How can you operationalise rapport?

1You can have many peers, but only so many co-founders

I wasn’t expecting to push a pram through the rain to get to a professional networking event. My attention would be divided, I might have to leave early, and I was not even sure I would be able to get into the venue. Thankfully, at the entrance, the organiser helped me lift the pram over the stairs.

Whatever time I had available, I wanted to make the most of it. I had no grand expectation that I would make formal professional connections. My ambition was smaller. I just wanted to see whether I could help one person in the room.

I sat down at my first table with six other people. When it was time for somebody to begin, I put my hand up and became a kind of de facto facilitator. I tried to explain my circumstances efficiently, give everybody time, and keep a shared conversation moving, all while my son repeatedly escaped to seize as much sushi as he could fit in his hands.

The person who spoke after me raised the value of peer networks. That subject immediately captured my attention because I felt it was relevant to everyone at the table. Not every useful professional relationship needs to meet the high standard of co-founding or formal collaboration. It might begin with another conversation, a small experiment, a useful tool, or simply somebody who understands the difficulty of uncertain work. A peer from another field may still complement your thinking or let you speak without having to sell or justify yourself. Professional friendship is a valuable outcome in its own right.

2Structure is a form of hospitality

After the introductions, we needed to decide where the conversation would go. There were multiple question prompts on the table and more on the projector. I cannot remember what they were. What I remember is finding it surprisingly difficult to decide which one would be right for the six people I had just met.

I asked the table what they preferred, and we collectively settled on the first question to maintain momentum. Choosing one question from a list of options sounds trivial, but I did not know these people. I did not know how strongly anyone felt about a particular subject, what they hoped to get from the evening, or whether somebody would feel quietly overruled. Every decision the group had to make created another small opportunity for somebody to become disappointed, disengaged, or left out. In a larger group format, people who are less inclined to push forward can easily go unheard.

People may need structure most before they have developed the relationships required to negotiate without it. A clear protocol carries some of the initial social burden: it tells people how to enter, how long they have, and when somebody else will be heard. It also reduces the anxiety that somebody might speak for too long, dominate the table, or crowd out another person’s opportunity to speak and be heard. As rapport develops, the group can assume more responsibility for what happens next.

Acknowledgement mattered too. When somebody reveals that what they are doing is difficult, immediately moving to the next person can feel deflating. Even a simple response, ‘that sounds hard’, acknowledges what the person has shared.

The importance of structure became clearer during the second round. I moved to another table where people were already having what felt like a private conversation. Nobody paused to explain the subject, acknowledge the new arrivals, or create an opening for us. I could not tell how long they would continue, when I might enter, or what contribution was expected from me.

My son was also becoming difficult, so I made the choice to leave. I wished everyone well and went home. This is not a criticism of the people at the table, nor a verdict on the event. I had joined the second conversation after it began, and my attention was increasingly divided. What I experienced was two different conditions in the same room. At the first table, the structure helped us create a shared conversation. At the second, I could not see how to enter the conversation or recreate that structure by myself.

Structure cannot create rapport. However, it can prevent an interaction from failing before rapport has an opportunity to develop.

3A meaningful activity can support rapport; continuity needs repetition

When considering networking events like this, it helps to be clear about the outcomes the event is intended to support. Rapport is the outcome I would aim for. For this purpose, I would treat two people seeing value in speaking again as a practical sign that rapport may have begun. This does not require complete understanding or trust. The useful design question is what conditions give rapport a better chance to emerge.

This is a subject I’ve thought about before. During my PhD, I organised group lunches and two speed-networking events to support more cross-disciplinary interaction among people who shared an office. Those speed-networking events had a clear job: give people a brief, low-stakes opportunity to learn about one another. In that sense, they worked. But once everybody had met, introductions alone offered little reason to return. Continuity needs a repeatable activity people value.

I was part of a group that ran fortnightly dance events in Melbourne for several years. People returned regularly to dance, and community developed around the activity. Repeated exposure did not guarantee rapport, but it gave relationships more opportunities to develop.

Many formats can introduce people to one another. A meaningful shared activity can support rapport within one event and give people a reason to return.

The event I attended already had such an activity: guided conversation using shared prompts. Minor modifications could give that activity a more stable shape, keep it from becoming too loose, and support the continuing development of rapport and professional relationships.

4A well-framed business problem invites others to contribute

At the table, I struggled to connect the question we had chosen with what I thought was relevant to the people there. Internally, I kept returning to a different question: what would make it easier for people to help one another?

General questions can start a conversation. A room of practically minded people may be able to contribute more when there is a specific outcome to consider. The challenge is to provide just enough context to make the problem intelligible without requiring everyone to understand the detailed circumstances.

This means identifying the broader mechanics of the problem. What is the person trying to achieve? What is getting in the way? What have they already tried? What kind of help might move them forward? Other participants can then consider where they have encountered similar constraints and which parts of their experience may be relevant.

‘What do you need?’ can still be surprisingly difficult to answer. I was not prepared to answer it. If somebody had asked me, my brain would probably have locked up and needed rebooting. I had not given enough thought to how I could frame and distil my business problem for another person.

The point is not to ask a room of strangers to solve the problem immediately. A well-framed problem gives them a shared object to examine and an invitation to contribute what they know. It also gives participants a practical way to observe how other people listen, question, interpret, and think.

For the purposes of a shared activity, it is worth framing the problem as clearly and usefully as possible. The prompt below adapts IDEO.org’s guidance for framing a design challenge. It identifies the intended outcome, context, and constraints while leaving room for more than one possible solution. It also follows GOV.UK’s guidance on user needs by keeping the focus on the problem and leaving possible answers open.

A useful case needs four ingredients:I am trying to achieve <specific outcome>.The main barrier or constraint is <specific obstacle>.I have already tried <actions> and learned <lessons>.Help from the room would be useful if it helped me <choose a next move, make a decision, or design a test>.

The person might be validating a business proposition, looking for a first customer, trying to make an operation sustainable, turning a side project into regular income, or looking for work through an alternative route. Each is a meaningful challenge, but naming the desired outcome alone does not give the room enough to work with. A first-customer case becomes useful when it identifies the intended customer, the obvious routes already tried, the barriers encountered, and what the person might do if those routes continue not to work.

5Give everyone an early opportunity to speak and be heard

Here is one provisional event design that considers the conditions around rapport: how people enter, what they do together, how participation is distributed, and what may make another interaction more likely. It is based on the assumption that structured participation makes meaningful contribution more likely.

The 1-2-4-All Liberating Structure is a well-established facilitation pattern. People think alone, compare in pairs, combine into groups of four, and then return to the whole group. Everyone participates before ideas are combined.

Starting with pairs gives each person an immediate opportunity to speak and listen closely to one other person. Both people are directly involved. Larger groups can be useful later for comparison and synthesis, but they provide less time for each person and make it easier for somebody to remain outside the interaction.

The immediate purpose is to create a useful interaction in which people can demonstrate care, judgement, curiosity, and practical contribution.

Prepare one real case

Before the event, people can submit a current situation and say what help they would like from the room. The organiser can work with them to make the case concise, sufficiently informative, and suitable for a group discussion. If a promising submission is unclear, the organiser can suggest a new framing and ask, ‘Does this still reflect your situation?’ Nothing is used until the owner approves it.

The owner knows in advance that their case has been selected. During the discussion, the owner does not identify the case as theirs. The case may still be recognisable in a small community. Withholding the name keeps attention on the mechanics of the problem while the owner’s identity and specific business context recede. The mechanics may be relevant to people working in different domains. The owner must approve both the final case and the possibility that they could be recognised.

The cases do not all need to come from participants at the first event. If suitable contributions are not available, the organiser can construct representative cases to test the format before asking somebody to expose a real problem. A constructed case can test the discussion mechanics, although it cannot test the owner reveal or the experience of contributing a real problem.

Work through one case

The format begins with one case shared across the whole room. A sufficiently rich case should allow contributions from different kinds of experience without requiring everybody to be at the same stage of business development.

For the first case, the facilitator reads the situation and the help requested. Everyone thinks alone first. They then compare in pairs. Two pairs fold into a group of four. Each group shares its most useful question, interpretation, option, experiment, or caution with the room. The facilitator distinguishes facts supplied by the case from assumptions introduced by participants so the room can see which conclusions depend on missing information.

Thinking alone protects people who need a moment before speaking. Pairs give everybody an early opportunity to contribute. Groups of four require people to listen, compare, and decide what is most useful. Each group then shares its strongest contribution with the whole room.

Let the owner step forward

Only after the room has worked through the case does its owner have the opportunity to identify themselves. They can thank the room, say what people understood, explain what was missed, add relevant context, and answer a few bounded questions. If the conversation made them uncomfortable, they can still choose not to reveal themselves.

The room can acknowledge the owner for contributing something real. The owner can then briefly explain what they are doing and invite relevant follow-up. Disclosure is optional, and the owner may use the opportunity as they choose.

This design also creates risks. A selected case owner receives more direct attention than everyone else, so the selection method must be fair and explained in advance. Withholding the owner’s identity may reduce the influence of status, but it may also make the reveal uncomfortable or encourage people to guess. A participant should be able to contribute a case without agreeing to reveal themselves, and the format should still offer worthwhile participation to people whose cases are not selected.

Repeat with a second case

For a room of roughly twenty to thirty people, I would repeat the complete process with a second case and new pairings if time permits. The new partners matter because each person receives another opportunity to encounter somebody else’s way of listening and working.

Plan the time around complete cases

I would initially allow about thirty minutes for each case: two minutes to think alone, six minutes in pairs, eight minutes in fours, eight minutes for whole-room synthesis, and six minutes for the owner’s response. Two cases, together with the welcome, instructions, transitions, and survey, would require roughly eighty to ninety minutes. These timings are assumptions to test.

If both cases finish early, pairs can choose one and identify a useful question, practical task, or small ethical experiment that might move it forward. They say what they would try, what each person could contribute, what evidence they would seek, and what would tell them to continue, change direction, or stop. This follows the practical logic in Y Combinator’s co-founder guidance: spending time together on a small project reveals things that biography and questionnaires alone cannot.

6Every new event is an experiment

Every new event is an experiment in the modest sense that its design makes assumptions about what people will find useful, comfortable, and worth continuing. Light feedback can show which parts people valued and what should be retained, changed, or removed before another iteration.

No event structure can guarantee that every interaction will produce rapport or a useful follow-up. We should not judge an early format only by whether particular people continue speaking afterwards. The most useful early question is whether participants would attend a similar event again.

Before people leave, tell them that they will receive a short survey and explain that thoughtful responses will directly inform the design and conduct of future events. Make clear that criticism is welcome. Ask participants how useful they found thinking alone, working in pairs, working in fours, the room’s synthesis, the owner reveal, and the opportunity for follow-up. Also ask whether participants felt at ease, able to contribute, listened to, and sufficiently understood, and whether they encountered somebody with whom another conversation might be worthwhile. Case owners can be asked separately whether the discussion made their problem clearer. Greater clarity would be a useful secondary result. The facilitator can record where the format overran or required intervention. Ratings, short responses, and observations are signals for improving the next iteration.

The idea is to give peers a real problem to explore, give each person a fair opportunity to demonstrate how they think and work, and then see whether another conversation feels worthwhile.

This is one possible iteration from an experience I valued enough to keep thinking about. A promising first result would be that participants felt able to contribute, found the structure useful, and wanted to attend again. That would justify another iteration.

We cannot operationalise rapport itself. We can take responsibility for the conditions in which we ask it to begin.