Calibrating rapport

Once you have practiced the different matching techniques, you can carry on to perfect your rapport skills to any level you wish. As well as establishing rapport, you also need to recognize whether rapport exists, and to what degree. We have already stressed the need for careful observation (sensory acuity) so that you can detect or measure (calibrate) rapport. Calibration, a term borrowed from engineering, refers in NLP to the way you can notice small reactions and 'measure' moment-to-moment changes in other people. You can then, if necessary, adjust your own behaviour. Calibration takes a lot of practice, and at first it may seem impossible to watch for so many things at the same time. Above we learnt about the different areas in which we can create and recognize rapport (matching physiology, voice, language and thinking style, beliefs and values, experience and interests, and breathing patterns). Now we introduce four more ways in which we can create and recognize rapport.