Building Rapport

How To Be More Assertive: Part 8

It is easier to get what you need from someone (and to find out what they need) if you have a good rapport with someone. That involves:

• Using active listening skills to hear what they are saying.
  
  
• Making empathetic statements, that demonstrate you understand their situation and needs.
  
  
• Asking them questions about their views, or the problems they see, or the reservations they have
  
  
• Finding things that you have in common and talking about them
  
  
• Dealing with them face to face (not by telephone or email) and looking them in the eye
  
  
• Taking an interest in the whole person, and their wider interests, not just their work or the task they are currently working on.

Building rapport is analogous to strengthening a bridge over a river: the stronger the bridge, the more it can carry. That is, the better rapport that you have in a relationship with someone, the more you can ask of them.

How To Be More Assertive

What is
assertiveness?

Four styles

Rights and
responsibilities

Positive beliefs

Being direct

Expressing
disagreement constructively

Managing the other
person's behaviour
by enforcing
a process

Building rapport

Focusing on facts

Focusing on
consequences

Stopping put-down
behaviour

Text Book Techniques

Personal
action planning