A quick way to build rapport with someone (and a little empathy too)

“The great gift of human beings is that we have the power of empathy.” ~Meryl Streep

One day I met up with someone whom I had never met at a coffee shop.  We talked, and hit it off.  We ended up having an engaging conversation, and I know that we built a great rapport over the hour that we had talked, even though we had never met before and knew little about each other.

How was this done?  Through the use of “mirroring.”  It’s a very simple concept, and it’s easy to do.  The concept of mirroring has been around for a while and has been talked about many times before, but I hope to throw a little science in to explain how and why it works!

So what is mirroring?  Simply put, you observe and match the movements and vocal inflections and rate of speech of the person you are talking with.  If someone leans forward, for example, and places their arms on a table that is placed between you and the other person, after a few seconds, subtly (and in your own way) place your arms on the table too.  Listen to the other person’s vocal inflections, tonality, and pace, and try to match it (again in your own way).  You don’t want to make it obvious to the other person that you are essentially copying them, because they may get a bit suspicious and wonder what you’re up to. 🙂

The aim in mirroring is essentially to move or position your body in a way that is similar to the other person.  You can even go so far as to try to match their rate of breathing.  By doing this, you will synchronize yourself with the other person in a way that they really can’t detect at all.  You’ll feel that the rapport starts to build gradually.

If you want to run a “test” to see if you are building a rapport with the other person, you can initiate your own, non-mirrored movement.  Watch for a few seconds to see if the other person “mirrors” you!  It’s really cool when it happens, because chances are the other person doesn’t even realize they are doing it!  You know now that you have buy in, and you are well on your way to building a great relationship!

How does this work?  Let’s look into it a little more — On the surface, by mirroring someone else’s actions, you are actually mimicking the emotional state of the other person.  To put it another way, by mirroring another person, you actually start to “feel” within yourself what the other person feels!  How cool is that?

The key to this phenomenon lies in what we call “mirror neurons.”  These mirror neurons were discovered around 1990 in the laboratory of Giacomo Rizzolatti, a neuroscientist at the University of Parma, Italy.  They essentially stumbled upon this discovery when they were studying brain activity in macaque monkeys.  The monkey’s nerve cells in a certain region of the brain fired when a monkey performed a certain action.  When the monkeys saw an action performed, but didn’t actually physically perform the action, the cells in this same region of the brain fired — even though the monkey wasn’t doing anything!

Since then, we have discovered that we humans have these same mirror neurons that fire when we watch an action being performed, just as they would if we were actually doing the action ourselves.  If we watch someone play tennis, our brain is “mirroring” the tennis match as if we were playing it ourselves!

Our “system” of mirror neurons turns out to be even more complex than that of the monkeys.  Not only do we mirror actions, but we actually also seek the intention of the action, its social meaning, and the emotion behind the behavior.  In other words, when we see someone doing something, we wonder (neurologically, not consciously) what it’s like “in the other person’s shoes.”  This is also known as — you guessed it — empathy!

So as you can see, we are “wired” to be empathetic toward others.  In observing other people’s actions, and actually mirroring them, we are stimulating the empathetic regions of our brain.  The effects of mirroring are clearly advantageous to everyone involved — not only do we establish a rapport with the other person, we become more empathetic toward them.  On top of that, when the other person starts to “mirror” us, they essentially grow more empathetic toward us!  It’s a win-win!

Give the mirroring technique a try!  If you’ve experienced success with this technique already, I would love to hear about it!

Best wishes!

-Victor

Photo source: freeditigalphotos.net