How to interview a guest. . . .

1. Introduction : Hello and welcome to my class. My name is Ben Lewis Smith and I'm a musician and creative entrepreneur based here in London in the UK. I've put together this little class to teach you some of the tactics and techniques. I've learned about how to interview guests, how to put guests at ease, how to make them feel relaxed and at home, and how to get the best out of them. This isn't an interrogation and interview. We want to put somebody in their favored position to get the most out of them. I've given you a couple of live case studies of interviews I carried out on Zoom earlier in the year. And also just general tactics and techniques about how you might go about interviewing people. If you're starting a podcast or you need to learn how to interview for work or just for fun. You will enjoy this course. So thanks so much for tuning in. 2. Put your guest at ease: Putting the guest at ease. This is so important in the proceedings. So I'm going to assume you're doing a remote interview on Zoom or on some of the other software platforms that you can use. The first thing I always say to a guest is look relaxed. I'm not recording immediately. You put them at ease and just start to engage them in conversation. Get to know the sound of the voice, and just start those basic interactions. I always say to guess, look, imagine we were in a coffee shop or in a pub or something like here in London, there are some splendid pubs and just get the conversation flowing and get them relaxed. I often find that you get the best out of people. You get the best responses when somebody is just a little bit relaxed, There's nothing worse than, I think naturally people are quite nervous when they come in and there's nothing worse than those nerves affecting their responses and you knowing that you could have got a better answer if you just set things up a little bit differently. I also think some guests don't like to use headphones. But I say to them, the conversation we can have will be more immediate and we won't get echo If you use headphones and a microphone. Just having a little bit of a think about the tech can really help to boost the quality of an interview. Just have a little think about those things as you're talking with your guest. When you're sending out an e-mail ahead of time or you're communicating with them via DM or whatever. I don't often give completely scripted questions. So for instance, some guests will say, please, can you send me the questions you are going to ask me. The trouble with that is, if I ask those questions in that very matter of fact way that the responses won't be as good. So what I now do, I offer a talking points, so I'll give ten or 12 different talking points about their career, about their work, about their life, where they live, and just give you a little hub points to discuss. And then as you're planning that out, and I'll talk more about preparation in the next video. But as you're planning of that out, you can then start to make connections, which makes the interview all the more interesting. 3. Preparation : Now you can over prepare. It can be said somebody can spend hours and hours and hours preparing for an interview. And you never actually get to ask any of the questions. But to know the background of your guests is so important because it will inform the conversation that you're going to have. When I first started anything, what I do, I write a long list of questions, so 20 questions, and I would focus on making sure I asked all of them in the right order. Now what I tend to do is I will have various talking points and I'll draw the guest name in the middle of a piece of paper and draw a spider gram outwards with all those different talking points. And then maybe using colored pens, I can just make the connections between the different areas. So a lot of my guests are musicians. Singers are conductors or performers in some way. So they used to performing and being on the stage. And so the real thing that's always interested me is kinda the behind the scenes of what their, what their actual life is like. Not just walking out onto the concert platform, but what they get up to in their everyday life. So I try and encourage questions in that regard. The preparation is really important equally and interviewing somebody, some of the best questions can actually come from that sort of free-flowing discussion and leaving your guest with plenty of time to deliver their responses. There's nothing worse than an interview that keeps interrupting. Allow the guests that bit of space to reflect on your questions and then to come up with answers. But yeah, preparation is important. I wouldn't over prepare though and try and go into an interview with a sense, specific sense of direction. Because if you go in with an agenda, it will feel a bit for slightly trying to shoehorn the interview in a certain direction. So I tried to go in with my background, but also with sort of neutrality, allows the personality of the guest to really shine through. 4. Live "zoom" case studies : In this section of the course, I'm using examples from to live interviews with a bit of commentary along the way. Sam evans, Thank you very much for joining me. How are you and how is this festive season ahead of us looking? It's looking good. Thanks. Yeah, it's gonna be busy. Oh, my quiet. We've got nice Christmas concert. It's lined up and I've got some singing. I'm back at the Ned's in London. Gareth Malone, Christmas with Gareth Malone is a big thing at the Ned's and I'll be there singing some jazz stuff with them. It's gonna be fun. So here we go. Then we're into the interview and Sam has given a brilliant response. And the intro that I gave was really short and snappy. I'll show you later a previous interview where I just went on and on. Keep your intro really short and snappy because it keeps people's attention. And then you'll notice that you get quicker. More to the point replies. So good start. Sometimes wonder, in my approach to conducting, right? I'm obsessed with this idea of being liked. I find it difficult being up there and everybody not having a good time. You know what I mean? But do you think that's a bit of a modern phenomenon? Because in the past, some big names, they weren't exactly popular on the podium worthy. So what's your opinion on that? So we're not quite so good now, I was twiddling a little bit with my jacket button. Just be careful with those kinda nervous tells you. If you've got something that you repeatedly or sometimes my wedding ring will be spinning around on my finger like that. Just be a little bit careful. The thing about hand gestures, There's some people use them. I use them a lot to demonstrate points. Just be aware of when you are using them, that you're not overdoing them because they can be a little bit distracting, but not too bad. Let's see how Sam replies. I don't I don't think it's I think it's a false choice between being liked and being exacting. I think you can be exacting, but be liked at the same time. I think I'm very, very important. I mean, everybody wants the same thing. Everybody wants to sing better. They want to sound better. The conductor wants that. They want them to sound better. We're all, we're all ultimately striving for the same thing. The difficulty is when the conductor doesn't create a place of psychological safety in the rehearsal room. I think that was very prevalent in previous generations. I think it's slightly symbiotic actually because I think that some quiet members believe that they're only getting the proper experience if they're being berated by somebody angry on the podium. Now Sam does some amazing things here. He was a great guest and this interview got loads and loads of views for my channel, which is 1,200 or something more than a usual video might get. He did one specific thing at the beginning, he gave a really dramatic pause. Do you remember? I asked the question. That was a good four or 5 s of silence. I think in today's world were so scared about putting in silences because we think that people think we don't know what we're saying, but they can be so dramatic. One other little thing he did, he gave an upward inflection. I don't know if you heard that at the end of a sentence he is voice went up. And then he continued his point. And it sort of gives the listener a kind of interest in what we're saying, those kind of dramatic moments just to keep the listener really engaged. So I'm now going to show you an earlier example. Now, I must say, I'm gonna be a bit more critical here, and it's not the fault of the guest at all. It's specifically me and how I went about interviewing them. But there are just some interesting cross comparison points here. So meet Tony. Welcome to Night experience music. Every Friday I speak with a business leader or world-class musicians to discover what we might learn from their experiences. I'm delighted to be joined today by Tony speak of in a successful business leader from his work with Apple through to involvement in various startups. I count Tony as both a friend and a mental Tony, Welcome. And what kind of business projects do you most enjoy working on? And where do you most like to add value a business? So I think you'll agree the intro is way too long, hair goes on. I think 40 or 50 s just have me blubbering on giving an intro way too long. So keep the intro short and snappy. Do remember in Sam's it was about 20 s long, bank to the point, really slick. The other thing Here's the tech issue, Tony, is the cameras kinda down very low. So it's looking up at ten. I should have flagged this up. No fault of Tony. He was a great guest. But just something to be a little bit aware of. Let's see how Tony replies. Okay, Great question. Well, I think I think throughout my career and just to put it perspective, I've only been involved in computer software, worked in a variety of different companies and all sorts of sizes from some very small startups to a sensor to Apple and run one of their subsidiaries for them for several years. But if I think where I've added value over, over the course of my career is in terms of teambuilding, working with people, and getting the best out of the people you work with. And it's always an interesting combination of motivation and direction and a few other sort of soft skills. So Tony, he did a great job. Pretty poor technique, I think for me, but he he used that stalling technique. You remember when he first answered the question he went That's a really interesting question. I don't think he meant that he was just sort of stalling it a little bit. But that shows you a different, different style there. You see impressions of business leaders today like Alan Sugar and Dragon's Den and they're so fierce there, so sharp elbows. Do you think that you need a bit of that to gain traction in today's market, or is that not an essential skill? And the more I see where that, I've seen where that comes into play. I guess business environments, it can work. Cool. Now we're back on track. We've got some more focused questioning here you see, if you give a short snappy question, you often get a short snappy response which can be really powerful if you're setting somebody up for a really good answer, the question here was more focused and much better. So in conclusion, you've got two different interviews. They're from different different times in different styles and both have their merits and we're always learning all of that. But a couple of key takeaways. Keep the questions short, snappy to the point. Don't over script and overplan. If you plan out all your questions, 20 questions, it's just going to be really formulaic. It's not going to flow. Follow the guest a little bit and their interests. You see when Tony started to use a bit of humor that we want to see the human side of the guest. And the more you can encourage to bring that out, the better. The key thing is keep on going, even if there is a tech issue like the camera placement or that keep on filming, you will get something useful out of it. 5. Don't lose heart : Now, if it's not going well, don't lose heart, whatever you do, don't stop the interview. Keep the camera rolling, keep the Zoom meeting going. Keep recording because you'll often find that you actually get some really splendid content out of every session. And don't, don't lose heart, don't lose faith. Keep, keep the camera rolling. And just at the end of the session you can reflect on how you think that session went. Yeah, there may be a tweaks you could have done and I'll show you a couple of examples, live examples about how I would have maybe done things differently. Another suggestion that I have is that you write down a list of kinda fun, slightly more edgy questions. Not most of you have for breakfast, but more kind of getting into the character of your, of your interviewer and write them in a different color so your eye can kinda quit on your notes, can quickly see them and think right? I'm going to take this questioning in a different direction because often, if an interviewer gets a bit stagnant, taking it off in a slightly different direction and putting a different spin on it can make things a bit more interesting and reconnect again with your audience. So just bear that in mind. But the key thing is don't lose faith. Don't lose hope in an interview because there's always something that will come from, even if you end up using a short section of it as a kind of sound bite. That's absolutely fine. Sometimes there are technical issues along the way. I was trying to conduct an interview the other day and the internet connection became very frozen and I would say as much as possible, try to remain in the space with your with your guest, as in, um, you know, keep, keep rolling and try. I think there's an element of performance that goes into interviewing somebody is putting on a show for the audience suddenly so you don't want to stop and give up in that process. So keep calm, carry on. There will be a use for the content, I promise. 6. Conclusion : So in conclusion, I think some of my key points are that as soon as the gas comes into the room, into the Zoom meeting, however you're recording, you're trying to put them at ease. You're not gonna get the best interview if the guest feels under stress or under pressure. There are ways that you can get the best out of your guests. One tactic that I found really helps us to give an example from your own life, e.g. if you get particularly stressed or anxious about performing, about speaking in public, for instance, if you get stressed about standing up in front of people, and that's something that brings you a sense of anxiety. I would share that with a guest as an invitation for them to share something back to. You often find if, if you're a little bit vulnerable with your guests, that the responses you get back from them will be more enlightening and we'll just show you more of their character because they've seen that you're showing your bearing, your bearing all, and they will in return. I think an openness is important with your guests. There's no point kind of skirting over the surface of issues. I think we've gotta have an honesty and we've got to tell the truth in there. I think that's so key. Certainly do prepare and know the background of your guests, but don't over prepare and I wouldn't be going down the line of writing every single question out for a long time. I used to do that over a hundreds of questions and just read them off. The trouble with that is the entity doesn't have any sense of flow, and it doesn't all connects together. It doesn't hang together particularly well because you're sort of jumping from one area to the next. By all means, have your questions heavier or lighter questions, you'll sort of fun questions. But I would say try to go with the flow of the interview. And if the guest is taking you off in a particular direction, I follow them because those tangents are often really interesting and they lead into kind of unexpected directions. Actually end up getting gems out of the interview. If you kind of go off script through the script out the window and have a bit of fun. Look. I hope this really short course has been useful for you in a few tips for interviewing. It's always interesting to hear comments. And if you'd like this sort of content, then be great. If you could let me know in the comments down below and I will keep it coming. But thank you so much for joining me on this course about interviewing a guest.