happens quite naturally. You can mirror someone’s behavior on many different levels — through your dress, your language and manners, your body posture and movement, and even your breathing.
By pacing someone’s behavior, mirroring and feeding back their voice tonality and tempo, facial expressions, posture and gestures, it is possible for you to not only match their behavior, but to lead.
So the first step in gaining someone’s trust is to be more like them. We trust people who are like us. To prove this point, ask yourself who would you rather give money to? Yourself or someone else? 🙂
Notice how your listener is standing and inconspicuously imitate their posture. We do this naturally already. The next time you’re with a group of people you like, notice how often you mirror each other. You’ll be surprised.
There are three main aspects to mirroring speech. First is the quality of the voice: pitch and tone, tempo, emotion, accent, and volume. Second is specific vocabulary. You’ll notice certain words or phrases that come up in the conversation frequently and you’ll want to match their vocabulary. The third aspect to mirroring speech is by utilizing their dominant submodalities. Notice if they speak with visual, auditory, or kinesthetic metaphors. See what I mean? Can you hear what I’m saying?
We can create rapport and build trust on many different levels. I wonder if you have a clear picture of how you will integrate pacing and leading into your behavior.