More on interviews, and info on rich pictures

What great advice I’ve had from colleagues and friends in the last few days, on interviews. You've all encouraged me not to see facts and feelings as separate, and to plan to incorporate the personal as well as the organisational into what I'm doing. As the erstwhile JCM says,

"It has to be facts and feelings, because context is everything (the facts of the situation, the extent to which the leader has allies and alliances they can rely on and build on, etc)."

One bit of advice I'm going to have in mind over the next few days, (thanks to a great conversation with Sharon on Friday, and an email from Gene) is to consciously explore the question, “How is what they are saying true for me?”, and being open to asking the people I interview, particularly when they talk about others, “How is what that colleague of yours did, also true for you?”

I’m also interested in Jake's suggestion that I try out cognitive maps. - I’ll let you know how this goes. They were always my least favourite system tool, so I'll be stepping out of my comfort zone here.

Advice that I have found particularly exciting and challenging. From Kemp:

“Don't think too much. Your head is not the lead player here. Why don’t you experiment asking your head to sit the next meeting out. Go in unprepared. No agenda. Watch and listen and ask your allies to reveal what is present? Why not not plan? We are all pretty traumatized and traumatized folk always need to know what happens next. So let it ride and experiment.”

And from Jake:

“The more I think about it the less I would be inclined to have a series of questions of any inclination. My strong recommendation is to see the whole process

as an action inquiry in which you want to discover what is currently unknown - and to be open to being surprised and confounded by what you discover.”

I did ask a few of my interviewees last week to draw me a rich picture diagram. I wanted to put a bit of information on the blog so that people I meet know in advance what I’m talking about, if there is an opportunity to use this technique.

In drawing the picture I’ll use Jake’s helpful instructions, and invite interviewees to:

use as many pictures and as few words as possible

resist the temptation to draw flow diagrams, organisational charts or other formal diagram types – make it a picture

draw the picture on an A3 sheet and aim to use all the paper

use colour to convey emphasis and feeling

when you have finished take a look at your picture; what strikes you? is there anything missing you want to add? In particular, where are you in the picture?

There are two rich picture diagrams below.

The first is one I did of ‘work life balance’. On it are me and my husband, facing out of the picture, busy (the clock squeezed).

Along the bottom are pictures of a long list of things I want to do along the bottom, in ‘me time’, including cups of tea with friends, getting work done, watching films, playing music and reading. In the middle are our children and their childminder who makes them safe and happy during the day. What struck me after I did it was the pivotal position of our childminder, and how essential she was to making our work-life balance operate. She got a pay-rise after I did the this exercise!

The second is one about deporting failed asylum seekers, one of the responsibilities I had in my last job. I had a strong sense of all the hurdles there were to the process. This included the difficulty of getting people redocumented, given their nations' reluctance to co-operate with the process, the limited detention space, and the important need to ensure justice was done properly when considering the asylum seeker's claim for protection. Doing this picture made me realise that my sense of this being difficult and hardgoing was well-justified!

In reacting to the pictures my interviewees draw, I’ll be asking myself,

What strikes me immediately?

What stands out? What is the strongest colour, what does it highlight?

What is the overall feeling conveyed?

Are the items connected or disparate? Does it convey chaos or order?

How is this different from your perspective?