 Lecture 42, As-Salamu Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In the previous lecture, we had learnt about the different types of oral communication and their importance. We had also talked about the different types of interviews. In today's lecture, we are going to look at how to plan interviews and how to conduct meetings. You will learn about the four types of interview questions and when it is appropriate to use each type. You will also learn about how groups make decisions. We will also discuss the preparations and duties necessary for productive meetings. Let us first talk about interviews and how to plan them. Planning an interview is similar to planning any other form of communication. You begin by stating your purpose, analyzing the other person and formulating your main idea. Then you decide on the length, style and organization of the interview. Even as an interviewee, if you are the one who is being interviewed, you gain some control over the conversation by anticipating the interviewer's questions and then planning your answers so that the points you want, the points you want to make will be covered. If you are an interviewee or an interviewee, you will first plan something. If you are an interviewee, then you will analyze your purpose, analyze your audience. You will think about what questions you want to ask. If you are an interviewee, then you will anticipate what questions you want to ask. As a result, you will be able to practice your answers. You can also, as an interviewee, you can also introduce questions and topics of your own. So, you need to prepare beforehand and think what are the questions that you can ask. In addition, by your comments and non-verbal clues, you can affect the relationship between you and the interviewer. If there are two people involved in an interview, then both of them have the responsibility to successfully interview the interviewer. Both of them have the responsibility to develop the relationship between the interviewer and the interviewee. They are strong, but especially, they have the responsibility to interview the interviewer because they are trying to make the relationship with the interviewee positive. Asking yourself the following questions will help you prepare for the interview. Let us have a look at these questions that can be helpful in preparation for an interview. You need to ask yourself what your role is, what your respective roles are. Also, what does the other person expect from you? Is it to your advantage to confirm those expectations? Will you be more likely to accomplish your objective by being friendly and open or by conveying an impression of professional detachment? If you are the interviewer, the responsibility of planning the session falls on you. If you are the interviewer, the responsibility of planning the session falls on you. On the simplest level, your job involves scheduling the interview, determining the time. It involves the location, planning where it is going to be held, that the location should be comfortable and convenient. Good interviewers are good at collecting information, listening and probing. And so, they should develop a set of interview questions and decide on their sequence. Now obviously, you will be planning these interview questions before. You will decide on their sequence before and you can obviously, depending on the situation and the context, you will change a bit as well keeping in mind the responses that you get. The purpose of the interview and the nature of the participants determine the types of questions that are to be asked. When you plan the interview, bear in mind that you will ask questions to get information, to motivate the interviewer to respond honestly and appropriately and to create a good working relationship with the other person. Now, in order to conduct a successful interview, you will ask different types of questions. To obtain both factual information and underlying feelings, you will use questions according to what you need. Open-ended questions invite the interviewee to offer an opinion, not just a yes, no or one word answer. If you use open-ended questions, then the interviewee will be able to give their own opinion, not just a yes, no or one word answer. You can learn some interesting and unexpected things from open-ended questions, but they may diminish your control of the interview. If you have an open-ended question, you have given the interviewee more responsibility, more scope to answer, then it is possible that you may lessen your control of the interview, but the benefit of that is that you can learn interesting things, which you may not know if you have an open-ended question. The other person's idea of what is relevant may not coincide with yours. If you have asked such an open-ended question that the answer may be specific, then it is also possible that the interviewee will not match the concept of relevance of the interviewee and they will answer something that you think is moving away from the point. That may lead to the waste of time for the interviewee to get the interview back in track. So, try to use open-ended questions to warm up the interviewee and once you have used those, once you have warmed up the interviewee, ask open-ended questions. The other type of questions that you can use are direct open-ended questions and to suggest a response, you will use these direct open-ended questions. For example, asking what have you done about something, assumes that something has been done and calls for an explanation. So, this is a direct open-ended question. You gave such a scope to the answerer that he could answer openly, but this question is not so open-ended that he can talk about anything. It is direct open-ended. You are saying what have you done about something, which implies that something was done and calls for an explanation. With direct open-ended questions, you have somewhat more control over the interview, but you still give the other person some freedom in framing a response. Another type of questions is closed-ended questions. Closed-ended questions require yes or no answers or call for short responses. These closed-ended questions are exactly the same as open-ended questions, whereas open-ended questions have a special freedom to answer them. Closed-ended questions require only yes or no answers. For example, if you ask the question, did you make the flight reservation today? The answer for that can only be yes or no. Questions like these produce specific information. Their benefit is that they save time, they require less effort to answer, and they eliminate bias and prejudice in answers. The disadvantage, on the other hand, of such questions is that they limit the respondent's initiative and may prevent important information from being given. Obviously, if you ask a question which can only be answered, the benefit is that your time is being saved, you are getting a very clear answer, but there may be losses as well, and a major loss may be that the person who is going to answer may also have some other information that is relevant to you, but you may not be able to give that information because you did not give them the chance to give you that information. Closed-ended questions are better for gathering information than for prompting and exchange of feelings. Fourth type of questions are restatement questions. These questions mirror a respondent's previous answer. Whenever an interviewee has answered these questions, they restate them and repeat them as a question. For example, if you say to an interviewee, you said you dislike completing travel vouchers, is that correct? Now, with this type of a question, you are restating what the interviewee said and adding a question to it. Or you are questioning what they said. This shows that you are telling the interviewee that you were paying attention to their conversation. Restatements provide opportunities to clarify points and correct misunderstandings. Obviously, if you are restating what the interviewee said then this is a very good tool. If you do not have anything to clarify after restating or if you have a misunderstanding, then when you restate it, it can be a misunderstanding. You will use restatement questions to pursue a subject further or to encourage the other person to explain a statement. You can also use restatement questions to soothe upset customers or co-workers because by acknowledging the other person's complaint you gain credibility. Now, if someone is your customer or co-worker who is upset about something, if you will restate their conversation then they will have an idea that you are also agreeing with them and you will get more confidence and you will be more credible. These are the four different kinds of interview questions. Now, what about the structure of the interview? Good interviews have an opening, a body and a close. The opening establishes rapport and orients the interviewee to the remainder of the session. In the opening, as an interviewee, the interviewer establishes a rapport with the interviewee establishes a link and also tells the interviewee what is the structure of the interview and how you will conduct the interview. You might begin by introducing yourself by asking a few polite questions and then explaining the purpose and ground rules of the interview. For example, if you want to ask me a question then you will say it in the introduction or if you want to ask me a question then please ask me in the end of the interview. The ground rules of the interview will be explained in the introduction. At this point, you may want to clear the use of notes or a tape recorder with the interviewee. If you are making notes or you are recording the interview then you will take permission from the interviewee and tell them that we are doing this and we hope that this is okay with you especially if the subject is complex or if you plan to quote from the interview. Whatever the interviewee is saying if you have the intention to use those words somewhere else then you will first take permission from the interviewee to record or note down your comments or not. The question or the different questions in the body of the interviewee reflect the nature of your relationship with the interviewee. In the introduction, you have established the ground rules and the opening of the interview. Now let's talk about the body. The main body of the interviewee will be asked about the relationship with the interviewee. For an informational session such as a market research interview you may want to structure the interview and prepare a detailed list of questions. This approach enables you to control the interview and use your time effectively. It also facilitates repeating the same interview with a number of respondents. Obviously, if you have made a structure of the interview and have written detailed questions then you will have time to conduct the interview with different people. You may even wish to provide the interviewee with a list of questions before the interview. If you think this is a subject then you should give a list of questions before the interview so that they can prepare their answers. On the other hand if the interview is designed to explore problems or to persuade an interviewee then you might prefer a less structured approach. It is not necessary that you have written questions before the interview and if you want to explore some problems then you will be able to determine all the questions before the interview. You may even simply prepare a checklist of general subjects and then go through those the interview and let specific questions evolve on the basis of the participants responses. In the body of the interview try to use a mix of question types. Don't use only open-ended questions or only closed-ended questions or restatement or direct open-ended questions. Try to use a mix of them. One good technique is to use closed-ended questions to pin down specific facts that emerge during an open-ended response. You might also follow up an open-ended response by asking for example how many people did you contact to get this information? First you asked an open-ended question what information did you get? You can get a lot of information like how many people did you contact to get this information? How many people did you contact to get this information? The third section of the interview is the closing of the interview. The close of the interview is when you summarize the outcome preview what comes next and what comes next. You review what comes next and underscore the wrapper that has been established. Whatever you did in the interview, summarize and tell what will happen next. Whatever relationship you have established with the interviewee you can go ahead. You will restate the interviewee's key points. You will restate those points and you will do this so that the other person the interviewee can clarify any misunderstandings or add any other ideas. Obviously when you restate the interviewee then it will be if you misunderstood or misunderstood then you can correct the interviewee's so that the record of the interview is correct. To signal that the interview is coming to an end you might lean back in your chair and face your palms up and say something like well I guess that takes care of all my questions would you like to add anything? If you include a phrase or question in your closing then immediately the interviewee has finished the interview if you want to add something then there is one more thing left otherwise the interview is over. If the interviewee has no comments you might go on to say thank you so much for your help you have given me all the information I need to finish my report or to make my decision I will have it completed in two weeks I will send you a copy as a thing we will inform you of the decision within whatever time and then you would rise shake hands and go towards the door with the interviewee in parting you could add a friendly comment to reinforce your relationship to re-affirm your interest in the other person by saying something like have a safe trip home have a safe journey if you know that the other person is going to be travelling on a trip to Murray it is a beautiful place you will give a pleasant closing from a practical standpoint you need to be certain that your interview outline is about the right length for the time you have scheduled you cannot do as much as you want in your mind for every interview there will be a time you will allocate the time for the interview roughly speaking people can speak at the rate of about 125 to 150 words per minute this is about one paragraph which people can speak in one minute assuming that you are using a mix of various types of questions which we talked about before you can probably handle about 20 questions in half an hour if you mix different questions then you can ask about 20 questions in half an hour if you have only closed-ended questions which have a yes or no answer then you can ask more than 20 questions in half an hour however you may want to allow more or less time for each question and response depending on the subject matter and the complexity of the questions then you will be able to determine how much it will take in the interview but bear in mind that open-ended questions take longer to answer than other types of questions when you have concluded the interview take a few moments to write your thoughts down and the time you will take to write your thoughts or to jot down your ideas keep a margin for them because you have to do this at the same time which you have allocated for the interview for example if you have to do 4 interviews in a day then you will have enough time to write your thoughts if it was an information gathering session then you will use that time to go over your notes or fill in any blanks while the interview is fresh in your mind in addition you might write a short letter or memo that thanks the interviewee for cooperating confirms the understanding between you and if appropriate outlines the next steps you will do this after the interview it is not necessary but the next day or later on in the day these are the interviews what about meetings the other thing we have talked about the business situations of today interviews are very common communication is important and the second thing how we communicate is meetings let's have a look at how to participate in small groups and meetings working in small groups and attending meetings involve more people and can be more complicated than one-on-one interviews generally two people are involved but in groups and meetings more than two people are involved and more complex because everyone has different roles as more and more corporations embrace the concept of participative management involving employees in a company's decision making the importance of teamwork has also increased you will see more and more that meetings are not only restricted to the top management companies are involving more and more of their employees at all levels or at least some levels in their meetings at their best meetings can be an extremely useful forum for making key decisions and coordinating the activities of people and departments theoretically the interaction of the participants should lead to good decisions based on the combined intelligence of the groups now it is not necessary that every meeting is so productive that it has good decisions and all the intelligence is combined but theoretically that is what should happen based on the fact that people are interacting and giving forth their ideas so logically the decisions should be also based on everybody's ideas and they should be good decisions whether the meeting is held to solve a problem or to share information participants will gain a sense of involvement if they are attending a meeting if you take a decision and tell your company and your employees and you will involve them in taking a decision the difference is that when you have involved them in a meeting they will have a sense of achievement sense of involvement at worst meetings are unproductive and frustrating this can also be the worst case scenario when people attend meetings and feel that no one has listened to us no result of this meeting we talk about this in every meeting and later it is the same that is happening this can be frustrating then it is a waste of time and they are just an expense also more importantly more importantly than wasting time and money poor meetings may be counterproductive because they may result in bad decisions if a meeting is not conducted well if it is not planned well and as a result of that the decision is also wrong then it can be a loss for the company when people are pressured to conform they abandon their sense of personal responsibility and agree to ill founded plans a lot of the times what may happen and what it should not happen is that the senior people in the meeting make sure that the junior people agree to what they say even if the juniors do not wish to agree and in that case then it leads to bad decisions where a lot of the people are not happy with the decision that has been taken we will now examine how to understand group dynamics how to arrange meetings and how to contribute in a productive meeting now a meeting is called for some purpose and this purpose gives form to the meeting people are assembled to achieve a work related task but at the same time each person has a hidden agenda or a private motive that affects the group's interaction such personal motives either contribute to or take away from the group's ability to perform its task now people are playing a role in whatever meeting that they are participating and different people play different roles these roles that people play in meetings come under three categories self oriented roles group maintenance roles and task facilitating roles members who assume self oriented roles are motivated mainly to fulfill personal needs and they tend to be less productive than the other two types if a person has taken a self oriented role in a meeting then they will only think about themselves their agenda and the company and other people will not think about it so self oriented roles if there are too many people then the meeting will not be productive far more likely to contribute to group goals are those people who assume group maintenance roles to help members work well together and also those people who assume task facilitating roles to help members solve the problem or make the decision obviously instead of thinking about yourself if people adopt group maintenance roles then they will help other members to work well together and if people take task facilitating roles then it will be beneficial to help group members to solve the problem and make the decision to a great extent the roles we take within a group depend upon our status in that group in most groups a certain amount of politics occurs as people try to establish their relative status there are a lot of politics people want to establish their status they want to write that it is more than ours or it is more than ours we are perceiving how other people perceive us and by thinking about all this we adopt our roles one or two people typically emerge as the leaders but often an undercurrent of tension as members of the group why for better positions in the pecking order eventually when there is a discussion one or two people lead the discussion but there is some tension because other people want to be leaders and this power struggle can often get in the way of real work many times you might have seen in meetings in the power struggle who is being considered more and who is getting the chance to speak more in real work let us have a look at what people do when they are in these different roles people who take on self oriented roles are often controlling they want to dominate others by exhibiting superiority or authority they are withdrawing from the group either by becoming silent or by refusing to deal with the particular aspect of the group's work if they feel that they are not doing what they want then they withdraw or they are attention seeking they call attention to themselves and demand recognition from others or they are diverting which means that they focus the group's attention on topics of interest to themselves rather than those topics which are relevant to the task if they are diverting attention to people then the task which they have to do gets removed people who adopt a group maintenance role are encouraging they draw out other members by showing verbal and non-verbal support they also lead to harmonization they reconcile differences amongst group members through mediation or by using humor to relieve tension if they feel that the group members have tension or some people are shy or they do not have a good harmony then in some way the governance roles which people have adopted harmonize the situation maybe by using humor by joking they say that the differences get reduced and they are also compromising they offer to yield in a point in the interest of reaching a mutually acceptable decision if there is a point against their will then they compromise they leave it if this is in the interest of the group then they do not agree so obviously people with group maintenance roles people who adopt group maintenance roles are more beneficial to have in a group also similarly there are people who take on task facilitating roles and these people also help the working of the group by either initiating which means that they get the group started on a line of inquiry they give information or seek information offering or seeking information relevant to the question facing the group helps open up the discussion it helps clarify ideas people with in task facilitating roles also coordinate they show relationships amongst ideas they clarify issues they summarize what the group has said they also are involved in procedures affecting within the group they suggest decision making procedures that will move the group towards the goal so these are the four things task facilitators they also contribute in a group now what are the norms of a group what are the norms of a group what are the things that are common and acceptable to function in a group a group that meets regularly develops unwritten rules that govern the behavior of the members to one degree or another people are expected to conform then to these norms for example there may be an unspoken agreement that it is okay to be 10 minutes late for meetings but not 15 minutes late if there is a meeting regularly every week a group meets of that meeting in the context of work the most productive groups tend to develop norms that are conducive to business whatever norms that groups tend to take on should be those that are conducive to business that lead to good business when a group has a strong identity the members all observe the norms religiously and then they are upset by any deviations and individuals feel a great deal of pressure to conform and this sense of group loyalty can be highly motivated to see that the group succeeds however such group loyalty can also lead members into group think the willingness of individual members to set aside their personal opinions and to go with the whole group even if everyone else is wrong simply because belonging to the group is important to them if this is the case if there is such a strong group identity that the people who are thinking are not agreeing with those norms they also come to the pressure to agree with those norms even if those norms are wrong then the group identity has more losses and less benefits so whatever group identity which is established by the group norms they should be better for the business not that people should be pressurized to follow them and the business will have a loss groups usually reach their decision in a predictable pattern whenever there is a group when there is a meeting when there is a meeting there is definitely a decision there is a predictable pattern the process can be viewed as passing through four phases first there is the orientation phase then there is the conflict phase then the emergence phase and then the reinforcement phase in the orientation phase group members socialize they establish their roles and they agree on their reason for meeting first when the group meets they exchange, socialize decide who will do what who is leading the group who is listening and then they agree on the reason for meeting in the conflict phase members begin to discuss their position on the problem whatever is the problem everyone gives their opinions and this is called the conflict phase if group members have been carefully selected to represent a variety of viewpoints and expertise then disagreements are a natural part of this conflict phase obviously if everyone in a group is the same then there will be no disagreement in the conflict phase everyone will agree on the same but if the meeting is called in such a way that different people can give different opinions different viewpoints or different angles then it is very natural that there will be disagreements at the end of this phase group members begin to settle on a single solution to that problem no matter how many disagreements they are people have to find a common solution then in the emergence phase members reach a decision those who advocated different solutions either because they agree now that their solution was not the best solution or because they feel that it is futile to keep on arguing so whatever the reason is but some people do their disagreements on the side or because they think that our point was wrong or because they understand that it is futile to continue arguing here we should accept that finally in the reinforcement phase group feeling is rebuilt and the solution is summarized members receive their assignments for carrying out the group's decisions and they make arrangement for following up on these assignments whatever the decision is in the reinforcement phase everyone agrees that this is the decision this is the solution and who has to work now so that this solution can be implemented now when it comes to arranging the meeting by being aware of how small groups of people interact meeting leaders can take steps to ensure that the meetings are productive when you will know how people interact in small groups what are their roles what can they do what are the different phases when you will know then you can effectively plan so that the result of the meeting is productive the key to productive meetings is careful planning of purpose, participants agenda and location these are 4 things that you have to take care of so that your meeting is effectively planned first the purpose then the participants who will be in the meeting and what is the purpose of the meeting agenda and location where the meeting will be the place is convenient or comfortable or not the trick is to bring the right people together in the right place to accomplish the given goals in just enough time and in order to do this special attention should be given to these 4 elements determining the purpose of the participants setting the agenda preparing the location whether the meeting is conducted electronically or conventionally its success depends on how effective the leader is in today's times many meetings are conducted electronically there are meetings on videoconferencing so it should be electronically or conventionally that everyone is sitting in a table or in a room that meeting's effectiveness will rest on the leader's effectiveness if the leader has prepared and selected the participants carefully the meeting will generally be productive listening skills are specially important to meeting leaders the leader's ability to listen will facilitate good meetings if you are a meeting leader then how can you contribute to make the meeting productive as a meeting leader you are responsible for keeping the ball rolling you have to make sure that things keep moving so you need to avoid being so domineering that you close off suggestions if you dominate the meeting so much that people will fear or think that there is no use then your meeting will not be productive at the same time don't be so passive that you lose control of the group you cannot afford to move back and let the group do it and then you have no control you have to find a compromise if you feel that the discussion is slowing down or lagging then call on those people who haven't spoken up in the meeting ask for their comments you will pace the presentation and discussion in such a way that you have time to complete the agenda you have obviously kept an agenda in your mind and you have also allocated some time so now your responsibility as a meeting leader is to keep the pace and speed of the meeting so that you can cover all the things in the agenda in a given time as time begins to run out interrupt the discussions and summarize what has been accomplished another leadership task is either to arrange for someone to record the proceedings or to ask a participant to take notes during the meeting as a leader, you are also expected to follow the agenda participants have prepared for the meeting on the basis of the announced agenda if you talk to the agenda then your participants will not be prepared for that but if there are so many reasons that you want to introduce then don't listen to it if you have discussed enough time then you can discuss more things allow enough time for discussion and give people a chance to raise related issues as well if you cut off discussions too quickly or limit the subject too narrowly then no real consensus can emerge so try to keep the balance as the meeting gets underway discover that some participants are too quiet and other participants are too talkative to draw out the shy participants ask for the input on issues that you know they will they are relevant to you might say something like Irfan you have done a lot of work in this area what do you think if you feel that Irfan is not talking a lot on the other hand for the people who are overly talkative and others need to be heard from the best meetings are those in which everyone participates so don't let one or two people dominate your meetings while others just doodle on their notepads also as you move through your agenda stop at the end of each item when you talk about one item then stop summarize it make sure that you understand what the group has taken from that from that make sure that you understand the feelings of the group and state the important points that have been made during the discussion for that item and then move on to the next item on the agenda at the end of the meeting the meeting that will be closed then you have to tie up all the loose ends at the beginning you stated the agenda of the meeting the main body of the agenda what we have done what happened that you have to see the participants you have to see the pace you have to see the speed you have to deal with the agenda now at the end tie up all the loose ends either you will summarize the general conclusions that were made by the group or you will list the suggestions wrapping things up ensures that all participants agree on the outcome and it gives people a chance to clear up any misunderstandings as soon as possible after the meeting the meeting leader has a copy of the minutes or notes showing recommended actions schedules and responsibilities obviously the decisions that have been made all the decisions are recorded in the minutes so as soon as possible after the meeting the meeting leader distributes the minutes in all the participants so that everyone gets to know that these things were decided and now we have to do this responsibilities will be written what to do also like leaders participants have responsibilities during meetings and these then will be listed out in the minutes and obviously the minutes will also provide a reference for future actions now when we talked about the responsibilities of the participants you have to remember that if you have been included in a group then you try to contribute to the meeting and to the smooth interaction of the meeting till now we have talked about what leaders have to do what are the responsibilities of the group what are the responsibilities of the participants how can they ensure that they participate effectively in the meeting and the interaction of the meeting is smooth you will use your listening skills and powers of observation of the interpersonal dynamics of the people and then adapt your behaviour to help the group achieve its goals speak up if you have something useful to say but don't monopolise the discussion so this is what we talked about what is the role of the leaders and what is the role of the participants with this we come to the end of this lecture today we have talked about the 4 types of interview questions and we have clarified I have also talked about how groups make decisions what the roles of different people are within a group and what the preparations and duties are of the people who are involved in productive meetings with this we come to the end of today's lecture until next time, Allah Hafiz