Persuasion – Rapport, Anchoring and making the request

NLP practitioners often direct their focus to therapy. NLP has had astounding success in the clinic, but what many people forget is the many ways in which NLP can be useful in the typical daily setting – the home, the office, school… whatever.

Wherever communication is happening, you can use NLP, to help you become a success. Ultimately we all want what we want, and often we need to persuade to get it.

One of the most basic ways you can become a more persuasive person is to create a profound rapport with everyone you deal with.

Have you ever been in a conversation and found yourself totally engrossed and focused on what the other person’s has to say? Perhaps you may have smiled when they smiled, found yourself comfortably moving closer to them or maybe (if you were walking) your footsteps becoming in sync. In other words, have you noticed when you were in rapport with that person?

NLP helps us become consciously aware of what behaviours deepen rapport. Gaining rapport with someone means you are understanding and appreciating their model of the world (yours does not change). In NLP the conscious deepening of rapport is called Pacing.

To pace a person, first we must calibrate.
We must recognise what representational system they are favouring and their emotional state. We can do this by observing their non-verbal communication.

If someone is favouring their visual system, they are likely to be speaking quickly with a relatively high pitch. During pauses to think they will most likely direct their gaze upwards.

Someone orientated around the auditory system will speak a little slower, often with a melodious tone. They will probably look to the right or left when thinking.

A kinaesthetically focused person will speak slowly with a deeper voice, frequently pausing. They will gaze downwards towards their hands, often making use of gesture to explain themselves.

To pace our acquaintance, all we need to do is match or mirror his or her body language. Some sensitivity is needed here – a NLP newbie who reads a book on rapport and begins to ape everyone he/she meets is soon going to become unpopular.
Mirroring must be subtle, and above all, it must be flexible. Non-verbal communication is like a dance, the moves don’t always exactly match – they complement each other.

A good technique that seldom goes wrong is to match your “partner’s” voice (tone, speed etc). A visual person will quickly get frustrated with someone kinaesthetically focused – their slow response time makes them seem they aren’t listening. The kinaesthetic person will get annoyed at the visually focused person’s prattle – they feel hurried, as though the visual person doesn’t appreciate their responses.

Now that your voice is deepening rapport, let’s focus on non-verbal language:
Start to subtly mirror their movements – as they raise and lower their hand in gesture, nod your head. When they sway their body from side to side, roll your head from side to side. Find the right balance between direct mimicking and interpretive mirroring. They should remain unaware (consciously) of you active attempt to mirror them.

Most importantly you should pace their breathing. Visual people will breathe a little faster (from the shoulders), the auditory focused people breathe from the abdomen (slower) and the kinaesthetically orientated will breathe deep down, towards their stomach (much slower). Match breathing to match state.

If you mirror successfully you’ll actually feel the bond in your conversation deepen.

Finally, use your language to strengthen the rapport. You’ve identified their representational system – use language that mirrors their state.

“I see what you mean, that’s something to look forward to”

…is an example of visually orientated language. An auditory based similar sentence might be:

“Speak your mind, I’m hearing you loud and clear”

For the kinaesthetic person: 

“Hold on a moment, I’m still getting to grips with the idea”

Using the appropriate language will help your acquaintance feel that he or she is really getting through to you (and vice-versa).

Hopefully by now you and your acquaintance are deep in rapport, and you’ve just remembered that you’re trying to persuade this person of something – don’t worry, now we’ll look at getting them into the state of mind where they will be most useful to you (insert evil cackling laugh here).

We are now moving from pacing to leading. You will now be aware of what emotional state they are in, so let’s change that state.

Bring the conversation around to you, and start to tell them a story. When I last did this I suddenly exclaimed:

“Oh but I haven’t told you about my weekend camping yet…”

Basically any opportunity, for you to graphically discuss an emotional experience, is what you want. Continue your story, peppering it with language from their favoured representation system. Because of your level of rapport, they will actually feel the elation you felt at catching that big fish. They will feel your sense of appreciation when you tell them how you wife was so generous, how she happily cooked the fish for you, how satisfied she felt at a job well done. (Note the language I used, this person was a very kinaesthetic thinker)

This person is now in a fantastic frame of mind to do you a favour. Through your artful story they have appreciated your model of the world and are feeling pretty generous.

If this is your boss, it’s probably not appropriate to ask for a raise straight after your story. Nor would it be normal to ask you neighbour for the loan of his brand new ride-on lawnmower, right after discussing fishing.

What you want to do is anchor this state, so that you can trigger it when the time is right to make your request.

Anchoring is common in NLP, but usually you anchor positive states for yourself. Here we anchor a positive state of someone else’s, but it is also for our benefit.

So, to backtrack a little, while you were describing the crux of your fishing tale, you “absentmindedly” tug your earlobe (any gesture you never make unconsciously will do), you say the words in italics in a certain (different) tone of voice (remember to be subtle) and you stare straight into their eyes (and they see you doing this).

Congratulations! You just anchored the state your story produced, in all three representational systems.

Now let the conversation wander where it will, maybe even go talk to someone else for a bit, because all you need to do is tug your lobe, look into their eyes and use that voice and they’ll be sent straight back in that state.

In my initial example, I told someone about a camping trip. This person was in fact someone who I wanted to borrow an expensive camera from. My request (half an hour later) went something like this:

“So… (tugs lobe, stares into eyes, adopts voice)… can you see yourself lending me that new Panasonic sometime… how about tonight? (tugs lobe again)”

In conclusion, the Panasonic was a lovely little unit. It was used to film some fantastic interviews. I took it home, plugged it into my editing suite and put together a promotional video that made my clients ecstatic. The organisation I borrowed from has always maintained a “no loans” policy. They continue to do so, to this day.

I hope I don’t have to draw you a picture.