Becoming a Master Interviewer | An Interview With David Farnsworth

This is a rebroadcast. The episode originally ran in October 2017. David Farnsworth was a retired leadership and executive coach who spent years helping organization improve their interviewing skills through the 3D Interviewing method. He passed away in July 2020. In this episode David explains methods latter-day saint leaders can use in order to improve the effectiveness of one-to-one interviews and classroom teaching through effective questions. Highlights 7:15 Why do I want to develop my interviewing skills? * The question is: how do you see your role? * Understanding the leader's role in an interaction 11:35 The Fundamentals * Be sincerely interested in others * Reading others accurately * Having the vocabulary to articulate * Be willing to be authentic and consistent * Having a good sense of ourselves (self-awareness) * Trust others in their ability to respond * Not seeing yourself as the expert, but to uncouple yourself from having all the answers 17:45 Drawing the Cube exercise (see graphic, below) 22:00 The Art of Formulating Focused Questions Preparing questions in advance * Draft good questions * Try to put them in a logical order * Examine questions carefully and fine-tune them 29:45 Active Listening * Paraphrase in your own words what the other person has just said * Leaving the other person in control allows you find out how they think, what they're feeling, etc. * Three levels of paraphrasing: * What was said? (make sure you're clear about what they've said) * How was it said? (for example, "I can see this is difficult for you...") * What was not said? * Three reactions to paraphrasing: * Agreement * Correction/clarification * Amplification 44:20 Summarizing: different than paraphrasing. * Pulling together the major points of the discussion or topic (your understanding of the discussion). * Same three reactions to summarizing as paraphrasing (agreement, correction/clarification, or amplification). 52:45 Sequencing questions * Getting acquainted example * 55:00 Problem-solving example * 58:50 Classroom example 67:00 How can I start interviewing using the 3D-I model? * After Action Review Links Read the TRANSCRIPT of this podcast Listen on YouTube Get 14-day access to the Core Leader Library The Leading Saints Podcast gets over 300,000 listens each month and has over 10 million total downloads as part of nonprofit Leading Saints' mission to help latter-day saints be better prepared to lead. Learn more and listen to any of the past episodes for free at LeadingSaints.org. Past guests include Emily Belle Freeman, David Butler,