Building Rapport – Effective Communication

There are many skills that attribute to effective communication. The building of rapport and the reflection of feeling are the two that will be covered throughout this essay. For each skill the effectiveness on discussion, the impact of the skill on another person and the potential difficulties of ineffective or absent use of both skills will be discussed. The building of rapport is the action you take to develop a trusting relationship with the person whom you are communicating with, the aim to make them feel comfortable.
Whilst rapport is a skill itself it contains many sub-skills within it in order to make it successful. These include attentiveness, common grounding, courtesy, collaboration, respect, connecting and sharing information behaviours (http://www. sciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S0022435908000511). Being able to communicate to a person through common grounding is an excellent method of building rapport and is most easily achieved through asking appropriate questions, once you know facts about the person whom you’re speaking to it is easier to relate and begin the building of a relationship.
A study conducted supports that asking questions builds report. “Rapport building activities in corner shop interactions” ran activities that included conventionalized forms of communications such as how-are-you and health inquiries, individualized exchanges of conversational work around topics (such as politics, schools) and create play with language. The reflections of these three activities expressed that the asking of questions in various forms built rapport with the customer and the shop keeper, thus supporting the statement that asking questions helps build rapport (http://onlinelibrary. iley. com/doi/10. 1111/j. 1467-9841. 2004. 00259. x/pdf0). Rapports effectiveness on discussion is evident that it assists in keeping a flowing and understanding conversation through the connecting and sharing of information. A discussion where rapport is most likely to be effective is the conversing between a psychologist and a patient whom has been mentally abused by their mother growing up.

Practitioners are encouraged to build rapport for many reasons, the most vital reason is for a positive client outcome. The psychologist would need to take into many factors when conversing with the patient. A steady relationship through common grounding with the patient would have to be constructed first before the psychologist would attempt in getting the patient to open up. They would need to respect the issue they are facing and not be too forceful to get them to open up.
With the rapport build to a steady relationship the client will find it easier and more comforting to open up to a person whom they can relate to, thus resulting in positive client outcome. To support this outcome a cohort study was carried out, 354 patients participated in a non-profit drug treatment program and 223 patients participated in a profited programme. The study discovered that low rapport levels in counselling treatment resulted in poor treatment outcomes and high rapport had higher treatment outcomes (http://www. ciencedirect. com/science/article/pii/S174438810500071X). If the building of rapport is not present in communication there are many pitfalls that can occur due to its absence. TALK ABOUT PITFALLS Failure http://onlinelibrary. wiley. com/doi/10. 1111/j. 1939-0025. 1985. tb02706. x/abstract Building rapport (the things you do to develop a relationship with someone and help them feel comfortable communicating with you) Reflection of feeling (paraphrasing the emotional aspects of a person’s message)