Assertive or Engaging?

The requirement to be assertive and forceful in order to get what we want is a legacy of our historical past, particularly in the working environment.  Performance and progression has been seen to be a function of how successfully a person can have themselves seen and heard through the adoption of assertive behaviour.  This thinking facilitated a ’90’s explosion of assertiveness training, where participants were encouraged to pare down submissive behaviour and ramp up assertive behaviour to create a behavioural state that was seen to be effective in influencing, negotiating, communicating and managing.

‍

It was quite some time before the more enlightened leaders discovered the fundamental flaw with ‘assertiveness’.  People were using the same behavioural approach to get what they want with everyone they came into contact with.  Compliance was experienced with only a few contacts and relationships began to suffer.  

‍

The recognition of the psychology of response illustrated that people who become submissive in the face of assertive behaviour do so out of discomfort, anxiety or even fear.  The unconscious creation of such negative emotions is definitely not a productive and mutually gratifying foundation on which to build effective relationships.

‍

Fortunately, progressive thinkers have uncovered a more resonant and pleasantly experiential form of engaging communicative behaviour.  ‘Rapport’ is a commonly used word these days and many claim to be doing it across a myriad of life contexts.  How many of us actually know how to build rapport successfully in order to engage others?

‍

At its most basic level, rapport is a process of matching and mirroring which facilitates communication at the unconscious level.  It works on the theory that people like people who are like them.  Following this premise, an assertive approach may be useful when communicating with people who themselves have assertive behaviours and the opposite effect will be true for those whose preferences are not assertive.

‍

Extensive experimental research over many years has given us some very interesting observations about how we communicate.  Any communication is:

7% the words that we use

38% the tonality of our voice

55% our physiology

‍

Please consider for a moment that only 7% of your communication is made through a conscious connection with the words that you say, the rest is delivered through an unconscious understanding.  The process of rapport at a deep and effective level, addresses 100% of your communication, enabling engagement with both the conscious and unconscious minds.

‍

In influencing, negotiating, leading, managing and communicating to engage, rapport is THE process for getting the results you want, underpinned by a win-win philosophy of mutual gain and respect.  People will engage with you because they see value in the relationship rather than through negative emotive thought.

‍

Rapport is far deeper a process than simply matching and mirroring physiology.  True rapport is established through the matching of representational systems, of voice tone, pitch and timbre, of idiosyncrasies, of breathing and eye focus, of habitual strategies and Meta Programme preferences, of values and beliefs, all noticed and utilised by well-honed sensory acuity.

‍

Creating an easily learnable process of rapport was one of the primary tasks which faced the creators of NLP and over the years, that process has been continuously developed.  We now have a process of rapport which enables those who learn it to consciously communicate at the unconscious level, making engagement easy and removing the requirement to adopt uncomfortable behaviours that fall outside of your normal functioning.  This process forms part of our Enhanced NLP Coach Practitioner Certification Programme and we look forward to showing you how.

‍