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Episode 3: How to Lead a Great Interview
6 Plays9 months ago
Every Libretto project starts with in-depth qualitative discovery, allowing us to surface the key differentiators that will be essential in our work.
Join Ian and Neal as they discuss how authentic curiosity is critical to a great discovery interview.
Hosted by Ian Sutherland and Neal Kane
Produced by Tiffany Carlson
Edited by Connor Ferguson
Music by Coma-Media, via Pixabay
© 2024 Libretto. All rights reserved.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Well Put Podcast
00:00:12
Speaker
Welcome to Well Put, the podcast about communications for mission-driven organizations from libretto. My name is Ian Sutherland and I'm a creative lead here at libretto. And I am Neil Kane and I am the founder and president of libretto.
Discovery Process and Building Trust
00:00:28
Speaker
And today, Ian and I will be talking about our approach to discovery and techniques that we use as a firm to build a sense of trust and connection with clients during what we characterize as a qualitative interviewing process and how that helps drive our subsequent work.
00:00:52
Speaker
I've had the pleasure of conducting a lot of discovery interviews with you, Neil, and I've certainly learned a lot from your approach. I think a good place for us to start today is the preparation for those conversations.
Preparation for Interviews and Research Techniques
00:01:05
Speaker
What do you do to prepare for a discovery interview?
00:01:08
Speaker
There's a short list of things that you want to Address and you do want to go in with a sense of preparation and you don't want to just sort of have confidence in your ability to wing it I mean you want you want the conversation to be organic and to go in interesting places, but you also again want to begin the conversation with a sense of who the organization is
00:01:36
Speaker
hopefully a sense of the person that you're interviewing in terms of LinkedIn profiles or a really great way of getting background information about folks.
Flexible Questioning and Organic Conversations
00:01:44
Speaker
We tend to do one of the many what I would characterize as the slightly Zen Buddhist things that we do is that we prepare a list of questions which we sometimes call a discussion guide. We typically don't share that with the interview subject but we always have a first question queued up
00:02:02
Speaker
And then we, to a certain extent, let the conversation go where it will, and the paradox that we often find is that at the end of that conversation, when you refer to the list again, all the questions have been asked, but not necessarily in a serial order. It happens more in the context of a kind of hyperlinked discussion.
00:02:24
Speaker
Indeed. I found that very interesting. When I started working at libretto, the nonlinear approach oftentimes yields tangents to areas that you may not have thought you were going to go into during that conversation, but that yields a lot of great candor
00:02:42
Speaker
and a lot of insights that maybe you wouldn't even have thought you would have gotten at the onset of the conversation.
Techniques for Group Interviews
00:02:50
Speaker
I'm curious too, Neil, when you approach a discovery interview with multiple people versus a one-on-one, how do you run a session like that?
00:03:00
Speaker
So one of the things I find that when you're doing in particular a group interview, because I am a Virgo, I tend to think of things somewhat analytically in that regard where let's say you have, if you have five people that you're interviewing and you have a 60 minute session and that sort of begins to approximate that the maximum you want to do in a, in a like something like a group zoom interview, that's 12 minutes a person. And, you know, it's maybe stating the obvious, but
00:03:30
Speaker
You know, once you go above your 12-minute quotient, someone else is being taken away from. So I try to be not too rigid about it, but to maintain awareness around who's talking and how much and how good the representation is.
00:03:49
Speaker
And I also encourage people to give more quick inputs that are briefer so that you just get more points. And I think when you set that expectation up front, you're less likely to get things that feel more like quote unquote speeches, which is, again, something I'm less eager to be hearing in that kind of a session.
00:04:16
Speaker
I'm particularly fascinated by group discovery conversations because I think there's a real element of vulnerability when you're on the other side of the questions and you're in that group providing answers.
Encouraging Vulnerability through Personal Stories
00:04:28
Speaker
I think of a medical center where we had conducted work a few years ago and we were talking to a team of nurses.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I just remember thinking, oh, that could be difficult in front of your colleagues and particularly in front of your superiors to share something that's candid to, in this case, the two of us who, to them, were of course strangers. One thing I've noticed you do in those settings that I've started to do myself is provide a little bit of personal context as well. I'm thinking of how you always say,
00:04:57
Speaker
You know, I'm one of eight children where there are no favorites, that you're the son of a legal worker and a, excuse me, a legal aid and a social worker. And I have noticed that allows people to then be a little more vulnerable themselves. Is that a tactic you do in every situation, Neil, or is that something you decide upon given the context of the group? I really try to gauge it in the moment.
00:05:22
Speaker
One of the things that I always say is that emotional intelligence is a huge component and a huge dimension of our work and I think what that means is
00:05:33
Speaker
Again, it's about a balance between being authentically yourself and remembering that the interview is not about you. I was thinking with the healthcare folks, and I remember interviewing folks from a visiting nurse and hospice organization.
00:05:53
Speaker
And I'm virtually certain that in that situation, I probably talked for a couple of minutes about the fact that both of my parents were in hospice and it was a really amazing, difficult, revelatory situation that also made me just incredibly appreciative of the work that those folks do. I mean, again, I think in a situation like that where you're expressing sincere appreciation
00:06:23
Speaker
For people who may often feel under-appreciated. I just think that really contributes to the depth and authenticity of what you get out of people because you're putting you know, it's almost like you're putting a little bit of yourself on the line and again always in the service of drawing them out of
00:06:43
Speaker
rather than, oh, I have a great anecdote that I want to tell, you know, because that's it's not about that. It's really about it. Really, it's really about it's talking about yourself in a way that's going to elucidate an interesting response from them. Exactly. Almost it's in service to the conversation that they will then provide their own insights from.
Balancing Roles in Co-Interviewing
00:07:05
Speaker
So one thing I'm interested in hearing your perspective on, Ian, is because there's often two of us, typically there's two of us in interview situations, which is something I always advocate for because you can kind of divide the note taking and the asking portions of things. And I also, I know that I've said more than once,
00:07:28
Speaker
Again, one of my quasi-cryptic Zen Buddhist observations is, what is it? I'm fine with being talked over and I hate being interrupted. So I'm wondering, it's like when you're in a situation where me or someone else is kind of
00:07:45
Speaker
driving and you're trying to figure out a way to ask a question that you think is really essential. What is the best technique for making that happen so it doesn't feel like the interviewing is being totally dominated by one person?
00:08:00
Speaker
I think it's two elements. One, you have to follow the flow of your co-interviewer, whoever is leading that particular session. And you also have to follow the flow of the answers that have come up so far so that it's whenever you jump in to ask a question of your own, it's not overly tangential. It's not off topic. It's following the structure that's sort of already been laid down by both the interviewer and the interviewees.
00:08:30
Speaker
I don't know if it's a good metaphor, but I sort of think of someone who's doing the navigation during a road trip. There's a driver. The driver probably has a pretty clear idea of where they are going. But every now and again, they'll rely on the person in the passenger seat next to them.
00:08:48
Speaker
at the opportune moment, not right before the turn or right after the turn, to provide a little bit of navigational guidance. So when I'm in those situations, whether it's with you or another librettist, I really just try to be that light touch of navigational guidance to keep the conversation moving forwards, not asking a question that's going to take us
00:09:10
Speaker
in a completely different direction. It's fine if there are tangents, of course, but when you add that other voice in the interviewing capacity, you really want it to be a gentle movement so that the conversation stays on track as much as possible.
00:09:27
Speaker
That is so crazy because I was just thinking about how when Chip and I went to Ireland and we were going to rent a car because you want to see the countryside and several people said to us, only one person can drive. You have to decide who's going to drive because you're driving on the left side of the road.
00:09:49
Speaker
And we had flown all night and I just made the decision. I've never done this. I want to do it. And it was largely a blast. And it's funny, a couple of days ago, I was at a party and I was demonstrating for someone what you do when you're driving a standard on the wrong side of the road and you're entering a rotary, which they call a roundabout.
00:10:10
Speaker
and there's a total like muscle memory like pose where you're looking over your shoulder and also you're shifting with your left hand because anyway speaking of tensions but no I think I think that's a great analogy something else I wanted to ask you about was as you know when we start engagement at some point the client at the kickoff stage will almost inevitably say well who you know who do you think you should talk to
00:10:36
Speaker
And can you talk a little bit about how we come up with, we sort of parse or strategize that list of participants?
Diverse Voices and Unexpected Insights
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think one thing that makes libretto distinct in our field is that we talk to a very non-hierarchical list of people, whether that's at a nonprofit organization, whether that's a higher education institute, whether it's a preparatory school. We're not just speaking to executive leadership. We're not just talking to administrative folks. We really go from top to bottom and back again. So
00:11:13
Speaker
The reasoning behind that is because it allows us to get the widest possible variety of insights. Some of the best perspectives have come from folks that it may not have been thought those insights would come from. And a great example that I'm thinking of currently when we were doing a discovery session for a medical system that we work with in New England, we had one of our most favorite quotes come from
00:11:41
Speaker
an ambulance driver that we had interviewed as part of our discovery conversations. So it wasn't a rock star neurosurgeon. It wasn't a member of the executive team, though we had great conversations with those folks as well. But this hospital driver, when we asked them,
00:11:58
Speaker
how they would describe their role, they used the phrase, I help the hands that heal. And that ended up being a concept we returned to many times throughout our presentations and development of the platform, the messaging platform that we created. Yeah, what I love about that is,
00:12:17
Speaker
Uh, one thing is that it totally has a solo, what I call a solar plexus moment. Like it's really, it really resonates emotionally and it kind of comes out of nowhere. You know, again, we might've been interviewing, uh, you know, senior faculty members at MIT one day and the next day we're talking to continuing ed students who had gone back to a, uh, sort of a part time adult learner program. Uh, and it was someone who had had a,
00:12:44
Speaker
uh an associate's and she got a bachelor's degree in marketing and you know when you think about one of the things that i truly believe is that you have to bring that same sense of curiosity and empathy
00:12:59
Speaker
and really care to both interviews because otherwise, if you situate people within that kind of a hierarchical perspective, I mean, people talk all the time about equity and that is not equitable. If you are less curious about someone else's sort of life experience, it's really about having an authentic conversation with whoever the other person is that you're across from.
00:13:26
Speaker
And the outcome of that I think is seen when we present whether that's our findings or in a platform that will develop or a piece of campaign communications that we're working on. The feedback we always hear is, well, you guys really went deep. You guys did the work. You spoke to everybody. And I think that's another mantra of yours, Neil, is that we
00:13:48
Speaker
We want to talk to everybody we need to talk to and don't, well, I'll throw that one to you, I suppose, to walk through it. No, it is. Again, hashtag quasi Zen Buddhist, but it is that idea of talking to everyone you need to talk to and not talking to anyone you don't need to talk to. And what that means is a good cross section of the stakeholders who are really going to drive the project that you're doing, a messaging platform, a case statement,
00:14:14
Speaker
a view book without getting into a lot of redundancy and granularity that makes the conversations feel like a little bit predictable. And I think, I mean, I think that's part of it for me is like, I always want to go in with, uh, without a predetermined sense of what we're going to get out of it.
Maintaining Authentic Curiosity in Interviews
00:14:34
Speaker
And I was just mentioning that resume debt example, you know, that person, it's like, so how long was the gap between like your associates and your bachelors? What prompted the gap?
00:14:43
Speaker
What inspired you to go back? What was the hardest thing about finishing? What was the biggest surprise that you found when you had the bachelor's versus the assistant? I mean, again, right there, there's half a dozen questions. And we'll get another kind of truism is this whole idea of not asking a question to which you already know the answer. And actually, that's another thing I wanted to ask you about was,
00:15:10
Speaker
And we've talked about this. We had this one moment where we were in an internal meeting, and again, one of my sort of mantra is like, I never ask a question to which I already know the answer. And another libretta said, well, that's great, Neil, but what if we don't know the answer and you do? And I would ask you, Ian, what do you do in that situation?
00:15:30
Speaker
It's funny because I almost have a third perspective on that. I think sometimes it is okay to ask a question you already know the answer to because it may be helpful for that person to put that answer in their own words. And there may be something in that answer that you already know that you didn't think about in that particular way or a way in which that perspective was shared that's helpful for the project overall. So I think you can go one of
00:16:00
Speaker
many ways with that. But I do find it can be helpful to, whether as a opening question, something a little more softball, just to get the conversation going, ask something that you probably already have an awareness of what that answer will be, just to give that person the opportunity to frame it in their own way.
00:16:21
Speaker
That being said, after that conversation, you held with that other librettist, who I will say for the record was not made. How has that changed? How has that changed your approach to that issue? Do you now ask questions you know the answer to?
00:16:35
Speaker
Not necessarily, but I virtually always try to leave space for my colleague and leave minutes when my colleagues can ask a question that they wanted to pose and that they haven't heard yet.
00:16:53
Speaker
And I'll go on one other little tangent, which is one of our clients, who we worked with at multiple organizations, and he was at a university, and he said, you know what's different about the students at this place? And I said right off the bat, please don't tell me that it's different because people hold the door open for you because we've heard that on so many campuses. And he goes, oh, well, that's exactly what I was going to say, but never mind.
00:17:22
Speaker
And then the next time we went to see him, we drove into the parking lot and it was reserved. And it said, Neil Kane, libretto. And underneath it said, under no circumstances should you hold the door open for this person if you see him.
00:17:37
Speaker
I do remember that. One of my all-time, just absolutely my all-time favorite. It's a fantastic story, which of course makes me pose the question of all of the Discovery conversations that you have conducted. Do you have a particular favorite moment? And maybe that's a recent interview you conducted. Maybe it's one from earlier in your career. What comes to mind?
00:18:01
Speaker
One that I do talk about was with a, again, it was with a MacArthur Fellow.
00:18:09
Speaker
And this person was a world-class expert on exoplanets. Again, just an absolutely gripping conversation. And towards the end, again, because Neil, I said, you know, I just, I have to ask you, can you tell me what the, you know, how the MacArthur prize sort of changed, you know, what effect it had on your life and essentially what to use the money for? And she said, oh, I spent a lot of it on childcare.
00:18:39
Speaker
And I'm sure I said, okay, that's the most interesting thing I've heard all month. And would you tell me a little more about it? And it turned out that just before she won, was named a fellow, she was widowed. And so she had a young child.
00:18:57
Speaker
And she was trying to carry on this work and grieve and raise a kid, which is, again, just an unfathomable set of circumstances. And she said, well, when I had the money, I would go to a conference like in Europe and then I'd be like, oh, you know, well, I'll bring the nanny along.
00:19:18
Speaker
And then she goes, let's bring the nanny sister. So it was this totally, I mean, some would say almost kind of mundane thing, but hugely, hugely human. And something that talk about you don't see it coming. And it's, it's incredible. It's also, it's incredibly moving. And it's part of, you know, you're doing your job and you're
00:19:43
Speaker
you're there to do that job. But one of the things I used to say when I worked more in the corporate arena was, you know, scratch the suit, find a person. So I think a big part of it is don't, as I said before, don't have preconceived notions about the people you're talking to, which doesn't mean, I don't think, don't be overly familiar or don't use a lot of inside humor or, you know, sarcasm or snark, which can really go south.
Guiding Interviews with Intellectual Curiosity
00:20:13
Speaker
But, you know, just remain open to sharing a small piece of yourself that is relevant and you so often get it back in kind. And the other thing I would just add is also, I'm hugely driven to this day just by intellectual curiosity.
00:20:36
Speaker
So if I'm talking to someone who works in the North American Office of an International Conservation Organization, I'm like, well, what is that relationship like? And how much of your organization, your piece of things is about a global practice versus an American practice.
00:21:02
Speaker
how does the US office rate in terms of importance with other global pieces of what they do? Or how hard is it to make the philanthropic case for an international organization with an American kind of wing as opposed to an American organization? And see again, for me, if you remain curious, those questions just kind of like spill out and you do wanna prepare some of that.
00:21:31
Speaker
but a lot of it is just, it's about being curious and curious about what you don't know. It's often just that simple. It's such a great example of you reaching for that human element in a very, in a way that showcases curiosity and not, it's not, how do I put this? You're not trying to put somebody on the spot. You're just asking a genuinely curious question and you get an incredible answer like the answer you received from that MacArthur prize winner.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, if I can just mention one other thing that, again, which could be helpful for others because, you know, what we were talking about before, like when you go to a school and you have a room full of people and let's say you're starting an admissions project and you say, you know, what's one word that describes this school? And the word everyone is going to use is?
00:22:18
Speaker
community community and you know it's like that's fantastic you go into that same situation and you got 10 people in the room let's say you're in person and you say as a function of this admissions project i would like our school to come across as a little more blank
00:22:38
Speaker
And that could be bold, audacious, less modest, intellectual. Again, and those things are all about finer nuances, and they're also about incremental change.
00:22:57
Speaker
as opposed to again you know oh tell me this reiterate the status quo that you may are probably going to default to because people just default to that even though you have this much more refined sense of what this place is about and we can and I'd rather again I want to go to that
00:23:20
Speaker
rather than revert kind of to the truisms. And one of my favorite responses to that question you posed, how do you make this little more blank was of course we need more purple hair on campus, which I think was at a college we had worked with a few years ago.
00:23:35
Speaker
No, that's fantastic. A favorite discovery moment for me was actually when the tables were turned, which happens occasionally. We had just kicked off a project with the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York. And we had had a great conversation with their leadership team and we were at lunch in their very beautiful cafeteria when they
00:23:59
Speaker
posed a question back at us, which is very common in these discovery conversations.
Serendipitous Connections in Conversations
00:24:04
Speaker
They want to know where we're coming from and what our perspectives are so that they can answer our questions more accurately and share the perspectives that they think we're looking for. And they asked you, Neil, what is your take on this place? And you answered
00:24:21
Speaker
Well, it reminds me of a mixture of UMass' Mindfulness Institute and the Kupalu Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. And lo and behold,
00:24:34
Speaker
who is behind you as you give that answer? Basically, the director of the Mindfulness Institute, who is having lunch with an executive from Cropalo, and they turned around and said, did you just say what I think you said? And people were just, it was like, were these plants? And what's funny about that is, I feel like that kind of response, which I'm sure at times,
00:25:04
Speaker
elicits a little bit of a ha, or like, what is this person talking about? But there's a little bit of risk there, and there's a little, again, there's a little bit of unconventional thinking and a little bit of stream of consciousness. And I find that sometimes, I mean, there are probably times where it's totally bombed. But I found that, you know, going out on a little bit of a limb,
00:25:28
Speaker
people really, really respond well to that. And I think that's one of those scenarios where honestly, it's like having spent like two hours there, like if you had said to those folks, do we have a sense that these people are going to get us? Like that is not even a question because of something that's, you know, again, that's serendipitous, but it's also, there's something about it that hearkens back to our, almost our philosophical approach. I don't want to sort of
00:25:55
Speaker
Absolutely. No, no, no. No, I think you hit it on the head. It was a very happy accident, as Bob Ross would have said.
Key Interview Takeaways
00:26:02
Speaker
And that takes us to our takeaways. I think first and foremost, as the conversation began, preparation is key. Neil, you shared the importance of doing a little bit of background research on whoever it is that you're interviewing, whether that's a LinkedIn profile or even just the about
00:26:19
Speaker
language on the website of that person's biography on the organization's website. Those moments of preparation can be really critical when you're in the midst of a conversation and are looking for that insightful perspective. Yeah. And then I would also add, always bring your curiosity. And we talk all the time about emotional and rational levers.
00:26:45
Speaker
So if there's a way to inject your experience into something in a way that will elucidate a substantive response from somebody else, I think it's always worth taking that risk. And again, to your point, I think being aware of your colleagues who are participating and ensuring in the moment that they're getting what they need out of it,
00:27:13
Speaker
I think I would just add that in a group setting, trying to make sure that everyone has the chance to speak, to yield the time in a very equitable way that will usually yield the richest results in terms of insights and notes collected afterwards.
00:27:31
Speaker
And then at the conclusion of any good discovery, make sure you go over the notes that you have, start the ideas that are coming to the forefront, and that usually yields great results for the actual project and further conversations down the line.
00:27:57
Speaker
So speaking of discovery, Ian, thank you for that great, empathetic, substantive conversation. You're very welcome. And now we're going to segue into the part of the podcast where we talk about
00:28:14
Speaker
what we're loving at the moment and maybe you can start us off and tell us a little bit about what's starting your party. I feel like I have been marketing this book series for the last couple of months to the libretto team during all of our production calls and
00:28:33
Speaker
more informal hangouts. I feel like a bit of a broken record. But I just finished the fourth book in the Neapolitan Quartet, which is the Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend book series. And it just moved me in a way that a book hasn't in some time. It really resonated with me. It's the story of
00:28:58
Speaker
to a woman growing up in post-war Naples, Italy, both brilliant, gifted, smart, and it just follows their journey from childhood to late adulthood. It was a remarkably, remarkably moving series. And I, Neil, I know you've seen the HBO television adaption. That's gonna be next up for me. Did you enjoy the TV show?
00:29:26
Speaker
I saw actually the first two seasons and I found them just, it was exquisite. Because first of all, it's Naples in the 1950s, which again, is not an era or a milieu that you associate with, it's not a room with a view. And they're basically living in public housing, so it's quite gritty.
00:29:51
Speaker
and there's a lot about class and intellect and street smarts. As you know, I also want to mention, I was just looking at the New York Times just published their top 100 books of the 20th century. Yeah, I was following that. I haven't read through... And at least two of the four.
00:30:11
Speaker
are on the list and I think my brilliant friend is number one. No kidding. Oh my gosh. I did not see that. That's excellent. That is awesome. Well then I pose the question to you. What has been on your mind and bumping around your head recently?
Cultural Interests and Entertainment
00:30:27
Speaker
One thing is we've been watching a show called Extraordinary Attorney Wu and it's set in Korea and it's about an attorney who is autistic and she is obsessed with whales and that sounds like a kind of odd cocktail but
00:30:55
Speaker
it's incredibly moving and for me it's always it's funny I tend not to laugh that much or cry that much like when I'm watching like you know a series or programs and when something does both to me
00:31:10
Speaker
that it has a certain kind of stature. One other thing I'd mention quickly is a podcast I listened to recently about the, I think it's called The Big Dig. And it's about the Big Dig project in Boston, and it's about infrastructure. And it's also, of course, about something that I lived through over many, many years. And it is just a fascinating, it's really epic because you see, I mean, for example,
00:31:39
Speaker
The Big Dig was the last project completed in the U.S. interstate project, which again, something I never knew when you learned that right off the bat. I did not know that either. The politics of it, the logistics of it, the physicality and scale of it,
00:31:57
Speaker
the bureaucracy. It's really, again, it's very, very nerdy. But I think it's, I've recommended it to at least one person who isn't from Boston who said they really, really enjoyed it. Because it's kind of an infamous, you know, public works project. But it's, you know, it's also where you just see when you have, you know, eight hours or whatever it is to really spin the tail. It was really, really compelling.
00:32:24
Speaker
I would love to listen to it. I have many fond memories of when I lived in Boston, walking across the Rose Kennedy Greenway, which now separates the North End from the financial district.
00:32:35
Speaker
And to think that at one point that was all just elevated highway is kind of incredible. I mean, we know in our work, especially in education, the word transformative gets bandied about a lot. But this was truly a transformative project. And that, again, me personally, has really affected quality of life. So it's fascinating.
Conclusion and Libretto Information
00:32:58
Speaker
So thanks to all of you for listening. This has been well put.
00:33:03
Speaker
a libretto podcast, and I'm Neil Kane. And I'm Ian Sutherland. If you want to learn more about libretto and what we do, check out librettoinc.com. That is libretto-inc.com. Perfect. Perfect. Very good. I wanted to add a chef's kiss.