Give the other person a fine reputation to live up to.
—Dale Carnegie
In this chapter we’ll continue to explore how to build rapport with an emphasis on exercises you can practice on your own, as well as tactics you can try out with the people you meet every day in your work environment.
Let’s be up front about one very important fact. Most nonassertive people are naturally rather shy. Some are moderately shy, and some are extremely shy. But if assertiveness is an issue in your life, the chances are you’re not a naturally gregarious, life-of-the-party-style person. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It just means that you have to be conscious of your personal style. You have to balance your natural tendency with something else—something that may not be as natural but that can be very beneficial to your life and career.
Even if you’re a very self-contained and solitary person, there are people in the world with whom you’ll find it easy to build rapport. In fact, there are probably a lot of people like that, regardless of what you’re like as an individual human being. The difficulty comes when you need to build rapport with people who are very unlike you. Often these are people whose interests and backgrounds are different from yours. Individuals who think and talk and listen differently than you do.
You can count on the fact that you’ll meet a lot of these diverse personalities in your working life. The higher up you move in an organization, the more diverse personalities you will encounter. In order to build a career that’s both successful and enjoyable, you can and must learn how to build rapport with personalities that might otherwise have made you somewhat uncomfortable, not to mention those that would have driven you completely up the wall. In the next few pages we’ll be looking at a number of the personality types you’re likely to encounter. We’ll then develop some tools and tactics to make sure that those encounters turn out in the best possible way.
Since ancient times, human beings have classified one another according to certain basic temperaments or personality types. The Four Temperaments, also known as the Four Humors, may be the oldest of all personality profiling systems—yet these principles are still very useful and accurate today. They can be traced back to doctrines of the Egyptian and Babylonian cultures, in which physical and emotional health were connected with the elements—fire, water, earth, and air. These ideas were further refined by the Ancient Greeks, so that these ideas came to dominate Western thinking about human behavior and medical treatment for more than two thousand years. Imbalance among the “humors” expressed itself through various behaviors and illnesses. Treatments were based on restoring balance.
In keeping with these ancient principles, we’re now going to look at four different categories of people; four difficult personality types that can create challenges in building rapport. While these aren’t reflective of all personality challenges you might face on the job, each of them presents specific issues with regard to rapport building. You’ll certainly find some of them easier to deal with than others, depending on what your own personality is like. In fact, here are a couple of questions you should be asking yourself throughout this overview:
• Which one of these categories most resembles me?
• What challenges do I bring to people who are trying to build rapport with me?
• Most important, while I’m trying to find easy ways to get along with other people, what can I do to make it easier to get along with me?
The Ultradriver
The first personality type we’ll discuss are the kind of people who are often described as hard drivers, peak performers, top achievers, or words to that effect. We’ll call them “ultradriver.” They see their business relationships as a hierarchy in which they’re determined to reach the top. Even if they haven’t reached that goal yet, they’ll still do their best to be one rung above you on the corporate ladder.
Regardless of gender, there are some people who see life as a zero-sum game: For me to gain, you have to lose. Every meeting, every phone call, every email, and every courier package is another opportunity for dominance and intimidation.
It’s not easy to build rapport with the ultradriver personality under any circumstances, and it’s especially difficult when you’re at the same level or below in the corporate hierarchy. But this kind of person is so common among high-level managers that you simply must learn how to get along with them. What needs to be done?
First, realize that the ultradriver’s behavior patterns are based on ego needs. Some of these people secretly believe that they’re actually inferior to everyone around them, while others truly are convinced of their own superiority. It doesn’t really matter. Your main task is to find ways to service their ego needs. When you do this correctly, they’ll be so gratified by what you’ve done that they’ll become surprisingly compliant. In short, they’ll like you. They’ll appreciate the fact that you see the world as it really should be—with them on top. Once you’ve created rapport in this way, you’ll be amazed at what a friendly person the ultradriver can turn out to be.
This sounds simple enough, but the hard part of dealing with the big ego of an ultradriver is keeping your own ego needs out of the encounter. To see how this works, consider the following example.
Randall is the owner of a company that supplies building supplies to customers around the world. It’s not a glamorous business, but over the years it’s been very successful. Randall is the kind of boss who keeps a very low profile. Rather than spend time at the country club or taking two-hour lunches, he likes to immerse himself in the nuts and bolts of the business (which is, quite literally, nuts and bolts). One of Randall’s vice presidents is a man named Ben, a very different kind of person from Randall. Ben likes the power and prestige that comes with holding a high rank at a successful company. He enjoys going to the restaurants, golf tournaments, and industry functions that Randall shuns. Randall himself is quite comfortable with that. He knows that he likes to stay out of the limelight, but he also sees the value of someone like Ben, who brings the company’s presence out into the world.
One day something very surprising happened. A close personal friend of Randall’s took him aside and revealed that Ben was portraying himself as the CEO of the company. He didn’t actually use those words, but in social settings Ben managed to convey the idea that he was the big boss. When Randall heard this, he thanked his friend for the information and said that he would speak to Ben about it.
Although Randall was surprised that Ben would misrepresent his role in the company, the more he thought about it, the less surprised he actually felt. Ben, after all, was a person who needed to feel like he was the top dog. He couldn’t really function unless he felt that way. And since he did do some valuable work, some space should probably be made for Ben’s ego needs. Since those needs weren’t going to go away, the only other alternative would be to fire him.
That same afternoon Randall asked Ben to come to his office. After a bit of small talk, Randall disclosed the rumor his friend had told him. “I’ve just heard something really strange,” Randall said. “I understand you’ve been telling people that you’re the head of the company—that you actually have my job.”
As soon as the words were out of Randall’s mouth, Ben began to stiffen up. He was caught, and he knew it. He was on the defensive, which was not a position in which he liked to find himself. Randall had to admit that he felt a certain amount of satisfaction in putting some brakes on this ultradriver. At the same time, though, Randall had decided not to make an ego investment in this confrontation. He wanted Ben to stop lying about his title, but he also wanted to keep Ben in the company for the company’s own good.
As Ben sat there squirming, Randall said something that Ben didn’t expect. “I’m not really all that surprised by what you’ve been doing,” Randall said, “because, after all, there’s really a lot of truth in it. We both know that you contributed mightily to the work here. In fact, your efforts have provided much of our success.”
As Ben tried to decide what to say, Randall continued. “The problem is, Ben, it creates a lot of confusion when you talk like this, even if there is truth in it. It also causes a certain amount of pain to me. So I’d like to ask you to knock it off, for my sake and for the sake of the company. We both know how valuable you are around here, and that’s what really matters. Do you understand what I’m trying to say?”
Actually, Ben still wasn’t sure that he did understand what Randall was saying, but it didn’t really matter. On the one hand, he was extremely grateful that he wasn’t getting fired. On the other hand, his ego was ready to believe that what Randall said was actually true. In any case, Ben decided then and there to keep quiet about who did what in the company. To say he felt rapport with Randall would be putting it much too mildly. He felt tremendously grateful to Randall, and he also felt just a little bit fearful of him in a way that he had never experienced before.
As a general rule, what the ultradriver wants more than anything else is recognition for his or her talents and contributions. Once again, this desire may be based on insecurity, or it may come from genuine egotism. You don’t have to figure that out. You’re a businessperson, not a psychoanalyst. Don’t get in a power struggle with an ultradriver. If they are making a real contribution to your enterprise, tell them so. Without question, that’s the best way to build rapport with this type of ego-driven person.
Having said that, we also have to face the fact that sometimes ultradrivers leave you no choice other than to banish them, and you have to be able to do that, or they will eat you alive. From a historical point of view, one of the great ultradrivers of the twentieth century was General George S. Patton. Early in World War II, Patton did a great job leading troops in North Africa and Sicily. He did such a great job, in fact, that he started to act more like a king than a general. By that time, plans were under way for the Normandy invasion in June 1944. General Dwight Eisenhower realized that Patton couldn’t be trusted to cooperate in a huge operation of that kind, so Eisenhower simply excluded Patton from taking part in the invasion. In an act that required a great deal of leadership and courage, he blatantly sidelined Patton, who felt angry and humiliated as a result. But Eisenhower understood both the strengths and weaknesses of the ultradriver personality. Once the invasion had taken place, he immediately began rebuilding rapport with Patton and quickly offered him command of a large body of troops on the Continent. Patton was still angry, but he couldn’t resist the bone that was being thrown to him. That’s the way it always is with an ultradriver. You’ve got to make them feel important, or else you’ve got to really put them in the doghouse for a while.
The Secret Agent
The opposite personality type of the ultradriver is not what you might expect. It’s not someone with low self-esteem who hides in a cubicle somewhere. No, the opposite of the ultradriver is a personality that we can call the secret agent. The secret agent has many of the same ego needs as the ultradriver but is much less obvious about it. This is a type of person who wants to be moved up but wants to do it in a very secretive way. Secret agents are very politically astute within the corporate setting. They’re very territorial. To win their confidence, you’ve got to make it very clear that you’re not going to diminish them in any way. This is different from the ultradriver, who wants outright praise and recognition. You don’t have to give the secret agent anything positive, but you do have to reassure them that you don’t have anything negative in mind. For secret agents, negative means anything that might encroach on their territory.
When we spoke about Ben, the ultradriver, we saw how difficulties arose from Ben’s habit of talking too much or, if not talking too much, certainly saying the wrong things. A secret agent will rarely behave in that manner. The problem with secret agents is they don’t talk enough. They don’t tell you things you need to know. Their natural tendency is to withhold information so that their possession of it can maximize their own sense of self-importance.
As a result, the goal of rapport building with secret agents is to draw them out; to create enough trust so that they emerge from their customary secretiveness. The best approach to take with a secret agent is to ask as many questions as possible. At the same time, you must make it clear that you have no hidden agenda for the information you hope to receive. You have no intention of using it to expand your own influence within the corporation, and you certainly have no desire to diminish the secret agent in any way.
Secret agents rarely achieve the highest levels of leadership positions. Those positions usually go to the ultradrivers. The truth is, though, secret agents don’t really want to be the official leaders. They want to have their private fiefdoms in which they can exert absolute power without being in the glare of the spotlight. So don’t feel you have to keep your own ambitions under wraps when you’re talking with a secret agent. On the contrary: Let the secret agent know that you’re aiming for the top, and let the secret agent also know that you’ll depend on him or her to be an important power behind the throne.
The Eager Beaver
So far we’ve written about building rapport with what might be called “difficult” personalities. With the ultradriver and the secret agent, it’s clear from the beginning that you have to make adjustments in your own personal style. To build rapport with these people, you have to understand their needs and learn how to meet them. There’s another kind of person, however—eager beavers. These personality types seem to be so likable, so compliant, so eager to please, and you need an entirely different set of people skills to deal with them.
Usually eager beavers are new to the corporation. They can’t wait to absorb the company culture, to go out to lunch with everybody, to work hard and get ahead. If you’ve been with the company for a while, you’ll find the eager beaver looking up to you with undisguised admiration. The question is, how are you going to respond to that? You might not take it very seriously, you might be flattered, or you might try to take advantage of the eager beaver in some way. From the viewpoint of rapport building, however, the best thing to do is to recognize the strengths of the eager beaver and also the weaknesses. These are people who do indeed have many strengths. They have a lot of energy, they’re usually very intelligent, and they buy totally into the collective enterprise of a corporation.
Here’s the one thing to take note of when dealing with an eager beaver: Nobody, or almost nobody, remains an eager beaver forever. You need to know this, not just for your business’s sake but for your own best interests as well. The key is, if you handle them poorly, high-energy eager beavers can quickly fall apart. They can go from being extremely helpful and efficient to being almost nonfunctional. They can change from being excited and naively confident to being hurt, depressed, and almost paralyzed. This all depends on how well you understand them and how well you put that understanding to use.
In the past few years, there have been several instances of journalists at major newspapers who got into trouble for fabricating or plagiarizing stories. One of the most flagrant of these stories involved a young reporter at the New York Times who seems to have been a classic eager beaver. Within the highly competitive culture of the newsroom, he presented himself as someone who was willing and able to work twice as hard as anyone else. He was the first one there every morning and the last to leave at night. In fact, there were many nights when he never did leave. He was literally living at his workstation, typing out copy at his computer terminal.
How did his supervisors respond to this eager beaver? Basically, they took his behavior at face value. He portrayed himself as somebody who was willing to do any job, no matter how much work was involved and no matter how impossible the deadline seemed to be. The senior editors simply shrugged their shoulders and gave him more work and more impossible deadlines. They figured, if that’s what he wants, that’s what we’ll give him. He seems to be a young superman.
In hindsight, of course, those editors can probably see exactly what was happening. If the young eager beaver was beating impossible deadlines again and again, one of two things had to be happening. Either the deadlines weren’t really impossible, or something not quite kosher had to be happening. Of course, it was the second of those options that proved to be true. The eager beaver was filing stories for the New York Times from all over the country, but he was never actually leaving New York City. In fact, sometimes he had never even left the New York Times building. His eagerness to please had turned into behavior that subverted the integrity of the whole company. What’s more, he now felt that he himself was being exploited, even though he was the one who had begged to be given more work. All that enthusiasm had turned to anger. In his own mind, his unethical behavior was justified because he had been given an unrealistic workload.
There’s a lesson here for rapport building with eager beaver personalities. Since they’re not able to put on the brakes by themselves, you have to help them do it. Above all, don’t just assume that they know what they’re doing. That’s definitely not the case. Don’t let them burn themselves out, because if that happens they can really do a lot of damage to themselves, and perhaps to you as well. Rapport building with eager beavers is a matter of helping them pace themselves. They may feel bad at first. They may feel that you’re trying to hold them back or that you want to keep them out of the limelight. They may even feel that you’re jealous of their talent and energy. Unfortunately, if you let them run, burnout is inevitable, and that’s bad for everyone.
The Burnout
The burned-out individual is another kind of person that’s very frequently encountered in a corporate environment. What’s more, you’ll need a special set of people skills in order to build rapport with them. It may take some work, but it’s usually worth doing. Very often these seemingly depressed individuals have some valuable knowledge and abilities. At the very least, they can give you insights on the corporate culture, which is especially important if you’ve just come on board. At best, they may be able to regain some energy and become real contributors. It all depends on whether you’re able to rehabilitate someone who has more or less given up on him- or herself.
When you’re dealing with someone who has lost enthusiasm and is just treading water, keep criticism to a minimum. In fact, this is a case when you should exclude criticism altogether from your rapport-building repertoire. Why shouldn’t you criticize somebody who’s obviously making a halfhearted effort? Because criticism is what they’re used to, what they’ve come to expect, and even what they want.
They’ll agree with you if you criticize them! They might not come out and say it, but on the inside you’re just saving them the trouble of beating up on themselves. That’s their comfort zone, and they’ve got to get out of that zone before they can be of any help to anybody. So be supportive. Express gratitude. Pat them on the back. Find a reason to say something good, and then keep saying it.
The greatest gift you can give someone who’s burned out in the corporate environment is the gift of hope. Don’t wait until they’ve done something good. Don’t make that gift contingent on some goal or performance. Give it right now. This is something that many people don’t understand about working with people. It’s not a matter of saying “Here’s what I want you to do, and here’s what you’ll get if you do it.” Instead, it’s rewarding even the slightest positive action right now. By doing so, you move the person toward the behavior you want. You create motivation and momentum. You get them moving under their own sense of power.
If you’re part of a corporate environment, I guarantee you that at this moment there are at least three or four people who fall into the category of employee burnout. If you think about it for a moment, I’m sure you could name them right now. Fundamentally, it doesn’t matter what level they’re at. No matter what their level, the basic personality type is the same. They’ve given up hope. They’re just going through the motions. They’re washed up on the beach and the tide’s not going to come in.
Think of a couple of these people who are in your workplace right now. You know who they are. Once you’ve done that, try this experiment. It’s an experiment in rapport building and in people skills, but it’s more than that. It’s an experiment in you, in your being a good person.
Find something to say to those two or three people that’s encouraging, reinforcing, and basically hopeful. Take a look at what they’re doing right now and find something good to say about it. Do this not once but several times. You don’t have to give this reinforcement every hour, every day, or even every week, but give it at least three times over a period of a month or so. Pay close attention to the results. You’ll discover how much difference the encouragement makes, just as Dale Carnegie did. Most important, you’ll begin to realize what positive impact good people skills can have on anyone and everyone. That’s more than just building rapport. That’s building success in the truest sense of the word.
Building rapport with other human beings, whether they’re difficult people or not, is not so different from any other endeavor. A certain amount of planning and foresight goes a long way. Ask yourself these questions as you consider how to build rapport with the people in your life.
What do you want to accomplish? It’s essential to have clear results in mind. This is essential in every area, whether it’s building your career or developing good relationships with the people in your life. What is the scenario you want to bring about? What is the outcome you want to achieve? It’s important to think clearly about this, and it’s even more important to take positive action based on your thoughts. All too often, people focus on what they desire to avoid instead of what they want to achieve. A very key people skill is the ability to move toward an identified destination rather than simply escaping an unwanted situation. The destination must be where you want to arrive. This is your purpose and your goal. What you want is much more important than what you don’t want. Along these lines, be sure to state your desired result in positive terms. Don’t say “I want to avoid a nine-to-five job.” Instead, make the phrasing positive and proactive: “I want to be my own boss and set my own hours.”
How will you evaluate your progress? Change is the one constant in the world. From minute to minute, nothing is the same physically, emotionally, and even spiritually. Whatever you may have intended, you need to look continually at the outcome of your actions to see whether you’re on the right or the wrong track. If something isn’t working, it’s just common sense to try something different until you get the result you want. What evidence can you produce to show that you are moving toward your goals in your dealings with other people? In the absence of tangible evidence, there is no way to measure progress toward the achievement of the outcome. Do you have more acquaintances that you can honestly describe as friends? Does your phone ring more often than it used to? Are you spending less time alone and more time with others? These are specific, verifiable changes. They’re real evidence of progress, not just feelings.
How can you adjust your actions in line with your evaluations? When you change your behavior, you should do so carefully. Take complete responsibility for your actions and the results. You can’t depend on anyone else to make changes. All you can do is change your own thoughts and behaviors. Then you must observe and respond to the results, which can manifest themselves in the way the behaviors of others also change.
What can you do right now to get started? Once you know your desired outcome you will be motivated to move toward it. If you know your present behavior is not getting the results you want in your interpersonal relationships, you need to do something else. Moreover, you must be prepared to keep changing and adjusting your actions until there is evidence you are moving closer to your goals. With respect to taking any action, the key phase is Do it now!
Results are what matter. Every interaction between you and another person has two components. The first element is what you intend to communicate. The second element—which is much more important—is what the other person actually takes in. Sometimes these two elements are one and the same, but, unfortunately, that is often not the case.
People often assume that once they “say their piece,” the job is finished. They assume that their message has been received. They hope that it has been understood and accepted—and if it hasn’t, they tend to place the responsibility on the other party. However, in terms of effective people skills, your work as a communicator is only just beginning when you have finished speaking. You must determine the extent to which your words have not just been heard but have been understood. To do this, you must pay close attention to the response you’re getting. If it is not the response you want, you need to vary your own communication until your interpersonal objective is achieved.
There are several major sources of misunderstanding in communication. The truth is, every human being has a different life experience associated with each word that’s heard or spoken. What one person means by a word is very often quite different from what another person understands by it. A second source of misunderstanding arises from the nonverbal components of communication, including tone of voice and facial expression. People respond to these as much as if not more than what’s actually said.
Your world is not my world. Or is it? Good communicators realize that the way they experience their lives may be very different from the experience of others. To put it another way, no two people live in exactly the same world. Every individual creates a unique model of the world and therefore inhabits a somewhat different reality from everyone else. Despite how it may seem, we do not respond directly to the world but to our experience of the world as we construct it. No one can say whether this experience corresponds to external reality or not—and it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is the “in here” that we interpret as “out there.” Your task is to move the person you’re talking with into the world you inhabit. This is really a multifaceted process. You must engage your partner physically, mentally, and emotionally.
Words are an imperfect representation of experience. Just as each of us has a different experience of the world, the words we use further complicate our communication. Language is a code to represent things we see, hear, or feel. People who speak other languages use different words to represent the same things that English speakers see, hear, or feel. Also, since each person has a unique set of experiences that they have seen, heard, and felt in their lives, their words have different meanings from each of them. Finally, some people are much more adept at verbal communication than others. Of course, vocabulary and educational level are factors in this—and they, in turn, are affected by many variables, such as the type of school one attended and learning talents or disabilities. Effective communicators work to maximize their ability to express themselves. They also realize that even if they do maximize their skills, miscommunications are still bound to occur, even when the meaning seems “obvious.”
Flexibility is always the key. Based on all the points above, it should be clear that the person with the highest degree of flexibility will be the most effective communicator. For example, if you have an extremely limited vocabulary, you will be able to communicate your message in a very limited number of ways. But the more words you know, the greater your options become. If someone doesn’t understand what you’re trying to say, therefore, you’re able to find other ways to say the same thing. Choice is always better than no choice, and more choices are always preferable than fewer. This is true with regard not only to the number of words at your disposal but also to your range of emotions and even to the variety of clothes you wear. If what you are doing is not working, you should have the resources to vary your behavior and do something else.
ACTION STEPS
1. List an individual in your life who is most like each of the four personality types.
Ultradriver: ———————————————
Secret agent: ———————————————
Eager beaver: ———————————————
Burnout: ———————————————
Do you judge any of these individuals in any way? If so, then perhaps you struggle with some of their attributes yourself. Reflect on each, and do an honest inventory of yourself, noting when you may behave like one or more of these four personality types. How might you shift that behavior to better serve yourself and those around you?
2. Make a list of those in your workplace with whom you find it easiest to build rapport. Take some time to examine why you find them easy to communicate with. Then make a list of those with whom you struggle. What steps might you take to feel more comfortable with them? How might you begin to build rapport with them?
3. Have you ever suffered from burnout? What three steps can you take to prevent yourself from burning out again?