Do You Make These Interviewing Mistakes?

mistake

In a previous post I wrote about the elements of a good interview. In this post I want to look at some common interviewing mistakes.

Interviewing a family member or a client for a personal history project involves more than just sitting down with a recorder and turning it on. Like anything done well, there is a real skill involved in drawing out the best stories. Here’s a list of mistakes that lead to a poor interview. And believe me I know because over the years I’ve committed all of these at one time or another!

  • Not leaving room for silence. This is especially important if you’ve asked a reflective question. Leave space for your subject to think. Don’t leap in with another question right away.
  • Sitting too far away from your subject. You want a degree of intimacy. This won’t happen if you’re sitting across the room. Make certain you’re no more than five feet away from your subject.
  • Interrupting your subject. Interrupting might work if you’re a journalist trying to get at the heart of a hot story. But you’re not. You’re gathering a person’s reminiscences about their life. Be gentle.
  • Talking about yourself. The interview is not about you. Don’t start relating how aspects of your life are just like your subject’s.
  • Offering advice. While you might  be tempted to toss in some words of wisdom, don’t. Your role is to unlock your subject’s rich treasury of memories. You’re not there as a therapist or counselor.

That’s my list. Do you have any other mistakes to add? Send me your comments. Love to hear from you.

Photo by Victoria

What do you think?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s