Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Episode 10 : Conversational Interview Technique – Let’s Have a Chat
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Episode 10 : Conversational Interview Technique – Let’s Have a Chat
Directed Conversations – What we do when we’re interested in others.
Click to share on Twitter
It’s easy when we’re fascinated with what they have to say.
Are you prepared with all the questions that you’re going to ask and do you have a good expectation of what answers you’re going to get? Are you there with an agenda to entrap and find something out? If your answer is “Yes” then what you’re preparing is an interview, maybe even a hard hitting interview!
Journalists interview, we have conversations!
If your answer is “No” to those questions you’re not recording an interview, you’re here for a conversation. If you wish to ask engaging questions, wanting to help someone relax and open up, to share a life and reveal things that you have no idea of. If you want to be surprised and touch with real humanity, you have to have a conversation. And if you take that conversation down the particular rabbit holes that will be discovered it’s simply a directed conversation but a conversation all the same. Two people on equal footing having a chat about specifically one persons life.
Most people think of sitting down for a recorded conversation as an interview but that is not what we are talking about here. Sure the conversation may well be biased towards one person and the other may be engaging with many questions but it’s still a conversation and that attitude is what will work best in helping a person relax and open up. This is not about you, this is about them and you need to want to explore everything that they know with an attitude of genuine interested of their life. When they tell a story you must want to know more out of interest not just to have the answer to your question so as to tick it off your list. You must really want to know about their life.
The best preparation you can have is a general knowledge of the times and life of the person you’re to sit down with. A little history is a good thing here, not just their personal history but their times and culture also. With a general understanding of the greater history when an unexpected statement is made you can then ask an engaging question to either explore that specific incident or take the conversation in a new direction.
This leads to the preparation. In preparation you don’t want to have all the answers, it’s best for you to be surprised so the conversation sounds natural and an exploration of a life as it will be for the listener. It’s important to do some general homework so as to have an overview of their life:
Preparation
* Childhood
* Family members, parents, sibling, grand/children, spouse
* Training and career overview
* Major interests in life
* Future goals
Ask some questions of family members about the important aspects of the individual and greater family. Get to know the “lay of the land”. Family members will know of the general life and times but they often don’t know of the details, that is what we want to discover in the recorded conversation. Note down the general information in a loosely chronological order to be marked off once covered.
Review the general prompts laid out in episode 7 for a few more ideas remembering all the time that it is not detail you want here(that is for the conversation) you only want a 50,000 ft overview of their life.
Attitude
Your attitude is the single most important aspect of how well the conversation will develop and progress. Additional to an upbeat friendly attitude with genuine interest,
View all episodes
Directed Conversations – What we do when we’re interested in others.
Click to share on Twitter
It’s easy when we’re fascinated with what they have to say.
Are you prepared with all the questions that you’re going to ask and do you have a good expectation of what answers you’re going to get? Are you there with an agenda to entrap and find something out? If your answer is “Yes” then what you’re preparing is an interview, maybe even a hard hitting interview!
Journalists interview, we have conversations!
If your answer is “No” to those questions you’re not recording an interview, you’re here for a conversation. If you wish to ask engaging questions, wanting to help someone relax and open up, to share a life and reveal things that you have no idea of. If you want to be surprised and touch with real humanity, you have to have a conversation. And if you take that conversation down the particular rabbit holes that will be discovered it’s simply a directed conversation but a conversation all the same. Two people on equal footing having a chat about specifically one persons life.
Most people think of sitting down for a recorded conversation as an interview but that is not what we are talking about here. Sure the conversation may well be biased towards one person and the other may be engaging with many questions but it’s still a conversation and that attitude is what will work best in helping a person relax and open up. This is not about you, this is about them and you need to want to explore everything that they know with an attitude of genuine interested of their life. When they tell a story you must want to know more out of interest not just to have the answer to your question so as to tick it off your list. You must really want to know about their life.
The best preparation you can have is a general knowledge of the times and life of the person you’re to sit down with. A little history is a good thing here, not just their personal history but their times and culture also. With a general understanding of the greater history when an unexpected statement is made you can then ask an engaging question to either explore that specific incident or take the conversation in a new direction.
This leads to the preparation. In preparation you don’t want to have all the answers, it’s best for you to be surprised so the conversation sounds natural and an exploration of a life as it will be for the listener. It’s important to do some general homework so as to have an overview of their life:
Preparation
* Childhood
* Family members, parents, sibling, grand/children, spouse
* Training and career overview
* Major interests in life
* Future goals
Ask some questions of family members about the important aspects of the individual and greater family. Get to know the “lay of the land”. Family members will know of the general life and times but they often don’t know of the details, that is what we want to discover in the recorded conversation. Note down the general information in a loosely chronological order to be marked off once covered.
Review the general prompts laid out in episode 7 for a few more ideas remembering all the time that it is not detail you want here(that is for the conversation) you only want a 50,000 ft overview of their life.
Attitude
Your attitude is the single most important aspect of how well the conversation will develop and progress. Additional to an upbeat friendly attitude with genuine interest,