Ahoy there. I’m back from my holidays now; everything’s going to be okay. Unless you’re not in Amsterdam with me, then you’re fucked. For the time being though, you can read about what ‘Matching’ – an interpersonal technique for getting somebody on your good side – is all about.
As I’m still a young scoundrel, I haven’t yet spent most of my life reading about Psychology, but I’ve still seen Matching appear over and over again across different fields of work and research: PR, Sales, Philosophy, body language, NLP, to name a few. So even if it does sound a bit like black magic, it seems like a fairly well respected concept by a wide diversity of people. You wouldn’t want to oppose diversity, would you? Didn’t think so.
Matching is a very simple thing to do. It’s most easily achieved when having a one-on-one conversation, but you can do it in bigger groups as well. All you have to do is analyse the body language of the person you’re talking to and gradually adjust your own body language to match theirs. Simple, isn’t it? The important thing is to at least be a bit subtle about it – otherwise whomever you’re talking to will probably just think you’re mocking them.
From what I’ve read, the main purpose of Matching is actually to make someone like you more, which sounds a bit creepy. Oh, that’s what you were looking for? Well yeah, it can be used for that, but you can also take the lead and start influencing the conversation with your own body language. Speed things up, slow things down, soothe someone into meditation, give someone a panic attack. Don’t give someone a panic attack. But whatever, you’re probably not going to turn into a Master of Puppets with Matching, but it is a handy and effective way of getting somebody on the same page as you.
