Building rapport – and building a connection – is one of those things I consider myself pretty talented as a conversation-alist at these days. People remark that they often feel like we’re old friends upon first meeting me; men very often assume that women I’ve met minutes before have known me for years; and I find it incredibly easy to have people open up to me about all manner of personal details – so easy that they typically offer those details unasked.

Kind of funny, in retrospect, considering I spent most of my life as a man apart, without any close connections of any sort.

So someone you’ve just met thinks of you as an old friend, or the girl you’ve been getting to know for twenty minutes has told you her life story and now feels that you know her better than all but two other people in her life. Sounds fun, and empowering, right? But what’s the advantage of this? Well, as you can probably surmise, the advantages to deep diving with rapport come in spades, actually. Here are a few: