The Key to Creating Group Rapport

When I first started out in the persuasion business I would have huge anxiety for about a week before a big seminar. I was impossible to be around. My family would sequester themselves and avoid me. Even my dog steered clear of my office somehow intuitively knowing I was in no mood to play. Not only was the gear up for these events intense and chaotic, but the let down after, not because the event was not successful, but because the energy I spent and absorbed and that worked its way though me, was immense.

Slowly my comfort with public speaking increased and i became more confident of the effect I was having on students and clients. Along the way I picked up some techniques to create an even faster rapport and ease in the process which is responsible for lessening by far, the anxiety and quickening, by far, the connection and cohesion.

There's one technique for creating an amazing group rapport which I use often. Simply, I imagine a shovel, like a huge snow shovel, as wide as the audience is and this shovel sits at the back of the room waiting for me to use it. The shovel (in my imagination) starts just over the tops of my audience and curves back around.

In my imaginings, I'm drawing energy through my feet and projecting it out through my eyes laying it gently over the top of the audience, like a blanket resting on their heads.

At the back of the room, the snow shovel catches this blanket of energy, whips it around as it comes to my feet, and hits a box which I imagine is sitting in front of me. I consider this box to be a filter.

I'm bringing in everybody's energy, and this filter eliminates the negativity. I never want to take on all that myself, unfiltered. So I see the energy come back, and as see it coming to the box. As it hit the box, it becomes completely clear.

Then energy then comes right up through my feet and out through my eyes to the back of the room where the shovel is, and back up. That's how it starts.

This process starts slowly and builds up speed and intensity until I can simply step aside and watch it moving faster and faster.

The energy begins to have a life of it's own and as I do my seminars, I let this process happen the entire time.

When I do trainings of 250, 300 people or more, it bonds the group like nothing I have ever seen.

Of course this bonding and rapport could have everything to do with what I'm saying, the words I'm using, the presuppositions, the patterns. . . It could be because we are all there for a common reason, to learn and work together and experience curiosity and fun. For me, however, this exercise dramatically increases my ability at the front of the room.

When you work with a big group think of this as just another frame you can use to aid your presentation.

Kenrick Cleveland teaches strategies to earn the business of affluent clients using persuasion. He runs public and private seminars and offers home study courses and coaching programs in persuasion strategies.

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