This is why we come to work!

At a recent Rapport-Based Communication leader group meeting, I asked practitioners to share a moment when they felt like “this is why I came to work” when they were interacting with a person they support.

One person related a story about a recent interaction and end the story with a big smile and talked about “the eye contact and the way he smiled at me”.

A second practitioners shared a recent situation when they experienced a lot of eye contact when they were supporting a young person who very rarely looks at others.

A third person shared a story about an interaction when they were tapping the table in the same way as the young person they were supporting. The interaction touched the person because there was a lot of smiling and eye contact.

The prevalence of the ingredients of rapport in these stories was very striking to me. In their reference to social attentiveness, positivity or interpersonal co-ordination, the practitioners were not yet consciously using the language of rapport-based communication, they were simply speaking about the qualities of the interaction that touched them the most. To me, this was a validation of the importance of rapport and how the language of rapport-based communication language articulates the social experiences most valued by practitioners.