Rapport

The Four Ways to Read People and Talk to Anyone in Any Situation

By: Emily Alison, Laurence Alison

Narrated by: Laurence Alison, Emily Alison

Brought to you by Penguin.

Get what you want from even the most difficult characters.

All of us have to deal with difficult people. Whether we’re asking our neighbour to move a fence or our boss for a pay rise, we can struggle to avoid arguments and get what we want.

Laurence and Emily Alison are world leaders in forensic psychology, and they specialise in the most difficult interactions imaginable: criminal interrogations. They advise and train the police, security agencies, the FBI and the CIA on how to deal with extremely dangerous suspects when the stakes are high.

After 30 years’ work - and unprecedented access to 2,000 hours of terrorist interrogations - they have developed a ground-breaking model of interpersonal communication. This deceptively simple approach to handling any encounter works as well for teenagers as it does for terrorists. Now it’s time to share it with the world.

Rapport reveals that every interaction follows four styles: control (the lion), capitulate (the mouse), confront (the Tyrannosaur) and co-operate (the monkey). As soon as you understand these styles and your own goals you can shape any conversation at will. And you’ll be closer to the real secret: how to create instant rapport.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2020 Emily Alison, Laurence Alison (P)2020 Penguin Audio

Excellent book if you want to improve interactions

Excellent book if you want to improve your interactions with others. This book has great advice, techniques, and guides.

Better than you think it will be.

This is a really good one to listen to, as it's applicable to your life immediately.
As an example:
I listened to the first few chapters the evening I purchased the Audible book. The next morning I had an encounter with a transient that had entered the property/area of my employment. I talked with the individual, and within a few moments he calmly left on his own accord without incident.

It was a very pleasant way to start a busy work day!

Worth It For Those In Sales And Service

Useful for working and improving relationships with managers, employees, and clients. I've used tit to establish mutual ground with aggressive, confrontational customers, stubborn, hard-driving manager, and employees who were unmotivated to put any effort forward. A very useful book indeed.

The best book I have read all year!

The best book I have read all year! Or should I say read to me; the authors (wife and husband, Emily and Laurence) themselves do a fantastic job of reading their own work. This is a must read, the book is well researched and provides practical real-world advice, whilst also continually engaging and entertaining the reader. Rapport is in essence, a book about you and your relationships with the people you encounter every day. It is a manual and plan for how to improve and continually work on your interpersonal relationships, with both the people closest to you, and the world around you at large. Drawing on the depth of experience and incredible research both the authors have obviously dedicated their lives to collecting and parsing, Rapport is a guidebook for connecting with people in a meaningful and honest way, and enabling the reader to contribute to the world by hearing and interacting with others. A thoroughly enjoyable read, I could not recommend it more highly.

Great Model for Better Listening & Understanding

Emily & Laurence Alison have done fantastic work at adapting their model of working in a high professional context with challenging people to how we can model their thinking and style of interaction in everyday contexts. A very workable model for both the beginner and more advanced communicator and interviewer. Essentially they are helping create workable steps to being a better modeler and listener - helping teach people how to view, understand, empathize with others from their model of the world rather than our own and, when needed, retain our own outcomes and needs in the interaction.

The drawback to the Audible version is that beginning in Chapter 5, the authors talk extensively about diagrams that we should use ... that include circles and answering questions -- and do not provide any PDF either with the audible download or online (anywhere I could find). This leaves the listener hearing about circles and using them for comparisons, and drawing lines .... with no visual context at all - making the Audible version less valuable as it leaves a huge portion of what is trying to be achieved by the authors, our introspection and self-modeling of our communication methods, out. This is frustraiting to say the least.

Real approaches for real life

The book uses stories and examples in a way that makes their messages click. The rapport acronyms mentioned are something I could see myself using at work and even in my personal life.


As I listened, I found myself thinking of specific people in my life who I could connect better with if I used the book’s lessons.

This book was recommended to me by a friend and after finishing it I’m glad I took the time to listen

where are the pdf's?

Very helpful and we'll written but without access to the diagrams and questions, the audible listener can either also buy the paperback or move on.

Top tier book

I’ve been fortunate to read several amazing books on effective rapport building and communication strategies and this book, by far, exceeds them all. I found myself repeatedly stopping the audio - which is expertly read by the authors - in order to write down yet another “golden nugget” of information useful in every aspect of my life. From start to finish, Laurence and Emily capture both your intellect and intrigue as they interplay personal stories and scientific findings to create a memorable and pragmatic listening experience. This is definitely a book I’ll listen to again and again. I cannot recommend it enough. Well done.

Fantastic reframing of communication

Emily and Laurence invite and challenge their readers to embrace good communication habits. Using a clear layout with easy to understand and remember examples and illustrations, this dynamic duo leaves their listeners feeling empowered to preform well in any encounter or relationship. Knowing what I know now from listening to this audiobook, I am compelled to communicate better.

Clear, specific and well organized

I found this very helpful! I recommend it for any and all human relationships. My expectations were exceeded!