Interview approach: the facts? Or the feelings?

Preparing myself for interviews

I’ve got some great meetings lined up in the next few weeks, to explore this ‘collaboration’ theme. Amongst other visits, this week I’m visiting the Council on Virginia’s Future, next week I’m meeting the Deputy Mayor of New York City to talk about how to join up corrections and welfare, the week after I’ll be seeing Service Ontario, and the week after that takes me to a demonstration project on alternatives to juvenile detention based in New Mexico.

How do I make the best of each of the meetings I have? I want to collect information that allows me to start drawing more generic conclusions. But I am meeting a wide range of people. Some will be local managers, others will be State or national civil servants. Others still will be politicians. I also fear pursuing knowledge narrowly, unaware of my own blindspots.

I’ve come up with two possible approaches to the interviews, and I’d welcome comments on which you think might work best, or whether there’s a third way. Option one is questions on specific areas of influence for the centre. It focuses more on the external ‘facts’ of the collaboration. Option two is a more personal approach, exploring the internal world of the person in the partnership.

I’m currently leaning towards option two. (Yesterday it was option one, but a fantastic conversation over my first US breakfast, with Kemp this morning, helped me think more thoughtfully about option two.)

Starting with my ‘research question’: My current formulation is “What should central Government do, and avoid doing, to allow effective collaboration at a local level?”

Option one: The external

This is based on a list of the sorts of interventions that the centre can make, that can influence local collaboration.

I’m hypothesising that there are five areas of influence:

1. How the central authority organises organisational structures, including those of partnerships;
2. How they organise funding, for example whether funding is made conditional;
3. How they oversee performance;
4. How they attend to professional development in the key professions under consideration, and
5. How they react to crises and failures.

I’ve represented these in a diagram, with some examples.

I also think there might be a spectrum for each of these themes, of prescriptiveness. How much has the centre set out the detail of what must happen, and how much has it let that be subject to other pressure mechanisms, such as market forces, choice, and participation. Or what blend of prescription and ‘leaving it to others’ has been manifested in each area of influence?

If this is the case, then I would ask questions like

1. How do you organise yourselves/ how have you organised the partnership working? What are the structures like? Who has authority to do what? And who makes decisions about that?
2. How are you funded/how do you organise funding? What conditions are attached to the funding? What’s your view on whether the extent to which the way you are funded helps or hinders your work?
3. How do you know you’re succeeding, and how do you know you’re providing a minimum standard of service? What happens if it looks like performance is getting worse? How does the performance management system help or hinder your work?
4. How are you prepared, professionally, for your role in the collaboration? Who sets these standards? What helps? And what’s lacking from your professional development, which would support you in collaboration?
5. How does ‘the centre’ behave when things go wrong, or when it’s clear that something isn’t working?

Option two: The personal

This approach comes from the premise that whatever one is doing in the world, this mirrors in some way, one’s internal world. If I’m going to be a student of partnership and collaborative working, I’m effectively learning from those who care deeply about working in partnership. Why do they care? What inner struggles do they face? So instead of asking about all the ‘stuff’ - the external facts and strategies, I would be asking about their internal journey. This, after all, is more often kept in the shadow and maybe I could bring it more in to the light.

In thinking about this approach, I was brought back to why I’m so interested in collaborative working. I recalled a time this summer when I felt particularly fulfilled in partnership. And in a particularly important partnership - that with my husband, Paul. It was a moment where I sang a song to my husband. It was a song I’d been working on this summer, the first I’d written since I was at school, and I felt a bit shy of it. I’d sung him the odd snippet. But then one evening he asked me to sing him the whole thing, and I got up and performed it properly. No self-consciousness, no irony, just full hearted and playful. He was completely delighted and moved. I felt really seen and heard. And in turn our partnership was strengthened because the theme of the song meant a lot to both of us. So I think it’s that when I feel accepted and celebrated for myself in my entirety, in particular my gifts, and that these gifts create something even more special with others, I feel truly at one. This is what I long to create for others.

I would be interested to explore this more with those I meet in the next few weeks. How can I make people feel safe to tell me stories about this that they aren’t used to telling, except perhaps to their life partners or close friends?

The questions might be something like:

1. Is there a time when working in partnership has kept you awake at night? What was worrying you?
2. Can you tell me about a time when you felt like you’d achieved what you wanted with partnership working? What did it feel like? How did you feel about the other people involved?
3. What is it about working in partnership with other organisations that’s really important to you? Why are you so committed?
4. Can you draw me a rich picture about working in collaboration, bringing in your emotions and your opinions about the collaboration you’re involved?
5. What would make the collaboration fall apart, if it were taken away?
6. If you could change something tomorrow about the collaboration, what would it be?
7. What was the most difficult aspect of working collaboratively in the last few years? What did that feel like? How did you overcome it?

And then... If the conversation went really well, I could phone them up a week later to talk about all the topics in option 1!

I would be really interested in your thoughts about these approaches.