Additional information

Below is some more information linked to the modules that form the training sessions. However, the links below also give you access to some other useful communication websites. Please feel free to contact us and suggest your own!

Additional information for Module 1

Beyond active listening: building rapport While active listening is a great way to listen to other people, often we also want to
ensure that other people listen to us. We may find people are sceptical, don’t trust us or take a while before they will really listen to us. If we understand how to establish and maintain rapport, how to establish it and how to maintain it – we can more quickly get to a point where we are listened to and trusted.

Rapport is defined as “a relationship of mutual understanding or trust and agreement between people”.

Building rapport quickly is a key skill if you are dealing with members of the public. It is not just essential in salesmen: we can all benefit from having people like and trust us more quickly.

Key techniques for building rapport:

Like them and be positive towards them - if you show that you like someone, they’ll start to like you
Be aware of body language - many people reveal more with the way they move and hold their bodies than with what they say
Speak the way they do - by using similar language to the person you are speaking to, you will make them feel more comfortable so that they relax and trust you more easily

Like them

If you want someone to like you and trust you, act like you like them. The easiest way of doing this is to tell yourself that the person you are talking to is someone you already like and trust. If you do this you’ll naturally send out signals – through your expressions, speech and body language – that tell the person that you feel positive towards them and that they can relax and trust you.

This very simple technique is used by most salesmen and many other people who want to make friends quickly. ‘Fake it til you make it’ – act like someone is your friend until it actually becomes the case. You can trust your judgement to ensure you don’t overdo it and come across as fake.

Body language

Body language is a very complex area, but the basics of it are actually quite simple:

Remember to look for it - if you take the time to look at someone’s body language you’ll find you can instinctively understand a lot about it

Be aware of ‘open’ or ‘closed’ language - people who are comfortable in a situation open up their body language; unhappy people close down, folding their arms, covering their body, turning away

Hands - can tell you a lot! Look at the gestures people make with their hands: they can be welcoming or hostile (e.g. clenched fists) but the person doing it will often be unaware of what they are displaying

Mirroring - When we are comfortable with someone, we often subconsciously reflect back their body language, standing in the same way and moving in the same way. By deliberately mirroring someone, you can often set them at ease

Unconscious cues - we often communicate our feelings in gestures without realising it by doing things like nodding or shaking our heads, sighing, yawning or more subtle indicators

Mixed indicators - if a person is trying to appear a particular way but actually feels differently you will often see a mix of body language. If a person smiles with their mouth but their eyes remain turned down they are trying to show they are pleased, but the emotion is insincere. If a person nods and says yes whilst their body language remains very closed and defensive, they are not comfortable with the decision they are making. By noticing how different expressions and gestures go together, you’ll actually find it quite easy to notice when someone’s actual feelings contradict the image that they are trying to project.

Reading body language

Open posture

Here you can see some classic open body language. Beyond the welcoming smile you can see that this person has his arms by his sides, not shielding or protecting himself. The slight head tilt shows that he’s interested in what’s directly in front of him and the open hands show a lack of tension.

Overall someone exhibiting this body language will be easy to approach and speak to and they are likely to be receptive to what you have to say. It will be relatively quick and easy to establish rapport with them as they welcome your contact.

Closed posture

Closed posture This image demonstrates classic ‘closed’ body language. Closed body language is seen in people who are uncomfortable, nervous and want to keep themselves separate and distant. Closed body language is shown by the arms being crossed across the body (forming a barrier and also allowing the person to ‘hug’ themselves), the eyes are somewhat down and there is a frown lowering the brow.

A person who is demonstrating this body language will be difficult to communicate with, and will usually listen from a sceptical or hostile standpoint. It will be essential to establish some kind of rapport with them before trying to communicate further.

Closed conversation

This image shows a closed conversation. These two people are involved with talking to each other, and wouldn’t really welcome other people joining them.

You can see this because their focus is entirely on each other - they are facing directly towards each other, their feet are pointed directly towards each other and they have allowed no physical space for anyone else to comfortably join their conversation.

This doesn’t necessarily indicate hostility, just that they are more interested in each other than they are in anyone else
right now.

Open conversation

These two people are having an open conversation - that is, they are inviting other people to join them if they wish to. This can be seen by the fact that they aren’t facing directly towards each other, but their bodies are creating an open angle, facing outwards to the rest of the room. They are literally creating a space for people to join them.

Not only their bodies are in this open shape, but their feet are too - their feet are set in at an open angle, welcoming in other people. You can also see the woman is showing her palms as she is gesturing - a typical expression of openness, welcome and honesty. This all indicates an open, friendly, and welcoming encounter is occurring.

Speak as they do

We more naturally feel at ease with people who speak in the same way that we do. At a subconscious level, we pick up on the phrases, word patterns and metaphors that are used in speech. If we recognise someone’s way of speaking as similar to ours, we will feel that they think the way we do too, and therefore feel more at ease with them.

Most people favour a ‘sense’ in the way they think and remember. The majority of people are primarily visual – they will have strong visual memories of events and will often think in pictures. But quite a few people think in sounds – they will remember the noises in memories and recall the way people spoke to them easily. A minority of people remember physical sensations and emotions most strongly, and may have difficulty remember what things looked like but will always remember how they made them feel.

When we speak we tend to favour words and phrases and metaphors that reflect the way we think and remember things. We can hear what a person’s primary sense is just by listening to the words they use.

Feeling people are more aware of sensations and emotions so they’ll use phrases like “I’ve got a good feeling about this,” or “I’m touched by that”.

Hearing people are more aware of sounds so they’ll use phrases like “That sounds about right…” or “Listen to me…”

Visual people emphasise sight in the way they speak, saying things like “Do you see what I mean?” or “Look at it this way”.

Studies have found that if you notice the phrases a person tends to use and reflect similar phrases back to them, they will ‘warm’ to you more quickly and be more at ease with you. This makes communication more fluid and simpler.

Some salesmen are trained in using this technique. If you were looking at a new phone and used a phrase like ‘I like the sound of that’, they would start talking about the audio features of the phone, while if you’d said ‘I can see the benefits of this model’ they would start talking about how attractive the phone is and how good it looks.

But this technique can do far more than help you sell – by using it, you can make people feel more comfortable with you and your conversations are likely to progress much more easily.

Asking questions to clarify what is really bothering someone

Sometimes the issue that someone tells you they are upset about is not what really is bothering them. If we try to deal with the first thing they complain about – the ‘presenting issue’ - we may find it impossible to do so, or they may not be satisfied even if we do make some progress. If we find out what the real issue is, rather than the presenting issue, we can achieve far more and make a major difference.

Have you ever been in a situation where something really minor really upsets someone out of all proportion? This is usually because the issue that someone complains about isn’t the real issue that they’re upset about. It wasn’t the glass you broke that was important, it was the fact the glass was a wedding present; it wasn’t being five minutes late, but the impression you gave that you didn’t care about the
meeting; it wasn’t the comment you made to someone, but the fact you reminded them of someone who used to bully them years ago.

If we just deal with the presenting issue – arguing that it’s ‘only a glass’, or ‘traffic was bad and five minutes isn’t that much’ – we will make no headway at all. By taking the time to find the underlying issue behind a strong emotional reaction, we can discover more about a person, their needs and how we can really help them.

Questions to ask:

Ask what matters/clarify
“What’s worrying you about X ?”
Go one level deeper
“And what’s so important about Y to you?”
Reflect back
“So what you feel important about is………”

At work, we may have people bringing us complaints, problems and issues that seem very minor to us, or which we know we can’t help with at all. By taking the time to find out what’s going on beneath the surface we can have a much more powerful and useful conversation, and often do far more to help the individual concerned.

Task - Using active listening in your life

The best way to learn the power of active listening is to try it in a range of situations. Notice a situation in your home life where active listening might help – if you have teenage children who like to complain, try taking the time to just listen to them without trying to solve the problem they’re complaining about. You may be surprised to discover that the problem actually vanishes when they’ve talked about it for long enough.

You might also try using active listening on a partner or friend who has had a bad day or has run into a situation at work – don’t try to help directly, just listen, and they may find a solution themselves through talking.

In your professional life, the next time a person approaches you with a complaint or difficult issue to solve, give yourself five minutes just to listen to their problem before you actually try to solve it.

Encourage them to keep talking, use the active listening technique of reflecting back to them what you are hearing and give them time to express what they are experiencing.

Who did you talk to?

How long did the conversation last for?

How easy was it to just actively listen and not get involved?

How did the person you were talking to initially react to your use of active listening?

How do you think they were feeling at the end of the conversation?

What might you do differently in future?

Last Updated on Tuesday, 15 March 2011 12:54

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