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Creating rapport, or putting people at ease, is an essential skill in personal and professional relationships.

Techniques include active listening, mirroring posture, language, emotion, and focusing on process.

Ultimately, it is about deliberately crafting an emotional climate that creates safety.

Therapist training spends a lot of time talking about the importance of building rapport with clients. But rapport isn’t just for therapists: good salespeople and businesspeople, even dating sites, talk about the same skills. Rapport means building a solid relationship with someone new by helping them feel at ease and, through verbal and nonverbal cues, creating first impressions that foster connection rather than distance.

Here are seven therapist-textbook tips to add to your rapport-building repertoire:

“They talk, you listen” means giving the other person your full attention and space to say what they want to say, without turning into a head-nodding inert blob or filling verbal gaps with information about your latest me-too experience.

But they often need more space than you initially think. If time is a factor—a therapist’s dilemma—feel free to interrupt them with your concerns: “I’m sorry to cut you off, but I’m getting confused about the point of your........

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