Interview Phase 2: Rapport

It's hard to believe it's been 25 years since the towers fell.  It's equally hard to believe that some of my listeners were not born then.  Rest in peace to all lost that day and in the years that followed.

Let's get into building and maintaining rapport.  How to build it and how to not destroy it.  What it is, why we need it.

Earn their sacrifice, and stay safe!

-LEO

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Good morning. Welcome back. And hopefully you're enjoying the interview breakdown, more advanced interviewing stuff. Let's go into the next phase. And as I said previously, also highly neglected phase, which is rapport building. Let's get into what that is, how to do it, and how to maintain it because you can lose rapport. We don't want to do that. There have been a lot of interview techniques and models over the years, like anything. It is an evolving art. And, you know, in the 80s, they had motivational interviewing, and then they kind of moved on to cognitive interviewing and then analytical interviewing. 1992, they had the peace model. They had behavior and behavioral analysis, also known as the read technique, popped out in like the early 2000s. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development had some methodology. The Sue technique or the strategic use of evidence, orbit observing rapport-based interpersonal techniques. There's all these different methods, and they all have one commonality. And that's rapport. It's in every single one. And it is constantly ignored or underplayed. And it's so important if you don't want to get told to pound sand, get me my lawyer. I got nothing to say to you. If you don't want to hear that, if you want a successful interview, it requires rapport. It's the art of making someone feel comfortable. And it is absolutely critical. We have to be able to connect with other people. It doesn't matter what your mood is, if you're hungry, again, that goes into planning and prep. You shouldn't be so hungry that you're feeling moody. You should have gotten a whopper on the way or something. But a difference in age, gender, ethnicity, situation, you have a bias, they have a bias. It doesn't matter. It is your job as the interviewer to overcome that. And it's an art. And it does a few things. It prevents abuse, which is good. It's hard to say that you abused the person if you guys are like friendly and have a genuine rapport and have found common ground. There's you're you're not going to abuse each other. But it just generally improves the collection of information and the reliability of that information. If you have a rapport with somebody, the info they give you is so much more likely to be legitimate. It's not a fake friendship. I do get friendly with people. I'm nice to them. I'm respectful. I'm not a robot. I'm not going to go get a beer with them afterwards or a hamburger. We're not going to grab food and we're not going to be texting in the wee hours of the morning about our life or any crap like that. We're not friends. But we're going to engage with the interviewee. We want a relationship that is cooperative. It's relaxed. It's one of understanding and one lacking judgment. I'm not judging them. It's a directed conversation. And that's what you're able to have if you have genuine rapport, you can guide the conversation a little bit. If you have no rapport, the conversation's just going to go whichever way it goes. But you need to be practicing this outside of your formal interviews. You can build rapport with people at Kroger. You can people that are different than you, not somebody that it's going to come easy to. Build rapport with somebody that it's a little bit uncomfortable and develop an understanding and practice a little bit. If you have rapport, you are able to control the interview. You can maintain a direction of that interview, of the subject matter being covered. The environment, you can make decisions on where are we going to do this? Because they respect you and they want to listen to you. They're not just going to be defiant to you. If you have no rapport, a lot of these criminals we deal with have very defiant personalities. They've been defying authority for years. That's why you're dealing with them. So if you don't have rapport, you might call and be like, hey, can you, you know, meet me at this police station or can you meet me in my car, you know, by this Kroger up in Fraser? And they're like, hell no, I don't want to meet you. Because you don't have any rapport. So it gives you the control that you really need. It's easy for things to escalate and for you to use rapport, or I'm sorry, not use, for you to lose rapport. And it's much harder to gain it back once you lose it. There's a lot of ways that you can lose rapport, but just giving them respect, it's one of the best ways to build rapport and maintain control. You don't have to rule this interview with an iron fist. You rule it through voluntary, you get them to voluntarily comply with the interview. And guys, we're giving respect. It's not because of who they are. They might be a fucking criminal. They might be a shooter. They might be a killer. They might be a rapist. They might be a pedophile. Okay? Get that through your head. But we're going to give them respect because of who we are. And because it's our job to collect facts. And who we are is professionals, professional fact collectors. And if they're a pedophile, even more reason that I want to have excellent rapport with that guy that molests little kids. I want to find common ground. I want to relate to him. You roll your eyes all you want to, but I would much rather he do life in prison than snu me off and go, I got nothing to say to you because you were rude to me. Because I called him a name. I said, Hey, what's up, Pito? And he bristled and left. Instead of me showing understanding, developing rapport, and sitting at his sentencing while his victim's mom cried and he goes off for life to a horrible, horrible life in Rikers Island. Anyway, I digress. Being prepared, again, going back to planning and prep, I told you there's overlap. It will help your rapport immensely.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Knowing the person just knowing everything about them. It helps a lot.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

What is the worst way to, you know, a lot of time we want to get control of an interview. And what is the worst way to maintain rapport and gain control? What do you never say to an angry woman? Put it that way. Just calm down.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

Good grief.

SPEAKER_00 7:21

Calm down. It does not give you control of the interview. It does not give you rapport. It shows a lack of understanding. So probably don't say that. When you're not in a formal interview, again, we don't want a bunch of closed-ended questions, but when you're in rapport building, it's all open-ended questions. We're not questioning them about the crime. We're in rapport building. We're going to transition into talking to them about the crime. But open-ended questions, letting them talk, and then exploring whatever they say at the end of those questions. So let's go into a couple different, let's say you have kids. Your kids come home from school. I don't care if you don't have kids. Stop interrupting me. You have kids in this scenario. You got a kid. Your kid comes home from school.

SPEAKER_01 8:15

How was school? We've all said this. How was school today? What do they say? Good. Sucked. That's about what you get. It's the same in an interview. What did you do today? Work. Where were you today?

SPEAKER_00 8:33

What did you do? How about with your kid, going back to your kid? What made you smile today? Tell me something that made you laugh today.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

What kind of person were you today? When were you bored? Who'd you have lunch with? Who is the funniest person in your class today?

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Oh, that had to be Amelia. Oh, what'd she say? What'd she do today? It's always Amelia, isn't it? It's always her. She's a clown. But do open-ended questions instead of close-ended when you're in rapport building. And then don't rush to get into the direct questions. Just take your time. Build rapport. Build an understanding. Show an interest. Rapport has so many positive effects. It increases the info the person gives to you. It gives you better cooperation down the road. It makes them trust you. It helps their memory, I believe, because they're actually trying to remember stuff instead of being put on the spot and remembering for you. They're trying to remember for themselves. Because they're like, oh, let me.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

You'll hear them say things like, let me try to remember. Hold on. And they're thinking. Good. You want their quality of recall to be higher.

SPEAKER_00 9:53

So they have an amount of information that we want. And then they have an amount that they're willing to share. And it's completely on us to develop the environment where they're willing to share it. So my goal in an interview, man, I'm lazy. You ask anybody, I'm kind of lazy. I don't want to go to trial. So that's why interviewing is important to me. And that's why I develop rapport as much as I can, because I don't want to go to trial. So you got to look at yourself. You got to watch your own videos. You know, after you've done these interviews, even if it's on body cam and you can't see yourself, listen because you might hear your own biases and you might hear the way you're talking, you might hear judgment in your voice. And if you can recognize that, instead of going like, I did great. That guy's just a jerk. If you get rid of that and you go, man, I could have done better here, or you get somebody else to look at it and go, man, I lost rapport with this guy. I don't really know why. They might listen and hear it immediately and go, Oh, yeah, you like he tried to tell you about his dead kid and you like brushed over it and moved on. Like he was getting emotional and you blew it off. So I heard him get mad, like I heard it in his voice. I've heard it countless times in my own interviews. I've I've interrupted people because I want to get to the chase. I get impatient. I'm hungry. I drank a Red Bull and I'm uppity. And I'll cut somebody off and I don't even realize it. And then I listen to it later, and I'm like, shit, that guy was trying to tell me something.

SPEAKER_01 11:42

And I interrupted him.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

So that sucks. You need to know what your biases are, your preconceived notions, your mood. Recognize that in yourself. What's Sun Tzu say? Know thyself or know your enemy or something, but know yourself by uh definitely. Know if you have an ego that gets bruised easily. That's gonna, I mean, if you get in a pissing contest with your interviewee, if you one-up them everything they say, I mean, they may have low self-esteem. So they're constantly talking themselves up. If you haven't noticed in life, the people that are constantly saying how great they are usually don't have a lot of self-confidence. They're it's bluff and bluster. And so if they're doing that, and you're like, oh yeah, I did that twice last week. You did that once, I did that twice. And you're one of these people, you got to stop. What's the biggest rapport builder? Uh I misspoke again, rapport killer. What kills rapport? What kills connection? I'm gonna tell you right now, it's cell phones. You should not have your cell phone out. Don't be texting. I don't care if your boss is out there texting you the most brilliant thing that he wants you asking. It's your interview. I recommend staying off the phone as much as possible. It just kills it. Lots of other things can kill it. Their phone can kill it if they're on their phone. It's okay to be like, hey, can we put the phone up for like 20 minutes so we talk? Shit, five minutes, because they're gonna forget about it. You know, let's can you stick it over there? Do you mind just sticking it over there? But cell phones will pull you out. But all kinds of other stuff can, you know, all these distractions, other people getting involved. It can mess up rapport and it can really get in the way. Another thing that can kill rapport is the Miranda form. You know, reading it to them. There's a big difference between you sitting down and immediately going, all right, listen up, you're under arrest, so I need to read you your Miranda rights. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer and so on and so forth. You all know the Miranda warrants. I won't go through it all. And then you do the waiver at the end. That can kill rapport. If rapport is fragile, I would advise you to not do Miranda. I'm not saying question them without it. I'm saying wait. Because if it's on the rocks and you're just kind of getting impatient, you're like, I'm ready for this to move forward, man. I had lunch plans or I was supposed to get off. My kids got a ballgame and I got to go. I'm just gonna cut to Miranda. I'm gonna blow off rapport. Then you shouldn't have started the damn interview because there's no point if you're just gonna do that, because Miranda warnings can be tense. And if you force them in too soon, they're gonna shut down the interview. They're gonna say, I want a lawyer, and it's over. And that's not the goal. That's never the goal of the interview. So let's get into the types of rapport. There's different levels. There's very different levels. There's casual rapport. That's, you know, if you're checking out at Kroger and you're cutting up with the, you know, the dude that's bagging your food, that's very casual. That guy doesn't really trust you. He might trust you with cracking a joke, being a little bit vulnerable, making a stupid joke. Very basic level rapport. He can see that you're being respectful to him. I'm thanking him for bagging my food. I'm not above him because he bags groceries at all, right? And that's a fact. But that's a basic level rapport. He's not going to tell me about a murder, right? He's not going to tell me about crime. He's not going to tell me anything private at all. Then there's close rapport. We, this is what we want to transition to from casual. So let's put it into police terms. Let's say that you're on patrol and it's two in the morning, there's a dude standing on the corner. And instead of jacking him up and say, give me your ID, dirty. What you doing out here? Why are you out here at two in the morning? You doing crime? Instead of doing that, you want to develop a casual rapport. So you're like, hey man, how you doing?

SPEAKER_01 15:51

I'm kind of late, isn't it? Open-ended question. It's not aggressive at all.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

You're just starting a conversation, kind of. He's off guard at this point because he's like, why isn't this dude busting me up? I always get jacked up by the cops. You want to develop that casual rapport. Now you guys start talking. It's kind of late, isn't it? He's like, oh yeah, you know, I work nights. So, you know, I'm out here late. I just got off. Oh, okay, cool. What do you do? Show some interest. Boom, you start going. The next step is close rapport. That's built by actively listening to the other person. It's like I said before, it's asking questions about what they said last, not trying to direct the conversation too soon, not making it, I'm the cop, I'm in charge, I'm pointing this conversation a direction, and you can like it or not, but that's how this conversation's gonna go. It's showing them respect. Once you get into close rapport, uh, the nonverbals start mattering a lot. We're gonna start paraphrasing what they say. Oh, you work at night? That's cool. I work at night too. See? Boom, we just found some common ground. That dude standing on the corner selling dope told me he works at night. And I said, man, me too. I get that. Boom. We start getting close rapport. Then there's intimate rapport after that. And I'm kind of breezing through these, but you get the point that there's levels. Intimate rapport is a lot longer. You have to be sincere. You're not blowing smoke up there, but it takes time, it takes effort. It is not a simple thing. It's multiple interactions. It's not established on the corner at two in the morning. It's established over time through you consistently showing up, doing the right thing, doing what you said you were going to do. You may not be able to get to intimate rapport, to them actually trusting you. It just depends. It depends on the person. If you get to close rapport, that's pretty good. Casual rapport is not going to take you far, but you get close, that's good. But if you share their view on something, that's great. Tell them that. You know, find that common ground. You don't have to do the same thing, but find the common ground. When you're developing casual rapport, you can do what's called baselining. That's when you're determining how they talk. How quickly do they talk? What tone of voice do they talk in? If they always talk slow and deep, and suddenly they're talking fast and high, they might be nervous. But if you're building actual rapport and they're actually becoming comfortable with you, you're not asking intrusive questions. You're not even asking their name. You're just BSing about life. They should just talk normal, or even very basic questions, they should talk normal. Where'd you grow up? Who do you live with? Where do you work? What's your work address if you want to ask that? But you don't even have to press that. Have you been locked up? Where have you been locked up at? Where'd you do your time? How was that? Like, oh, you were in prison in Georgia and you've also been to prison in New York. Is it kind of the same? Most people, they want to talk about that. They'll be like, hell no, it's totally different. And New York guys are soft or something. You know, they'll they'll have their little version of events that they'll want to tell you about. So you're just building that rapport up. It can just be small talk, it can just be a little conversation. But then we're working. That's the beginning of it. That's literally step one. And it pretty much has to start with that, generally. It's gonna start with you being sincere toward them and wanting to understand them. And this goes back to something I said when I was talking planning and prep, and I was talking about the interviewers. If the primary interviewer is just not developing rapport with the interviewee, it's just not happening. You gotta switch. The primary has to check their ego, and the secondary has to be ready to step up. If you're the primary, it's okay if you're not the primary in five minutes. It's actually easier to just sit back. And that secondary steps up. This stuff is critical, man. Be very mindful of the interviewees' past experiences, what they've been through with police. You're gonna be different than the past cops they dealt with. It's okay to tell them that. Hey, I'm not gonna be like the other cops you dealt with, and you'll see. You don't have to believe me right now. Give me a day, give me a week, give me an hour, whatever. But they may have a cultural ingrained perception of how cops are. They're here to lock me up. They took my dad, they took my brother, they shot my cousin. And they have, they reasonably have a very negative bias towards police.

SPEAKER_01 21:06

So you got an uphill battle right there.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

So, man, I've seen cops kind of antagonize people, being unfriendly. I mean, people just don't talk to those cops. Adversaries don't talk to each other. You gotta kind of be on the same side. They gotta start thinking that, man, this guy is not out to get me. If you have rapport, you have control. If you're antagonizing the person, you lose control of that interview by nature. If they get confrontational, it's not their fault. It's like absolute accountability. It's your fault. Even if they're being a total jerk, most of the criminals have some jerkiness to them. It's okay. So, how do we identify common interests? Obviously, we plan and prep. We know them in advance. We've looked at their social media, we may have done interviews. We may know a lot about this person. We've prepped. Then we're observing them. We're listening to them when they talk. Fellas, what do women say about us all the time? We don't listen. Interview is not the time to have listening troubles. You need to shut up and listen to what this person has to say when and if you want to build rapport. Because if they say, y'all shot my baby mama last week, and I say, Yeah, we're not here about that, are we? We're here about this other thing. I just killed rapport. I need to go down that road. If that's what he wants to talk about, y'all shot my baby mama this week. I might go. What? Who shot your baby mama? Y'all did. You. I didn't shoot your baby mama. Who did? The police? Obviously he's talking about the police, but I want to separate myself from whoever shot his baby mama. Yeah, y'all. Now I ain't know y'all, man. I did not shoot her. I don't even know about this. What happened? How's the kid? Is the kid okay? Show a little empathy for the situation. If you've ever watched White Men Can't Jump, they talk about Woody and, you know, him hearing versus listening to Jimi Hendricks in the car.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Wesley Snipes is telling them, like, you're listening, but you don't really hear them.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

You got to really listen to people, just hearing them, or maybe I got that backwards, just hearing somebody talking and then saying whatever you want to say, it's not really letting it sink in. You don't have to rush to respond. When they're done talking, it doesn't come off stupid or thoughtless for you to sit there for a full five seconds and let that sink in. It's fine. That builds rapport. That shows that it's just as much their conversation as it is your conversation. You're sharing the control of the conversation. You're not, you're trying to take control through sharing control. But the only way to control the conversation is through rapport. And the path to rapport is them feeling respected and not judged. You're having a conversation. It's not a monologue. If interviews were a monologue, it would just go like this: you shot the guy, you hid the gun under the shed, sign here. But it's not that. It's an exploratory conversation to collect facts. And it's gonna be two-way. So if you can't accept that it's two-way, if you're constantly interrupting, you're gonna be constantly killing rapport. You gotta concentrate and be focused on the person that's talking. Don't be focused on other stuff. Give them your full attention.

SPEAKER_01 24:57

Nod along, make noises that let them know you're listening. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. I see.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Make it clear that you understand and you are engaged. Refer to them by the name they use. You don't have to call them Mr. Jones if you're the cop. If they go by Chris, you can call him Chris. It's okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:21

Let them call you Leo. It's not gonna really hurt anything.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

And just paraphrasing, I already went over this. It's it works so well. They're gonna tell you something and you just go back over it. It shows that you were paying attention to them. People appreciate it. It makes them feel heard. Everybody wants to feel heard. The conversation should not be threatening. This is a mistake a lot of people make. There's a lot of stuff you can do, be it the location, be it the body language, be it the actual language, be it the presentation of the Miranda form, that can be threatening. You need to be a good listener, you need to be compassionate. You need to try to understand. You need to encourage them to talk. You need to thank them when they make a tough admission and you see them struggle through it. You can say, thanks for saying that. I see that was that was hard for you. Appreciate you saying that. Don't be condescending. Don't be a smart ass. Never be a smart ass. Smart smart assery just never goes anywhere in the interview room unless you're at like intimate rapport and that's how you guys cut up. Going back to Miranda, you need to pick the best time to do it. If it's a custodial interview and you're going to be questioning them, you need to pick the best time. You got to do it before you get into any substance, any kind of questions about the case. But you need to decide when that best time is. It might be after one minute, it might be after 30. It might be after two hours. I don't know. Minimizing interruptions, not just your own, but others. Make sure that other people know, don't come in. Your boss shouldn't be popping in on you. How many interviewers do you want in the room? I like to be alone, personally. But you need to make that choice. It's kind of planning and prep, but it can kill rapport if you got three interviewers in there. It can just come off as too much. If they're lying, as people do, most interviews, they lie at some point. You don't have to pounce on that lie. You don't have to use words like liar, use hard words. And we'll come back to that. But you don't have to pounce the lie. You can let that lie go. Don't forget it. But if you pounce on it, you might kill your rapport. You may need to re-interview them later. And if you just call them a liar, an effing liar, then you killed rapport. Staying with hard words, avoid, man. You know, words like murder. I don't really like using that word. I don't know if I've ever said the word murder in an interview, despite investigating murders. In drug work, you can call it powder instead of cocaine, cocaine hydrochloride or whatever. Like you don't have to say that. Instead of gun, you can say, oh, you know, we got the, we got the powder and we got the piece out of your closet. You just said the same thing to him without killing rapport, saying, I got the uh the short barrel rifle with the suppressor and the cocaine, the over an ounce of cocaine. Guys, what do we sell in here? When we develop rapport, when we are doing a great interview, what are we selling to our interviewee?

SPEAKER_01 29:00

We're selling them prison time.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Generally, if you're working cases with, I don't want to say important, because all the work's important, but with heavy sentencing guidelines, you know, somebody got hurt very badly or, you know, something terrible happened. It is a great tool. It is a vital tool. It you have to have rapport in order to be successful in the interview. And the interview is a wonderful tool to sell people prison time. You are being understanding. We'll we'll go with uh interviewing a pedophile, because plenty of people are like, I could never do that. Like, they're disgusting.

SPEAKER_01 29:47

It's like, well, yeah. But you're selling them life in prison.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

You're showing understanding. I don't understand you molesting a kid. I'll never wrap my head around that. But I'm trying to establish some kind of understanding with this person. No matter what they did.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Trying to find a common ground with this person. And then selling them prison time. Thank you for your time, and we'll move on to the next phase next Friday. Have a great one.