How to build rapport: communication techniques that actually work

A meeting opens and something feels off. The agenda is clear, the data is solid, but the room stays guarded. Nobody pushes back, nobody leans in, and the conversation that should move things forward just sits there. That gap between what's said and what's actually understood is rapport, or the lack of it.

The stakes are real. A 2025 study from Indeed found that 40% of workers report some level of distrust or uncertainty toward their leaders and colleagues. Gallup's [AT1.1]global workplace research puts the broader cost in sharper focus: only 23% of employees are engaged at work, with disengaged workers representing an estimated $8.8 trillion in lost productivity worldwide. Trust and communication sit at the heart of both problems.

Rapport is the sense of trust, connection and mutual understanding that makes communication work. It turns a stakeholder update into a genuine conversation, a first meeting with a new colleague into the start of a working relationship, and a difficult conversation into one that still ends in progress. The good news: rapport isn't a personality trait reserved for naturally charismatic people. It's a communication skill, built through specific techniques anyone can practise.

This guide breaks down what rapport is, why it matters in professional communication and eight practical techniques for building it, whether you're leading a team, managing stakeholders or navigating organisational change.

What is rapport?

Rapport is the degree of trust and mutual understanding that allows two people to communicate openly and productively. It's not about agreement, and it's not about mimicking someone else's behaviour until they warm to you. Rapport is the foundation that makes honest, useful communication possible, even when the conversation is difficult.

Building rapport matters across a wide range of professional contexts:

• Workplace relationships: colleagues who trust each other collaborate more openly and resolve friction faster.
• Stakeholder communication: stakeholders are more likely to share real concerns with someone they trust.
• Leadership: leaders with strong rapport can influence and motivate without relying purely on authority. Gallup research shows managers account for 70% of the variance in team engagement, making the quality of communication a direct performance lever.
• Client and customer relationships: rapport underpins retention, loyalty and honest feedback.
• Negotiation: trust makes it easier to find solutions that work for everyone involved.
• Teamwork: rapport reduces friction and supports psychological safety within teams.
• Change communication: people are more likely to engage with change when they trust the person delivering the message.

Why is building rapport important in communication?

Rapport makes communication more effective, not just more pleasant. When people trust each other, they share information more freely, ask questions instead of staying silent and raise concerns before they become bigger problems.

The evidence is substantial. Gallup's meta-analysis of more than 112,000 business units and 2.7 million employees found that highly engaged teams outperform others across 11 key business outcomes, including productivity, customer loyalty and staff retention. Organisations with best-practice engagement average more than 70% engaged workers, against a global average of just 23%.

Trust also determines who speaks up. Mental Health America's 2024 Workplace Wellness research found that 63% of Generation Z employees don't feel confident expressing themselves at work. When psychological safety is low, so is the quality of information leaders actually receive. Rapport directly addresses that gap.

Strong rapport can help you:

• Encourage openness and honest information-sharing
• Reduce misunderstandings before they escalate
• Build the kind of trust that supports long-term working relationships
• Make difficult conversations more productive, not just more comfortable
• Strengthen collaboration across teams and departments
• Support influence that doesn't depend on formal authority
• Improve stakeholder engagement during periods of uncertainty or change

It's worth being clear about what rapport can't do. It doesn't guarantee agreement, and it isn't a shortcut to getting people to say yes. It simply creates the conditions where genuine communication becomes possible.

How do you build rapport? Eight practical techniques

1. Listen to understand, not just to respond

Active listening is the foundation of rapport. That means giving someone your full attention, resisting the urge to interrupt and acknowledging what’s been said before responding. Most people can tell the difference between someone listening to understand and someone waiting for their turn to talk.

Gallup’s research offers a practical cadence here. Managers who hold one meaningful conversation with each team member per week, focused on recognition, goals and strengths, see measurably higher engagement. These conversations don’t need to be long; 15 to 30 minutes is enough when they happen consistently.

In person, active listening might mean maintaining comfortable eye contact, putting your phone away and allowing someone to finish before responding. On Teams or Zoom, it can mean closing other tabs, avoiding typing while someone is speaking, using brief verbal acknowledgements and leaving a beat before responding so you don’t accidentally talk over them.

In either setting, paraphrasing what you’ve heard and asking a clarifying question before offering your own view can show that you’re genuinely engaged.

2. Ask thoughtful, open-ended questions

Questions signal genuine interest. Open-ended questions, the kind that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, invite people to share priorities, concerns and context you might not otherwise hear.

Instead of asking “Are you happy with the project timeline?”, try “What’s your biggest concern about the project timeline right now?” The second version opens a conversation. The first closes one.

In person, you can follow up naturally on something the other person has just said. Online, where conversations can feel more transactional, deliberately leaving room for questions such as “What are you seeing from your side?” or “Is there anything we haven’t covered?” can help create the same sense of openness.

3. Find genuine common ground

Shared interests, experiences or goals create a natural sense of connection, but only when they’re genuine. Forced small talk or manufactured similarities tend to have the opposite effect.

Look for real points of connection, such as a shared challenge, a common goal or a similar experience navigating change, and let the conversation find them naturally rather than engineering them.

In person, this might emerge through informal conversation before or after a meeting. Online, it can be as simple as spending the first minute of a call checking in before moving straight into the agenda, or picking up on something a colleague has mentioned previously.

4. Adapt your communication style

Different people respond to different levels of detail, pace and formality. Adapting your style isn’t about adopting rigid personality-type labels; it’s about paying attention to how someone communicates and meeting them there.

Some stakeholders want the headline and the bottom line. Others want the full context before they’ll engage with a recommendation. Reading the room and adjusting accordingly is a core rapport-building skill.

That applies online too. One person may prefer a quick Teams message, while another responds better to a scheduled conversation or a more detailed email. Choosing the right channel can be just as important as choosing the right words.

5. Pay attention to non-verbal communication

Tone, pacing, eye contact and body language all shape how a message lands, often alongside the words themselves. That said, non-verbal cues aren’t universal. They vary across individuals, cultures and contexts, so treat them as signals to explore rather than fixed rules to apply.

In person, you have more access to body language and changes in posture or expression. Online, those cues can be harder to read, particularly when cameras are off, so tone, pauses, participation and changes in someone’s usual communication style may become more important.

If someone’s tone shifts or their engagement seems to drop, that’s worth noticing and, where appropriate, gently checking in on rather than assuming you know exactly what it means.

6. Show empathy without making assumptions

Empathy means recognising that someone else’s perspective, concerns or pressures are real and valid, even if you don’t fully share them. It doesn’t mean claiming to know exactly how someone feels.

The cost of getting this wrong is well documented. APA-cited research shows that when employees feel distrusted or not cared for, they report lower organisational commitment, reduced psychological safety and higher stress.

In person, empathy might be shown by slowing the conversation down and giving someone space to explain what’s happening. Online, it can mean resisting the urge to fire back an immediate solution in chat and instead acknowledging what they’ve said first: “That sounds like a genuinely difficult position to be in.”

7. Be clear, credible and consistent

Rapport isn’t only built in conversation. It’s built over time, through reliability. Doing what you say you’ll do, communicating honestly even when the news isn’t good, and following through consistently all strengthen trust in ways that no single conversation can.

That consistency matters across channels. If you promise to follow up after an in-person meeting, do it. If someone raises an issue on Teams, acknowledge it and come back when you said you would rather than letting it disappear into the chat history.

The cost of inconsistency shows up in the data. The 2025 Indeed study found that 40% of workers report distrust or uncertainty towards their leaders, a figure that points to gaps in consistent, honest communication over time. This technique plays out over weeks and months rather than in a single meeting. That’s also what makes it one of the most powerful.

8. Remember that rapport takes time

There’s no single technique that creates instant trust. Meaningful professional relationships are built through repeated interactions, consistent behaviour and small moments of genuine connection, accumulated over time. 

That can look different depending on how you work. In person, rapport may build through regular conversations, shared meetings and informal interactions. In hybrid or remote teams, it may come through consistent check-ins, thoughtful follow-ups and making space for conversation that isn’t purely transactional. 

Patience is part of the process, not a sign that something isn’t working.

What does rapport-building look like in the workplace?

Meeting a new stakeholder: Weaker rapport-building jumps straight into the agenda. Stronger rapport-building starts by asking what matters most to them in this project, then genuinely listening before presenting a plan.

Speaking with a dissatisfied customer or client: Weaker rapport-building moves quickly to solutions or justifications. Stronger rapport-building acknowledges the frustration first, asks clarifying questions and makes sure the person feels heard before problem-solving begins.

Managing a difficult conversation: Weaker rapport-building avoids the issue or delivers it bluntly without context. Stronger rapport-building is direct but acknowledges the impact, invites a response and stays consistent afterwards.

Joining a new team: Weaker rapport-building tries to prove expertise immediately. Stronger rapport-building asks questions, listens to how the team already works and earns credibility gradually.

Communicating organisational change: Weaker rapport-building relies on a single top-down announcement. Stronger rapport-building involves ongoing, honest communication with space for questions and concerns throughout. This matters: Gallup data shows that more than half of global employees (59%) are quietly disengaged, with culture and communication among the top areas they'd most want to change.

What are the most common rapport-building mistakes?

• Trying too hard to find similarities. Forced connection reads as insincere and can undermine trust rather than build it.
• Dominating the conversation. Rapport is built through listening, not through filling every silence.
• Excessive or obvious mirroring. Subtle alignment in tone or pace can help, but mechanical mirroring of gestures or language feels performative.
• Asking personal questions too early. Trust builds gradually; pushing for personal detail before it's earned can feel intrusive.
• Treating rapport as manipulation. Rapport works because it's genuine. Using it purely as a tactic to achieve a specific outcome tends to backfire.
• Assuming one communication style works for everyone. What builds trust with one person may feel inauthentic or off-putting to another.
• Confusing rapport with agreement. Strong rapport can exist alongside genuine disagreement. The goal is understanding, not consensus.

How do strategic communicators build rapport at scale?

The same principles that build rapport between two people also apply when organisations communicate with employees, customers, communities and other stakeholders. Strategic communicators scale these techniques by:

• Understanding audiences before crafting a message, rather than assuming what they want to hear
• Listening before communicating, through consultation, feedback channels and genuine engagement
• Recognising different perspectives across diverse stakeholder groups
• Building credibility through accuracy, transparency and expertise
• Maintaining consistency across every touchpoint, from internal memos to public statements
• Responding transparently, especially when the news is difficult

The data reinforces why this matters at scale. Gallup estimates disengaged employees represent $8.8 trillion in lost global productivity. Organisations that invest in trust-based communication consistently outperform on productivity, retention and customer outcomes. This is where interpersonal rapport-building connects to broader strategic communication, stakeholder engagement and organisational trust. The techniques are the same; the scale and complexity are what change.

Can you learn to become a better communicator?

Yes. Rapport-building, like any communication skill, improves with deliberate practice and reflection. Paying attention to how conversations land, seeking feedback and consciously applying techniques like active listening and adaptive communication all build capability over time. 

For professionals looking to go deeper, UTS Online courses including the Master of Strategic Communication, Graduate Certificate in Strategic Communication and Graduate Certificate in Corporate Communication build broader capability in strategic communication, stakeholder engagement and organisational influence. Subjects such as Driving Stakeholder Engagement, Communicating Risk, Issues and Crises and Strategic Campaigns develop skills in building stakeholder relationships, navigating reputational challenges and planning communication around clear objectives — for professionals ready to lead communication at a more strategic level.

Rapport is a skill, not a personality trait

Building rapport isn't about being the most likeable person in the room. It's about listening with genuine attention, asking better questions, adapting to the person in front of you and following through consistently over time. These are learnable, practical skills, not fixed traits some people have and others don't.

The research is clear: trust and communication quality directly shape engagement, productivity and organisational outcomes. With 40% of workers reporting distrust toward their leaders (Indeed, 2025) and only 23% of employees globally engaged at work (Gallup), the opportunity to build stronger professional relationships through better communication is significant.

Start with one technique. Listen a little longer before responding in your next meeting, or ask one more open-ended question than you normally would. Rapport builds in small, consistent moments, not in a single conversation.

For professionals ready to build these skills at a strategic level, explore UTS Online's Master of Strategic Communication, Graduate Certificate in Strategic Communication or Graduate Certificate in Corporate Communication, and turn communication capability into a genuine career advantage.

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