Exceptional Leaders are experts at creating rapport and trust

Interpersonal relationships work best if there is a base of trust and rapport, for instance, between a manger and his team, a salesman and his clients. First impressions are made usually in the first few seconds of meeting someone and can be hard to change if you create the wrong one! We have all had an experience of meeting someone and either instantly liking them or disliking and mistrusting them. Often, this has nothing to with what was said, more an ‘intuition’ or feeling. These instances show us how important our non- verbal impact has on others and if our visual cues don’t match the words coming from our mouths, the wrong impression can be created.

The ice skaters Torvill and Dean, are the best examples I can think of how our body language creates amazing partnerships. They have an instinctive rapport with each other and their dancing is faultless, all with body language and no words! Meeting the horses in our equine assisted development workshops is a very quick and easy way to learn about our non- verbal language and the impression we create. Observing the herd behaviour, you can see the smooth easy interactions and the fluidity of the horses together. They are so tuned in to each other they seem to move as if one body. By virtue of their honest and non- judgemental feedback we can quickly learn how to establish rapport and trust with them. This can effectively be translated into our human relationships both at work and in our personal lives.

You all have the skill of reacting to each other’s body language and can hone and perfect this using equine assisted development. You can use this same open, honest and interested to know you approach with the people you meet. Very soon you will find that people are instinctively drawn to you and will reflect your behaviour.