Integrate!

We often invest a huge amount of time and effort in planning our message. We want it to be clear and strong and motivating and bullet proof. We argue and support, find more evidence, and rehearse. We work hard to make the message as strong as it could possibly be. And when we fail to be heard as we want to be heard, we blame ourselves for delivering it the wrong way. This makes it harder the next time we have to walk into a conversation or a presentation and deliver a strong, clear message. What if our delivery was fine and the problem was that the audience was not ready to hear us? The most powerful messages all begin with the same thing: the speaker finds a way to say to the audience, "I see you." © Can Stock Photo / ueuaphoto The one thing that you can be sure every audience wants is a mirror. Before they care about how you see your subject matter, they want to know how you see them. When you reflect what you see in your audience, you do two things: 1) help them...

No picture in the post this week, and no politics. Just three communication principles applied to the US Election results. The first principle: matching states (pun unavoidable) creates rapport. Trump matched a mood of discontent and anger that is apparently epidemic throughout most of the states (as in United States). Literally, he won because he matched the state in more states (that's the way the Electoral College works). It's not clear to me that Trump did more than mirror: I haven't seen evidence that he can lead from the state he has matched into a more useful state. But when people looked at him, they saw their own state reflected back. Since states shared are states amplified, he has successfully created a wave of anger and discontent and that wave has carried him into office. The second principle: repetition creates reality. This is basic to advertising: if we hear something repeatedly, it will stick in our brains and when we are not actively engaging our criti...

If you google "matching and mirroring" you will find page after page of articles and videos mostly explaining that the practice of matching and mirroring someone else's physiology or language will allow you to build rapport. I am no longer sure that's entirely accurate. Here's what I have come to believe after almost ten years of teaching NLP and observing rapport as it develops: mirroring and matching is a sign of rapport. Working at mirroring and matching (doing it deliberately) signals that you are interested in entering into rapport. Paying attention to someone else is always a good way to start a relationship. The most productive way to think about matching and mirroring is to notice that it gives you the ability to be much more perceptive about the person with whom you want to connect.  When you are matching them, you do not have to rely on external observation of their state. You can notice how you change as you move into their movements, mannerisms a...