Description

Rapport is not a soft skill. It is the mechanism that determines whether a subject talks to you or shuts down, whether a victim trusts you enough to tell the truth, and whether a confession holds up when a defense attorney starts asking how you got it. This 8-hour online course goes beyond the basics covered in recruit training and builds the skills that separate average interviewers from investigators people actually talk to.

Advanced Rapport Building is a standalone course and a component of RTI’s full Interview and Interrogation course. If you’ve already completed I&I, this content is included. If you want to go deep on rapport specifically before committing to the full 40 hours, this is where to start.

What You’ll Cover

• Back to Basics: Interview goals, the distinction between interview and interrogation, subject background research, and location selection
• Observation and Listening: Active listening, empathetic listening, and conversation management techniques grounded in behavioral research
• Interpersonal Communication: How you communicate is as important as what you say — this module covers the mechanics of communication that either build or destroy rapport in real time
• Advanced Rapport: The science behind why people talk to some investigators and not others, barriers to rapport and how to dismantle them, and the emotional dynamics that make a subject feel understood rather than interrogated

HIG-funded research consistently finds that rapport-based approaches outperform confrontational methods on both information yield and confession reliability. This course teaches you why that is true and exactly how to apply it in the field. 8 hours. Idaho POST-certified. Online, self-paced.