We’ve all had those interviews. No matter what you ask or how you ask it, your interview subject is shut up tighter than a presidential candidate making a VP pick. Sometimes people are worried about giving too much information away, others are just nervous, but either way you’ve got to get the information. So, what can you do to crack that nut?
The ever faithful “Could you elaborate on that?” sets it up and then your follow up hits it out of the park: silence. Silence is uncomfortable and in today’s world, unusual. Your pleasant, expectant pause is often a better prompt than several follow up questions. Your subject will work to fill the silence and in turn provide you with not only the answer you seek, but additional information that is ripe for follow up questions.
The key to using silence is to use it sparingly. Try all of your other techniques first: use open ended questions and encouraging body language, pull from your pool of prior conducted research, but when the interview gets tough, you get silent and just let the subject talk. Another point to remember – be careful using it on the phone. The interview subject may think the call got disconnected and by the time you get finished explaining you’re still on the line, you’ve lost the power and momentum of the silence.
Great interviewing skills are essential to a writer’s repertoire. Tuesday in our comments section for my post on research we talked about the importance of interviewing including the interviewing hierarchy: 1. in person, 2. over the phone, 3. via email. Writers use their interviewing skills beyond articles to interview clients, employees, etc. What are some of your favorite interviewing tips?