Problem Solving Interviews

W. E. Beveridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367720773
• eBook ISBN: 9781000359251
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

First published in 1968, Problem Solving Interviews explores different elements relating to conversations concerned with finding a solution to a particular problem.

The book begins first by examining the role of the problem-solving interviewer, before exploring in detail what an interview is. It looks at the significance of different attitudes in shaping behaviour and highlights the importance of considering the attitudes of both the interviewer and the respondent. This leads on to a consideration of bias, including where it comes from, how it can affect the interview, and whether its impact can be eliminated or reduced. The book also covers carrying out and learning how to interview, and includes close analysis of three example interviews.

CHAPTER FIVE

Carrying out the Interview

I. ESTABLISHING RAPPORT

In formal selection or appraisal type interviews it is of course possible to prepare for the interview by fixing a time, arranging a room with comfortable chairs and a table, having paper and pen available and examining application forms, reports and notes before the interview takes place. Sometimes this is possible also with a problem-solving interview: an employee with a problem may ask for the opportunity to discuss his difficulty in his employer’s office and at an arranged time. But many such interviews inevitably take place without any kind of preliminary arrangement: a worried patient bursts out with his problem to a nurse in a ward; an angry employee comes unexpectedly into the supervisor’s office with a grievance about the rate for the job; an anxious parishioner takes the opportunity provided by the clergyman’s visit to reveal some family distress; a parent may waylay her child’s schoolteacher in the street. Sometimes it may be possible to delay the interview and arrange an easier time and more convenient place but sometimes the matter has to be dealt with there and then. If so, the interviewer must not allow himself to become flustered or embarrassed. It is important to be patient, understanding, calm and, above all, to be seen to be willing to listen. Let the person with the problem get the first emotional surge out of his system. After that, he may be able to approach his problem more rationally and the very fact that somebody has shown himself willing to listen may not only enable him to deal more constructively with it but give him confidence that the listener is ready to support him as he attempts to deal with it.

This confident and permissive relationship between interviewer and respondent is one of rapport; the respondent is able to feel that the interviewer is genuinely interested in him as a person and will listen willingly to all he wants to tell him. Rapport does not mean ‘chumminess’; a certain social distance is appropriate to the role relationship between interviewer and respondent. The danger with over-friendliness is that the respondent may become biased to say what he feels is pleasing to the interviewer and to avoid telling him of incidents which might place him in an unfavourable light. To please his interviewer he may even agree at the end of the interview that he now knows how to deal with his problem when in fact he is as confused about it as ever. Rapport is equally important for both the formal and informal interview. In the more formal interview, the interviewer can ensure that he will not be interrupted by telephone calls or messages. This is a matter of simple common sense. A respondent who has taken ten or fifteen minutes to settle down and is just about to talk openly and frankly about his problem may have to break off to allow his interviewer to take a phone call. At the end of the call, the respondent may find it very difficult to return to the mood of the moment before the telephone rang. He may feel it incongruous that the interviewer could turn his attention away from what seems to him his all-demanding problem and so become unable to continue the interview effectively. The net consequence is that the telephone call not merely interrupted the interview, it terminated it with the consequent loss of a valuable part of the interviewer’s time and a breakdown in confidence in the interviewer by the respondent, a breakdown which cannot be easily mended.

II. BEGINNING THE INTERVIEW

If the interview has been arranged beforehand, the interviewer should greet the respondent courteously on his arrival and, if necessary, introduce himself. Imagine that an employee, Mr Brown, has asked for a confidential interview about a personal problem with his personnel manager, Mr Jones. Here are three alternative ways it might begin:

(a) Mr Jones (standing up): Good morning, Mr Brown. Do come and sit down. Would you like a cigarette?

Mr Brown: Thank you.

Mr Jones: Light?

Mr Brown: Thank you.

Mr Jones: It has turned out very cold this morning. Makes one realize winter is on the way.

Mr Brown: Yes. It won’t be long now. Still, we had a good summer.

Mr Jones: We certainly can’t complain. Well now, I understand you’d like to have a chat with me about a personal matter.

(b) Mr Jones (seated): Ah, you’re Mr Brown are you? Sit down. What do you want to see me about?

(c) Mr Jones (seated): Come in. Ah yes—now you’re… (looks through papers on his desk)… sorry, I just can’t place you. What’s your name?

Mr Brown: Brown, sir. I asked for an appointment.

Mr Jones: Oh yes. Well, sit down. I’d better warn you I’m in rather a hurry. I’ve got an important meeting in ten minutes, so you’d better get on with it.

It is scarcely necessary to comment on which opening is most likely to prove effective in establishing rapport.

At the beginning of the interview it is important to clarify its objective. In interview (a), Mr Jones raises the question of why Mr Brown wants to see him so that Mr Brown may follow this up by setting his purpose for requesting the interview in fairly specific terms. The conversation might then continue like this:

Mr Brown: That’s right, Mr Jones. I asked my foreman to arrange for me to see you.

Mr Jones: Good. Well, can you tell me what it’s all about?

Mr Brown: Yes sir, of course. Well, it’s about my lad … he is eighteen now. He has always been a bit of a handful; not a bad boy really but troublesome.

Mr Jones: There are plenty of boys like that.

Mr Brown: I know. That is what the wife and I have always said; ‘We’re not the only ones.’

Mr Jones: Has he been playing you up?

Mr Brown: I’m afraid so. He’s been coming in at all hours recently. And never telling us where he’s been or who he’s been with. It’s been a real worry to us both.

Mr Jones: Mm hmm.

Mr Brown: When we’d ask, he’d tell us to mind our own business. He never used to cheek us up like that. But once or twice recently he’s threatened to leave home. He could too; he’s earning good money labouring on a building site. Not that I ever wanted him in a dead end job like that; I’d have liked him to do an apprenticeship but he wasn’t interested. Said there wasn’t enough money in it for him. Anyway I’ve never said too much. I felt I mustn’t drive him away from home or I’d lose the little bit of influence I did have with him.

Mr Jones: Yes, I can see that.

Mr Brown: Well, one of my mates was walking home with me the other night and he opened up and told me he’d seen Harry driving round in big cars with two or three real bad ‘uns. The sort who had been in trouble with the law. I can tell you I’m really worried about it.

Mr Jones: You feel Harry may be heading for real trouble.

Mr Brown: I’m afraid so. I didn’t tell the wife but it’s been on my mind since I heard. I just don’t know what to do for the best—whether to tackle Harry and stand the chance of a first-class row and maybe have him leave home or just say nothing. I’ve got to talk it through with somebody?

Mr Jones leads Mr Brown to the point where he can define the purpose of the interview precisely—to talk through the problem of his worry about his son with a view to seeing if it will help him decide what action to take.

It is clear that when the initiative for the interview lies with the respondent, as in the example above, the clarification of the purpose of the interview will not be possible until the interview has progressed some way. The interviewer’s first objective must be to obtain this; only then can he go on to conduct an effective interview. So many interviews take place in which this is not done with the result that interviewer and respondent get at cross purposes with each other. The interviewer, because he has not defined his objectives, asks questions or steers the interview to areas that seem inappropriate to the respondent. He in turn becomes irritated, feels that the interviewer is pushing him where he does not want to go, and leaves the interview feeling that the whole thing was largely a waste of time.

In some situations of course the interviewer will not have sent for the respondent and must himself begin by explaining the purpose of the interview. After the initial preliminaries, the interviewer might say, for example: ‘I understand from your supervisor that you feel you have been overlooked in one or two promotion possibilities recently and that you have been upset by this. Can you tell me about it?’ The purpose of the interview is thus clarified—to discuss the respondent’s disappointment when, as he sees it, he has been overlooked for promotion. The respondent now knows precisely what his conversation with the interviewer is to be about (its specific context) and that its purpose is to discuss his feelings to this. Whoever initiates the interview, and it may be either the interviewer or the respondent, it is still the interviewer’s responsibility to clarify its purpose. Only when a purpose has been stated which is accepted as valid by both interviewer and respondent can an effective interview take place. The respondent must see the purpose of the interview as supporting his own goals, otherwise his interaction with the interviewer—if it takes place at all—will not be directed to helping the interview move forward in a positive manner.

III. LOOKING FOR BEHAVIOURAL EVIDENCE

During the interview the respondent will express some of his likes and dislikes, i.e. his attitudes to various objects, concepts or situations. He may say, for example, that he is keen on reading. The interviewer may simply note this, in which case he has received a rather vague bit of information and no proof that it is true other than the respondent’s unverified claim. The interviewer may however want to check on the statement with a view to discovering rather more detailed information with which the respondent may back up his claim. So he asks him what kind of books he enjoys most. The respondent may reply that he enjoys historical books. Again the interviewer may simply note the fact, in which case he has once again obtained a somewhat vague bit of information, though a little more precise than the first bit, or he may check on the statement still further. ‘That is interesting,’ he may say. ‘What period of history do you most like reading about?’ If the respondent says that he is particularly interested in the history of the Russian Revolution, he can be asked what book on the subject he has enjoyed most or has read most recently. If he replies that he has recently read Isaac Deutscher’s biography of Stalin, the interviewer, whether he has himself read the book or not, can ask what he thought about it and why. The respondent’s capacity to provide a coherent answer at each step of this questioning process provides a validation of his original claim to enjoy reading.

I heard a young manager ask a school leaver if she got on well with other girls. She replied ‘Oh yes,’ to which he responded by saying ‘Jolly good.’ His only evidence for the truth of her claim was however her own unvalidated statement. He might have got some real evidence by questioning her about her past behaviour in situations in which she had been in contact with other girls. At school had she ever been a form captain or prefect? Did she spend her leisure time alone or with a group of friends? What sort of things had she done in company with others? (there is a difference between tagging along on a school outing and helping to organize a camping expedition to Iceland). Had she ever been in a position in which other people had accepted her as an authority figure—in Guides? Youth group? School club or committee? Answers to these questions would have given him some behavioural evidence on which to base his judgement as to whether or not the girl would be likely to get on with other girls in the future.

People’s claims about themselves always need to be checked against behavioural evidence. Someone says, ‘I’m interested in foreign travel.’ We can best discover what this means by trying to find out how the respondent has expressed this interest in his past behaviour. If he can claim simply to have read a good many books about foreign travel, that is one thing; if he can claim to have travelled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East, that is quite another.

In a selection interview, I heard a young girl asked, ‘How long have you been in your present job?’ She replied without hesitation, ‘Seven years.’ The interviewer at once interpreted this as meaning she had been in her present company for seven years and later claimed that she was a ‘sticker’ and not the sort of girl who moved around a lot. ‘Give her the job and she will stay,’ he asserted. A second interviewer, however, had taken the precaution of checking her statement. ‘So you have been with the A.B.C. company seven years?’ he asked. ‘Oh no,’ she replied, ‘only three. I was with the R.S.T. company for two years before that and I also worked for a small export office for a couple of years. I meant I had been a shorthand typist for seven years. But only the last three with A.B.C.’ This gave quite a different picture of the girl’s attitudes to moving around.

Probing for behavioural evidence is a guard against making unwarranted assumptions. ‘We have a policy of no racial discrimination,’ says a personnel officer. ‘We simply appoint the best man to the job, irrespective of race or colour.’ This can so easily be assumed to mean that the company carries out its declared policy and that no racial discrimination is to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• One The Role of the Problem-solving Interviewer
• Two What is an Interview?
• Three Attitudes and Behaviour
• Four The Effects of Bias
• Five Carrying out the Interview
• Six The Shape of the Interview
• Seven Analyses of Three Interviews
• Eight Learning to Interview
• References
• Index