Welcome to Connections

Your weekly pānui for tips, tricks, and strategies to deepen your connection with your tween, teen, or adolescent.

Kia ora Reader

The truth is, rapport is not really secret … it’s just hiding in plain sight. It’s so natural, so normal that we forget all about it!

I’ll give you the quick version in this pānui, if you’d like a bit more detail head over to the blog here. ​

Rapport is the way our bodies communicate. It happens naturally when groups of people are together and when we’re intentional about noticing and using it, rapport helps enormously in smoothing our communication pathways.

Salespeople are specifically taught rapport as a tool! They use it to align with a prospective customer. And if we’re the prospective customer chances are, we won’t even realise they’re doing it 🤭

Given these are our precious rangatahi we’re choosing to align with for the purpose of guiding them through the challenges of adolescence, I think we use all the tools we can - starting with rapport.

The Basics:

1. Notice the level you are both on. If they’re sitting, you sit. If they’re standing, you stand. Ideally you want your eyes to be at the same level which may mean you’re leaning on something or you invite them to sit at the table with you. For the younger adolescent the offer of sitting down to talk something through over a hot chocolate will be so adult it's irresistible.
2. Check on your hand position and move your hands so they’re in a similar position to theirs.
3. Do the same with feet if it’s applicable.
4. Throughout the conversation keep your eye on their body position and if they move, subtly move yourself to the same position.
5. After they speak, nod.
6. When you speak, pause and let them nod. If you don’t get a nod from them you’ll know they’re not in agreement so call it, “I can see you’re not in agreement here. What’s your thoughts?”
7. Zip it and listen to what they have to say, making sure you keep an eye on body position.

That’s it!

It’s really about pausing and taking the time to have a conversation with your adolescent, rather than an exchange of words without listening fully to each other.

Our rangatahi are precious. Slowing down to listen to them fully and completely sends them the message that you do care.

Head over to the blog if you’d like to read a bit more. Now’s the time to practice a back-to-school conversation with your young person - take the plunge and switch it up with some intentional rapport and see how different the conversation feels 🥰

Kia pai tō wiki ... have a great week

Melanie

Melanie Medland is a communication coach, an author, and a course creator.​

More at www.beautifulconversations.co.nz​

Click here for your complimentary strategy call.