The 4th most common mistake is a lack of genuine interest.

The thing about ‘interest’ is that, when you feel an interest inside and your focus is actually on the ideas that someone else is presenting, your whole body language changes.
You begin to sub-communicate, at a very subtle level, signals of interest; your pupil dilation will change, your level of focus will be changed, your movements will be different. And these are things that other people will read very carefully at the unconscious level and be influenced by.

So if your own signals, which are going out, are saying “I’m bored, I’m disinterested, I don’t want to know any more”, well the other people will respond to those signals by shutting down, or getting annoyed, or just losing interest in the conversation themselves.

So there are two simple solutions to this problem when you learn hypnosis online. The first solution is what a great therapist, called Carl Rogers, called ‘having a high unconditional regard for the other person’.
Now, no matter what you think of that person normally, whilst you’re building rapport hypnotize me online you must, inside your mind, convince yourself completely and 100% that whatever the other person is saying is worthy of respect.

Now I happen to think that that’s a good way to view people anyway.

But to have a high unconditional regard for someone else will help them to open up, because suddenly all the signals coming from you are saying, “Whatever you say, you will not be criticised, you will not be attacked”, which makes them feel safe enough to begin to share the feelings and ideas that actually characterise rapport in the first place.
Another, and slightly more obvious way of doing this is what’s called to ‘track back’.

Track Back is similar but different to ‘active listening’.
In active listening you’re told, “When you listen to what someone says, then repeat what they’ve said to you in different words so that they know that you’ve heard them”.

Now there’s a big problem with active listening; and it’s that language has a neurological effect on people. There’s a difference between someone saying, “The baby was in my arms”, to someone saying, “I was holding the infant”. Whilst the information may be the same, the actual emotional tone is very different.

It actually fires different parts of the neurology, and is understood differently on an emotional level.
So, if someone says, “Well, I was holding my baby in my arms”, and then you reply [in very formal voice] “Well, so you were holding the infant”, the problem is at that point the person feels that you’ve somehow misunderstood (because you’ve missed the emotional undertones of the conversation).

The solution is to ‘track back’ – to actually use the same words and the same tonalities that someone else has been using.

Well, let’s give you an example. If I say to you, “Well, I was walking down to the shops and, you know, a person just jumped out at me and scared me”…
A Track Back might track that same information and say, “Oh, so you were walking down to the shops, and then suddenly someone jumped out and they scared you.”

Notice that I’m using the exact same language and reflecting it back on to them. This goes back to the idea of ‘matching and mirroring’ someone, but I’m doing it
in a conversational hypnosis style so that it fits the context of what I’m doing.

Another way that you can actually employ a ‘track back’ frame when you learn hypnosis online is to say something like, “Oh, let me just make sure I’ve got this right. You want to do this.” And then you repeat the exact same words back to them.

 

Matching & Mirroring

Well, some of you will be aware of the idea of matching and mirroring. Basically, what matching and mirroring means is: when you copy someone else’s behaviour – their movements, the tilt of their body language, their signals and their hand gestures etc – at a level where they perceive it unconsciously but are not consciously aware of it, at that time you tend to build a very strong rapport or connection with the other person.

Now this is something very important. Something that a lot of people get wrong. The reason that matching and mirroring works is because it is perceived outside of ordinary conscious awareness. And the reason that a lot of people who try to apply matching and mirroring get into trouble is that, when the other person becomes aware that you’re copying them, they start feeling upset or somehow feel like you’re taking the Mickey (making fun of them).

It’s very, very important that if you are going to use matching and mirroring, it stay outside of someone’s perception.

Let’s look at an example from an actual research study. A Study on Matching & Mirroring In this study, a whole bunch of people were given a presentation – a pitch if you like – by a virtual robot. Now this virtual robot was programmed to match their body language. What would happen is that specific things like head tilt, hand gestures, body lean, were measured as the people were watching the presentation. And then the virtual robot would mirror these things, would actually adopt the same kind of positions with respect to head tilt and hand gestures and body tilt, as the people were watching, but they were given an exactly 3-second delay to make it less obvious it was happening.

Now, at the end of this they found out which of the presentations were the most persuasive. The interesting thing is that of all the people that took this study, two-thirds of the people didn’t realise that the virtual robot was matching and mirroring their behaviour. And those people tended to be persuaded by the very ideas that the robot, the virtual robot, that was presenting. Now, and this is all something that you need to be aware of, about one-third of the people found out, half-way through the presentation “oh, this robot is actually mimicking what I’m doing”, and at that point they were less persuaded than a control group.

So in other words, if you’re matching and mirroring someone and they find out you’re doing this, you’re likely to break rapport and actually get the opposite reaction to what it is that you want. So later on in this programme we’ll be having a look at a technique that will allow you to match and mirror someone unconsciously, so that it’s very, very unlikely that they’ll ever find out that you’re doing it. For now just be aware that matching and mirroring is a powerful technique, but it has limitations. Which is why on the rest of this programme, on this CD, we’ll be looking at how to go beyond the traditional rapport methods.

How do YOU choose to see the world?

Rapport Mistake Number 2

Now the second mistake that people with typically make is that of trying too hard. The problem with trying too hard is very much related to being too nice to someone else. If you try to hard you sub-communicate – you send signals out – that you’re desperate; you’re desperate for the company, you’re eager to please.

Now, the problem with being desperate is very few people actually like to have desperate people hanging around them. Somehow it makes them feel obligated or under pressure. But, for whatever reason, it actually begins to shut down communications again.

So, if you’re trying too hard to establish rapport with someone else, the other thing that can happen is you activate what’s called The Law of Reversed Effect.

The Law of Reversed Effect says ‘the harder you try to do something, the more likely it is you’ll fail’; because you’re consciously interfering with an unconscious process.

So, when building rapport with someone else, the idea is to fall into this rhythm where rapport happens: to maintain a sense of, “these are the things that I need to do to make it happen”, and then get out of the way to allow your unconscious mind to make these things actually occur.

Excerpt from: The Power of Conversational Hypnosis

Rapport Mistake Number 1

The very first thing that people do wrong is they try and be nice to people.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you go out there and start being nasty to people or stop being nice. It’s fine to be nice, but only to the extent that it doesn’t break down your ability to share or communicate thoughts, ideas and feelings with someone else.

The trouble with being nice is that sometimes people are nice at the expense of the real communication that needs to be happening, which actually then breaks down rapport. It’s stops helping and starts becoming a barrier.

Let’s give you an example of a school teacher. A school teacher who wants to be nice to the pupils may let them get away with anything they are doing, and thereby, bit by bit, she starts losing respect, stops being able to present ideas in a way that students will listen and, at the end of the day, it starts going horribly wrong.

The same thing can be true of a client. Let’s say we have a lawyer talk to their client. There are some things the client needs to hear upfront which are not necessarily pleasant; which will not necessarily be nice. But if the lawyer does not have the courage to turn around and say, “Hey, this is how it is and you’d better sort something out”, then he’s doing his client a disservice, because he stops communicating fully.

Now, everyone has actually experienced this when they talk to someone, and maybe you have friends yourself, that you’ve been kind of – I don’t know – casually acquainted with for many years. It’s almost like there’s a social veneer that you can’t get past.

Why? Because you’re too busy being polite, too busy trying to be nice, to actually get through to the real person; and to allow the other person to see the real you as well.

So, Rule Number 1 is… Be nice only to the extent that it’s not interfering with the process of communicating feelings and ideas with the other person.

Excerpt from: The Power of Conversational Hypnosis

let’s begin by having a look at what rapport actually means. One way to define it is as a ‘close and harmonious relationship in which two or more people understand each other’s feelings and ideas, and can communicate well’. We’re going to use that definition as our guidelines as to how to create rapport. Now to some extent everyone knows how to build rapport; because you’ve done so with other people.

You’ve built rapport with your friends, your family, and even with your working colleagues. So what is it that people traditionally do in order to build rapport? Well, the traditional view is to just be nice to someone, maybe a little complimentary, and then to find common experiences which you can share – maybe a shared interest in sports, or perhaps you went to the same university, or came from the same town. Now all these things actually do work. They actually will create a sense of rapport with most people.

The trouble is that most people don’t realise why these things work, and so begin to apply them in situations when they no longer are appropriate. The basic rule of thumb behind building rapport with others is that people like people like themselves. So at some level, showing that you’re like another person, will allow the other person to feel safe or comfortable around you, and be happier to communicate and share ideas. That’s why common experiences work; because you’re saying, at some level, “look, you are I are alike. We come from the same place. We think the same thoughts. We have the same values.” That’s what really makes this thing work. So how can we take this concept, refine it, and make it more powerful?

Excerpt from: The Power of Conversational Hypnosis