Match Their Register Before You Make Your Point

Many of us have written a careful, complete answer to a message that was three words long, and then wondered why the reply that came back was cool or slow or missing altogether. The answer was accurate and the tone was friendly, yet something about the way it arrived did not match the way the question had been asked. This week's Mid-Week Mojo is about that gap, and about a rapport skill that NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) teaches under the name of matching language: meeting the other person in their register before we ask them to meet us in ours.

Rapport lives in the phrasing as well as the feeling

Last month we looked at pacing and leading, which is about matching a person's emotional state before we try to move it. The same idea applies to the words themselves. Every person has a register, meaning the length they write at and how formal they sound. It also covers how directly they reach the point and the small words they use for the things they care about. When we reply in a very different register, we are asking the other person to translate us before they can respond, and that is a small tax on every exchange.

NLP practitioners teach matching in a simple form, which is to listen for the words someone uses and borrow a few of them. We then settle into a similar pace and length before we make our own point. It is a courtesy more than a trick, because it signals that we were paying attention to how they speak and not only to what we wanted to say.

What the research found

A 2010 paper by Amanda Gonzales, Jeffrey Hancock and James Pennebaker in the journal Communication Research measured something close to this with software. They looked at language style matching, which counts how similarly people use function words such as pronouns and prepositions. These are the small words we rarely choose on purpose. Seventy groups made up of 324 individuals worked on an information search task. Some met face to face and some used text-based chat.

The groups whose members matched each other more closely in their style of language reported more cohesion, in both settings. In the face-to-face groups, closer matching also predicted better performance on the task. The researchers describe the measure as a way of reading the underlying social dynamics of a group from the language it produces.

The honest limits

This study measured matching that happened naturally, so it cannot tell us that matching on purpose would build closeness, only that closer groups tended to match more. It was a single task in a research setting, and the groups were small. Deliberate matching is also the part NLP teaches, and the evidence for NLP techniques themselves is thin, which makes this a habit worth testing and not a proven method.

Matching is also not mimicry for its own sake. It cannot repair trust that has been broken. A person who senses that their words are being copied to manage them will probably trust us less, so the aim is to be understood, and not to appear to agree. If a working relationship leaves you anxious or low most days, a doctor or licensed counselor is a better next step than any communication technique.

A hypothetical example

Picture a colleague who sends a one-line question in a chat window, asking whether the report is done. A reply of four paragraphs that explains the whole history of the report may be thorough, and it may also feel like a lecture to someone who needed a yes or a date. A reply that says it is done and adds the one detail they will need keeps our content and changes only the register. We can offer the longer history if they want it. This is an illustration rather than a case, and the same reasoning applies in the other direction when someone writes at length and receives a single curt line.

For Leaders

The way we write and speak is a cue for the whole team, and our register tells people how much room they have. If we answer short messages with long ones, our reports learn to over-explain or to go quiet. Neither helps us see what is really happening. Try matching the length and formality of a question when you answer it, and on hard topics, let the other person set the pace and then ask whether they want the detail.

For Individual Contributors

Your work is to manage your own message in the moment, and it starts before you write a word. Before you send a request to a peer or someone senior, read their last two messages. Notice how long they are and which words they use for the thing you are discussing, then write your note in that range. You are not changing your point. You are choosing the form it arrives in so that it is easy to receive.

The rep

Today, before you reply to one message that matters, spend thirty seconds on the sender's last message. Note its length and formality along with one or two words they used for the subject. Then write your answer in a similar range and put your point near the top. Afterward, see whether the reply came faster or warmer, and be willing to find that it made no difference.

We can run this a few times before deciding what it is worth. The goal is not to sound like someone else, it is to make it easy for someone else to hear us.

Live your life uncensored.

Reference: Gonzales, A. L., Hancock, J. T., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2010). Language style matching as a predictor of social dynamics in small groups. Communication Research, 37(1), 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650209351468

Reference: Witkowski, T. (2010). Thirty-five years of research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP research data base. State of the art or pseudoscientific decoration? Polish Psychological Bulletin, 41(2), 58-66.