Donald Jones

It doesn’t matter who they are… People are nervous when they’re being interviewed. Well, maybe not Venus or Serena. But as I once saw, a reporter asked Venus why she wasn’t smiling and she responded “Because you’re boring me.” So maybe it’s not always nerves, but people sometimes aren’t themselves when they’re put on the spot.

It’s the interviewERS job to create the appropriate atmosphere for the interview to give their best performance.

The atmosphere of the interview setting is determined by the the story to be told. That could mean you have to create a comfortable, safe atmosphere, an uplifting, fun, energetic one, or maybe even a serious vibe is required. Whatever it is, you have to know it ahead of time and create it- with YOUR personality, behavior and action. The success of that interview depends on the foot YOU start it off on.

The key point is to create an atmosphere where the interviewee can be themselves. The more comfortable they are, the more they’ll speak genuinely, which means you can draw out more passionate and less-practiced answers.

Since we don’t often work in controversial journalism anymore - In other words, our work is to make our clients look good and not catch them misspeaking- I find it appropriate and very helpful to give the interviewee an idea of the questions that are going to be asked.

NOT a list of the exact questions themselves, as this tends to encourage the interviewee to memorize answers. A memorized answer/statement rarely sounds genuine.

Also, since this isn’t for live broadcast, we assure the interviewee that they can always start over if they’ve misspoken. This is their greatest concern and by letting them know their mistakes won’t break them, they can relax.

If you’ve created a comfortable interviewing atmosphere, and prepared and relaxed the interviewee then you’ll often find they’ll give you more words than you expected. If you spend the rest of your time being a good listener- the most important part of interviewing- then you’ll get more emotion than expected. A good interview makes an engaging story!