Ways to Build Rapport

Have you ever felt truly appreciated? Showing people that they are appreciated is essential when it comes to building and maintaining relationships. Whether you’re showing appreciation towards friends, family or your colleagues at work, it’s important that you’re expressing authentically, and that you understand every person has their own unique way of receiving recognition and truly feeling appreciated.

This is particularly important in the workplace, where the primary reason people leave a job is not because of pay. It’s because they don’t feel appreciated, trusted or valued.

You see, your colleague might feel appreciated when you thank them for their hard work during a staff meeting, you, on the other hand, may prefer it when your boss seeks you out privately, giving you specific positive feedback.

There’s no cookie cutter approach when it comes to acknowledging an individual. There’s actually five different appreciation languages, and each person has a primary and secondary way they like to receive appreciation. By becoming familiar with the ways people in your workplace like to receive recognition, you’ll be able to give it authentically and genuinely, which will help you build rapport and long lasting relationships.

What you’ll hear in this podcast:

• What the five languages of appreciation are
• How to authentically appreciate someone
• How not showing genuine appreciation towards your co-workers will affect your margin
• The importance of being specific when you acknowledge someone
• What to consider before recognising someone
• The best ways to show appreciation in the workplace
• How showing appreciation will motivate your co-workers and increase productivity

To listen to the full audio, CLICK HERE.

Building rapport is important for all of our relationships. We build rapport with our family and friends, our co-workers or bosses, our clients or customers, sometimes even with the girl behind the checkout counter. It’s important to not only understand how to build rapport but also how to maintain it and know whether you are coming across to others the way that you want to come across.

There are times when you may say something with one meaning, but it’s heard by the other person in a completely different way. Learning about how other communication styles interpret meaning and may be the difference between making the sale or not. Or between getting that promotion or not.

Using curiosity and selective amnesia as tools in your communication toolbox can help you to diffuse potentially difficult situations and get back on track to building rapport and nurturing a healthy relationship.

To listen to the audio of this episode CLICK HERE

Hello and welcome to the program. I’m so glad you’re here. So this past weekend, Seth and I were talking about an employee banquet that had happened with his work and we were talking about the awards that were given out and how the different people feel about the awards. One of the topics that came up was there was one award where everyone kind of thought it was a joke. Anyone who gets the award doesn’t really appreciate it because it’s voted on not by the other employees, but it’s kind of picked out by those who are in the main office and it’s really whoever’s underfoot that they decide to acknowledge and celebrate at that particular banquet and it got me thinking about appreciation and motivation and how you feel appreciated at work and what that means for your coworkers, your team members and your clients. But first I want to give a shout out to Ben Twenty five, 19 who gave us a five star rating and review on stitcher.

Ben Says, whether you are an entrepreneur with a handful of employees or running a team. This podcast has you covered. Great show. I look forward to Tuesdays. Thank you, Ben. I really appreciate you taking the time to rate and review the show. Now when I’m recording this, it’s the week of Valentine’s Day and one of my favorite books is the love languages. When I discovered the different love languages and how people feel loved and appreciated, it really resonated with me and I know that my. I think I’ve mentioned before on the podcast that my daughter, her love language, my oldest is gift giving and she gives the best gifts. She’s really thoughtful. She knows you. She knows the gifts to give I. that’s not my love language. I don’t really think about gifts. You know, if I see something and I think she might like it all, I’ll pick it up and send it to her, but when I received gifts, it’s.

It’s nice. It’s not the way I feel loved. My love language is acts of service. If you do something for me, you know, if you fill up my car with gas while you’re out, that I feel loved. I feel appreciated and luckily Seth’s love language is acts of service too, so it works out great. Well there is also a book about appreciation that these guys wrote the love languages guys and it’s all about the way that you can show appreciation at work and what it really means for your bottom line because frankly, people don’t leave jobs because they’re not getting paid enough. More often than not, the primary reason that people will leave a job is because they do not feel appreciated. They don’t feel trusted or valued. It’s more of a psychological reason that leave, not necessarily a financial one. So understanding and showing appreciation is a good investment.

It’s a good investment in your relationships and in your business. So today we’re gonna. Talk about how you, how this can show up at work in words of affirmation, quality, time, acts of service, tangible gifts, and physical touch. I want to add a note in here that there is. We usually have a primary and secondary way that we feel appreciated. It’s the same with the love languages. We’re not all one thing. We’re many shades of gray, so today let’s take a look at how you can authentically appreciate someone. Now I use the word authentically because obviously if it’s not authentic, it’s contrived. People can tell when you’re just checking off a box and when you show appreciation in the way that people feel valued and appreciated genuinely, that it really goes a long way. One of the things that these guys found and the book is called appreciation in the workplace by Gary Chapman and Paul White.

What they found in their study is that when it is not authentic, when it’s contrived, it backfires in a horrible way. Think about an experience that you’ve had. Maybe you were shopping. This actually happened to me. I went to go get a dress for an event and I went to the local mall and I went into macy’s and I was ready to buy. I just needed to get address and get gone and I really hate shopping so generally I’m in a hurry when I go shopping because I want to get out of there, but I was looking for a dress and none of the salespeople would help me. Even when I went up and asked a question about specifically what I wanted or where I could find it. They were not very helpful. They didn’t really want to be there and I certainly did not feel appreciated.

I ended up leaving the mall that day with no dress and just deciding to wear something that I already had in my closet and frankly I have not been back to that macy’s sense. You know, back in episode eight, I was um, it was a millennial episode with Lucas. I remember he said, just treat me like a human being. Just treat me like I matter. And he said that several times he really felt unvalued where he was at and he also felt almost inhuman. He left that job. I think that was the job at.

Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. He did not feel appreciated at all. And it really hits home psychologically when you don’t feel appreciated. I mean, just think of the language that he used. Treat me like a human being. One of the things that they discovered in this book is that we have a primary and secondary appreciation language, so I’m going to use words of encouragement first, appreciating someone in an individual way, like I mentioned, make it personal about them and about something that they’re doing something about their character, not just, hey, you really did that one task well, something like, you know, I saw you working with client x and I really liked the way you xyz. Do you see what I mean? So for example, Lucas, I saw the way that you were interacting with that client and the smile that he left here with, you know, you’ve really made him feel great.

I love the way that you interact with our clientele. Something like that. Think of specific ways that you can show appreciation. Now, something else that they discovered is that 50 percent of people do not like to be appreciated verbally in a mass setting, like in a meeting. They kind of don’t like to be called out in that way. Now, this may be because they’re introverted or extroverted, but large group settings is not the best place to recognize somebody unless you know that, that is there particular language, the way that they like to be appreciated. Now this kind of gets to the fact that you need to know your clientele. You need to know your coworkers. You need to know the person that you want to acknowledge and build better rapport with. On last week’s episode, Nikki Rousch and I talked about what you need to know to build a better rapport.

Going back to the banquet, a lot of people do not appreciate the award that was given because of the way it is. It is chosen. Now, if they went around and pulled all the other people and said, well, who do you want to recognize? Who Do you think has gone above and beyond? Who has done an incredible job and you would like to acknowledge this year and it was voted on by all of the employees and the staff. Then that would be valued. Getting acknowledged by your peers. It makes you feel good and you know that you’re doing the right thing. Getting acknowledged by your peers actually meant more to the individuals than getting recognized from the hierarchy as it were, and there is a real cost associated with not feeling valued. There’s a real cost to disengagement. They found that disengagement lowers productivity and increases theft and illness by 50 percent.

Just imagine what that costs you as a business owner, what it costs your team as the team lead, what it means to your clientele and your bottom dollar turnover costs companies megabucks. There’s onboarding, the whole seeking process and the higher up the position is that they’re trying to fill. The more it costs. Remember, people don’t leave usually for money issues. It’s interpersonal reasons that they leave. Think about a job that you may have left. What was the reason? Was it solely financial or was it that you didn’t feel valued or appreciated or enjoy what you were doing? And when you use appreciation, when you show appreciation, use it equally. Don’t consistently pick just one or two people to to highlight. You need to appreciate each and every member of your team, and interesting thing that I found in reading this book is that the peer support and appreciation is just as an even more important than manager only appreciation when your team members appreciate what you do, it really makes a difference to you.

So think about that with your coworkers. If you’re not a leader, if you’re an employee, how can you show appreciation to some of your teammates and if praise is to be appreciated. If this praise is to be effective, it has to be specific. Character traits are more difficult to identify, but they are so affirming and personality traits can also be affirmed. They found that the best way to show appreciation and praise is in-person and in small settings, like smaller environments, they’re very powerful. Now, some people like to get written notes and that can be more age specific. I know I like to write letters and thank you cards and things like that, but you know I’m 50 so maybe it’s just my generation. Know how people like to be appreciated and what they were there. It is a large group setting or a small group setting and they did find that 50 percent of people do not like large group recognition.

Remember that and that 50 to 60 percent of people prefer prefer that it’s in the smaller one on one way, so that’s really around the words of encouragement and the words to show appreciation. Another one is acts of service. How can you help out your staff, your clients, your coworkers, what can you do and genuinely ask them, is there anything I can do to help you? And you know most people right away go, no, no, no, I got it. I’m good, but stick with it. Say, I see that you are trying to get all these emails out. Is there something I can take off your plate or is there a response that I can shoot off for you that will help clear up your workload? When you genuinely ask, if you can help someone and you get specific, it shows that you see them, you see what they’re doing and you genuinely want to help.

That’s a way that the acts of service love language can work for you at work. It may also be something as simple as grabbing a cup of coffee for someone. I, I hope you guys can’t hear that. We’ve got a new neighbor across the street and he’s got a couple of hunting dogs and they bark almost nonstop. We have a lot of cats in the neighborhood too, and I’m sure they’re just driving these dogs crazy, but I can hear it and I hope that you can’t hear it. So in thinking about that acts of service component, what would you like to have someone do for you? You know, a lot of us, we don’t want to lean on other people. You know, a lot of us are perfectionist or pleasers and we don’t want to burden someone else with our workload or ask a favor of someone.

That’s why genuinely going up and giving specifics on ways that you might be able to lighten the load for one of your coworkers. Your clientele or your staff can really be effective and impactful and pay attention to how people feel appreciated. Do they respond in a real, genuinely grateful way? Well then that’s probably their their love language at work, or I guess I should say their appreciation language at work. Think about this too with the words of affirmation language. When you write it down, does it really resonate with whoever you’re trying to build rapport with or when you say it out loud to them? Is that the way it resonates the most and remember we have a primary and secondary way that we feel appreciated. Just like with the love languages. Another appreciation language is quality time, spending quality time with people. Think about an experience that you had with someone that you worked with where maybe you got together after work as a team.

When you’re showing appreciation, when it comes to quality time, you must be present. You have to keep eye contact and make sure that you aren’t checking your phone, checking your email. You need to 100 percent be present and that way the person whose language is quality time, they can sense that. They can feel that and it all gets back to intention and being genuine. You can’t build rapport when you’re being disingenuous as a matter of fact. That’s the number one way that you kill rapport is by being fake and people can sense that. You can sense it. Alright, and that brings us to tangible gifts or like I mentioned with my daughter, grace gift giving. This can be awards or bonuses or gift baskets. Some people feel really appreciated when they’re given a plaque with their name on it and a recognition it can be in a public or a private way, but they like that tangible award.

Other people are really motivated by bonuses, by, by the bottom dollar, by some finances, right? Pay attention when you are going through these different appreciation languages with people, what resonates, what hits, how do people respond when you give them a gift or a bonus or a plaque or an award? Do they really appreciate it? What do people think about it? I mean, I think about the banquet and that seth and I were talking about this weekend, it’s not appreciated and it almost kind of is a bit of a report breaker amongst the team members because the person who got the award kind of feels like a little crunchy because that in general, that means that he was at the right place at the right time. Now they touched on the appreciation language of physical touch and this being the year 2019, what they discovered is don’t even do it.

Don’t go down this road. I mean if you have a great team win and you genuinely high five someone, that’s fine, but physical touch does not really belong in the workplace and if that is someone’s primary appreciation language, it’s usually not their primary appreciation language at work. So the ones that we are really talking about here today are the words of affirmation, quality, time, acts of service and gifts. So I mentioned that my love language is acts of service. Well, that’s at home at work. My appreciation language is quality time. I like working with a group with a team. It’s important to me to bond with the people that I work with, to have time, face time, one on one with each other, so what your love languages at home doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s going to be your appreciation language at work. So what this means for you is if you are interested in building a genuine rapport with someone or if you’re interested in motivating your team, you need to genuinely show appreciation in the way that your people are the person that you’re trying to build rapport with feels appreciated and this will motivate them.

It will motivate them to perform better. And remember that statistic, that disengagement happens when you don’t feel appreciated and that disengagement leads to 50 percent hike in theft, illness, and low productivity. You know, like you, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of jobs. I’m assuming that most of you have had a lot of jobs over the years. I think of the ones that I really enjoyed, the ones that I love to go to and the other ones where it was really just a slog, you know, I was getting through it and getting a paycheck to pay the bills. What made the difference there? Think about jobs that you have had and once that you loved, what made the difference? Did you feel like a team? Did you feel appreciated? Did you enjoy the work you did? Well, when you do, you’re more productive. You’re more motivated to get to work and to do your job.

Speaking as a client, one of the reasons that I just Adore Nikki rousch and I’ve been a client of hers, is that she is very, very genuine and she goes above and beyond when she works with you. She also shows appreciation and shows that she knows you. Her business is based on genuine relationship selling and when I work with her, I know that she genuinely appreciates me and she shows me in the way that I feel appreciated. It can make a difference. I refer her all the time and people are raving fans of hers, so what could genuine appreciation and rapport building do for you, not just in your work, not just with the people that you work with or for, but in all of your relationships. It’s important to feel appreciated and I hope that this episode has helped you with the different ways that you may be able to show appreciation, not just to build better rapport, but to motivate and to help people be more productive and just really be happier.

Emotions are a powerful thing. They have proven that we, we feel our emotions physically. They show up in our body. If you haven’t already, go to difficult happens.com and scroll to the bottom of the page. I know I got to move it up to the top anyway. Difficult happens.com and click on the secret gifts in every emotion. It’s a free series that I have that talks about each one of the emotions and what their purpose is, what their gift is for you. Once you know what each emotions purposes, it can help you so much with relating to people and understanding yourself better, and I’ve said it wants us at at a hundred times personal development leads to professional development. Right? On next week’s episode we’re gonna. Talk about people’s favorite ways to communicate and what that means to you, the different ways of communication and why you should care and until next time, be honest, but kind. Be Firm but fair and be in touch. You know, I love to hear from you.

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Resources:

Appreciation in the workplace by Gary Chapman and Paul White.