How to Interview Someone You Know Journalism
Want To Know How To Enquire Questions? Longtime Journalist Shows How Information technology's Washed In New Book ten:46 Copy the code below to embed the WBUR sound player on your site
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With the rise of podcasting and the lack of civil conversation he was seeing around him, writer and longtime announcer Dean Nelson (@deanenelson) says it struck him every bit a perfect time to write a book demystifying the fine art of asking others questions.
"Information technology just felt like, well, I know something about it. I think the world needs information technology, and there is this rising interest in long, deep chat, either through podcasts or I think just in civil life," says Nelson, who recently released his new volume, "Talk To Me: How to Ask Better Questions, Become Better Answers, and Interview Anyone Similar a Pro."
Preparation ahead of time, request open-ended questions, always recording yourself and your field of study — there are a lot of factors that go into a adept interview, says Nelson (@deanenelson). What's specially of import to go on in mind is "the difference between just sensationalizing and doing something because information technology'due south important," he says.
"Sometimes, y'all really have to press frontward in an interview to become at something," Nelson tells Hither & Now'due south Lisa Mullins. "This is where the discernment comes in.
"Are you getting into some of this deeper, more complicated, maybe more than uncomfortable stuff merely because it's an audience-getter and a ratings-getter, or are you doing it because it's really of import that we develop this?"
Interview Highlights
On how crucial it is to set up for an interview
"I just was on somebody'due south podcast just a mean solar day or two ago, and I was amazed at how well prepared this guy was. He knew what he wanted to ask, he knew the society he wanted to ask the questions in -— he kind of knew where it was going. And so, I would say that kind of preparation makes all the difference in the earth."
On what information you want to get out of the person you're interviewing
"It'due south who is this person? Why should we care about this person? And what are we going to talk most that is going to exist sufficiently interesting? If you can at least call up that one through, y'all're ahead of a lot of people."
On the balance between request questions that are also open up-ended and likewise closed-ended
"I think when you ask open-ended questions, that'south always going to elicit a improve answer or a meliorate response than a closed-ended [question]. For example, 'Where were you born?' — well, I could say Chicago — as opposed to, 'What was it like growing up in Chicago?' If yous're a proficient interviewer you already know that I was born in Chicago. You've washed your homework. Inquire it in some style that will draw the person out equally opposed to merely kind of the 1-word answers.
"The danger of the open-concluded question is making it so open-ended. I employ the case of after some sort of phenomenal Olympic accomplishment, somebody has only washed something that'due south never been done earlier and an interviewer will say, 'What does it feel like?' Well, that's so open-ended, information technology doesn't experience similar anything. It's never been washed before.
"This goes back to the training: If you've actually looked into who some of these athletes are or what they've overcome, I would describe from that. I think a great one that I saw not besides long agone was at the end of the Stanley Cup [Championship], the interviewer asked one of the players about having his dad in the rink on the twenty-four hours that the Stanley Cup was won. The interviewer knew that the dad was at that place. He had some sort of dementia. His dad didn't really know where he was, just his sheer presence in the stands was so important to the thespian that instead of, 'How does it feel to win the Stanley Cup?,' it was, 'How does it experience to win the Stanley Cup in forepart of your father, who has come to all these games who took yous to early hockey practice when you were a kid?' At present, that really elicited humanity out of that player."
On how to make sure that as an interviewer, your accurateness and fairness doesn't get questioned
"If you're recording the interview for instance, yous're in pretty good shape. ... At that place are times that I propose that information technology's appropriate to type upwardly your notes of what the person said, effigy out which quotes you're going to use in your story or in your interview and send those quotes to your source and say, 'I'm not asking for you to correct these. I'one thousand non asking for y'all to walk it dorsum. I'm just saying this is what I wrote down — did you lot say it?'
"When somebody says, 'I don't desire yous to use that quote' … I just kind of cutting a deal with the person, and I said, 'Alright. I volition not utilize this quote under one status, and that is you give me something better.' … And the person said, 'I'll telephone call you dorsum in a couple hours.' So, he did, and he did give me something better. He then badly didn't desire me to use certain quotes, simply he was able to make my story so much amend, because he gave me something deeper and more than thoughtful and frankly more complicated, and that's what made the story better.
"I don't retrieve nosotros were simply merely now coming to a place where we're not listening to one another. I think egos take always gotten in the way of actually relating to one another."
Dean Nelson
On how to ask tough questions
"I'll give you an case. … I asked a question of the writer Tracy Kidder, a human being I admire a great deal, merely he depends a lot on people'southward memories for his accounts of what he writes near. And so, I simply asked him, 'How do you know that that's fifty-fifty true? Aren't memories kind of tricky?' And he gave a very thoughtful answer about how much tin can you actually trust somebody'due south retention of something that happened twenty years agone, 50 years agone. You lot could have seen that as a challenge to his accuracy, to his professionalism, but by the time I asked information technology, he trusted me plenty to know that I wasn't attacking him, and and so I think he gave a actually thoughtful response."
On the importance of request deep questions
"I just call up there'due south a way to talk to each other that is healthy and good and that helps us more deeply sympathize things. And If we did more of that and accepted maybe a lilliputian more than complexity and a little more than dash, instead of just trying to score points or effort to convince our audience of how smart or how superior we are, I think we'd get a little farther in how we chronicle to one another.
"I don't recollect nosotros were simply only at present coming to a place where nosotros're not listening to one another. I remember egos take always gotten in the mode of really relating to i another. But, maybe information technology'due south a little more than heightened now. And so, on the ane hand, yeah, I think I'm dealing with a modernistic social problem. But on the other hand, I call back I'chiliad dealing with something that's been with us since we began talking to each other."
Book Extract: 'Talk To Me: How to Ask Meliorate Questions, Get Improve Answers, and Interview Anyone Similar a Pro'
By Dean Nelson
We Accept Questions; We Want Answers
I take learned a lot about interviewing since the Giddy Gillespie event— first and foremost that interviewing is more common than most of us realize. Nosotros ask questions every solar day because nosotros need to know something, or because we demand information so our side by side conclusion will be an informed i, or we desire to be able to share wisdom, or we want to avert trouble, or peradventure we are merely nosy.
By and large, we are trying to gain perspective on something. If we depend solely on our ain thoughts and observations and don't take into account the thoughts and observations of others who are not just similar us, we run the risk of coming to inaccurate conclusions and perchance taking harmful actions. Other perspectives reveal our own biases and assumptions. And think of what could have been accomplished (and avoided!) in our history had we simply asked a few more questions. Asking good questions keeps us from living in our own repeat chambers.
Think of the questions we have heard or have asked— questions every bit simple as: "What is the undercover to your chocolate flake cookies?" "What happened at schoolhouse today?" "Did y'all think nigh the consequences?" "Would you similar to take dinner with me?" "Will you ally me?" "Why is the coffee al-ways gone?" On the one mitt, those are simply questions. But they can lead to other questions and become conversations that will describe out personalities and understandings. They can get a kind of interview.
The questions that environs us may be simple and obvious; they may exist cosmic and profound. But they all serve a function. Consider the following scenarios from everyday life— in this instance mine:
There is a plate of spaghetti on the floor, and the dog is eating information technology equally if he had been waiting his entire life for this moment; his tail is wagging difficult enough to spin a turbine. I expect at my young son. He is standing, frozen in place, hands outstretched, eyes as big as the plate that is upside down on the floor straight under his hands. I wait at my daughter, who is three years younger than my son. She is at the kitchen table, silently crying. Not because of the lost spaghetti or the stained carpeting, simply because she thinks I am going to punish the domestic dog.
"What happened?" I inquire.
That's an interview question. Information technology'south a dumb interview question (more on asking impaired questions later), considering it's obvious what happened. But information technology's an interview question nonetheless. Mayhap a amend question would be "How did this hap-pen?" And then "What do you recollect is almost to happen?"
Everyone Is an Interviewer
Insurance adjusters, social workers, lawyers, nurses, teachers, investigators, therapists, podcast hosts, customer service representatives, bankers, and police officers spend a proficient part of each day asking questions. And that'south what an interview is: a purposeful serial of questions that leads to understanding, in-sight, and perspective on a given topic. What these people do next depends on the quality of the answers they get. And the quality of those answers has a lot to do with the quality of the questions.
I once had a doctor who never looked up from his computer screen when he asked me questions. I had visits in his exam room for a torn rotator cuff, skin cancer, migraines, and annual physicals. I could barely describe him to you, because all I ever really saw was his hairline over the screen. He asked questions and pounded on those keys like he was trying to smash a scorpion nether the keyboard.
In that aforementioned clinic I had a md who asked me questions other than only what my symptoms were and how often I was going to the bathroom. We talked about our articulation dear for the lakes in Minnesota, and our joint lament over the quality of journalism in the country. The second doc'due south visits didn't take much longer than the showtime. But guess which doctor I was willing to be more open with? Guess who was improve able to help me figure out some of my physical issues?
Doctors are under lots of pressure from insurance companies to spend every bit little time with patients as possible and to document everything. I get it. But fifty-fifty medical journals write that the interviewing skills of doctors can be primal to developing acceptable diagnoses and therapies for their patients. Good doctors do more than order lots of tests. They ask questions. They listen. They evaluate. They follow upward. They interview.
Once I recognized the intentional line of questioning, I appreciated what the second physician was doing. He wasn't merely getting to know me in a casual sense. It wasn't like nosotros were going to go out for drinks later. He was gathering information and so he could develop a program. He was, in an informal mode, taking my medical history, which is a term doctors use for conducting an interview. It was a conversation, but directed toward a specific goal.
Other careers depend on quality interviews, too. A social worker I know told me that how she works with a client de-pends on what that client tells her. And what that client tells her is a straight outcome of the questions she asks: "The interview is everything." Same story for human resources, where the interview is the time yous can look past that mountain of near-identical resumes and find out what really sets a candidate apart. Law? A degradation is an interview. Jury pick is a series of interviews. And then is a trial, when lawyers ask wit-nesses questions. Fiscal planners? I have never been asked more personal questions than when I talked to a financial planner. He was interested in my family'south goals, our definitions of success and condolement and security. Those were all interview questions.
Journalists, of course, ask a lot of questions. It's their job. Almost of their careers depend on their ability to comport a good interview. As a journalist I accept interviewed people who were overjoyed, and those who were overwhelmed. Successful, and gutted. Winners and losers. Interesting and dull. Saintly and decadent. Heroes and antichrists.
Almost every profession depends on getting people to talk to you lot, and the good news is that conducting a great inter-view is something you tin can acquire. We encounter doctors, lawyers, police officers, and journalists on television or in movies, and it seems that they accept a poised, professional, confident manner when they carry interviews. They look like naturals. The shows give the impression that conducting a great interview depends entirely on your beingness an extrovert with insatiable curiosity. We get a stereotype in our minds well-nigh interviewing, that nosotros're just built-in with the interviewing gene or we're not. Only I don't think that's the instance at all. Remember, everyone is an interviewer. Every profession has its times where we demand to ask questions of strangers. Boisterous and confident people tin can be great interviewers. Marc Maron is very good at this. He gives off an air that says, "It's so absurd that you lot're talking to me on my podcast, but of course yous wanted to talk to me in the first place." For Maron, it'due south a combination of piffling- kid wonder and arrogance, and it works for him. But shy and insecure people tin be corking interviewers, too. Some of the best interviewers I have seen are tentative, noncombative, soft- spoken people. Their personalities put people at ease and make them easy to talk to. They know their field of study well, and they know that their source can help them proceeds fifty-fifty more than understanding, and they are okay with beingness vulnerable. I heard the journalist Katherine Boo depict how she got people in Mumbai to be then open with her in her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers. She said that she showed up so often that people sort of forgot that she was there.
Good interviewers are simply themselves. They're not acting. They're curious. They know how to be repose and listen. The accurate ones who ask skilful questions are the ones who excerpt profound answers instead of clichés, and who get past the surface and into something that rarely gets explored.
Asking proficient questions in a expert social club that leads you to greater understanding volition raise whatever job, and any life. I have seen it happen with nearly every personality type, in virtually every professional context.
From the book TALK TO ME. Copyright © past Dean Nelson. Published February 19, 2019 by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by Permission.
Emiko Tamagawa produced and edited this story for broadcast with Todd Mundt . Jackson Cote adapted information technology for the web.
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Source: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2019/03/08/dean-nelson-interviewing
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