Take Control – Podcast Interview Technique

If you’re a podcast host who conducts interviews, we’ve compiled a few learning notes to help you build your verbal Kung Fu skills. Previously, I wrote about recording, structure and putting your guest at ease. But now, we’re looking at interview skills and presenting.

Common Issues

This list identifies our top picks of easy interview wins. They may not be comfortable to face up to, but once you can deal with them your communication will be even more effective and precise. Here we go, let’s jump in and watch out for any of these:

• Questions that die before the the end of the sentence
• Questions which are not phrased in a way that gives the guest a clear direction for their response
• Questions that begin with a vocal tic or stutter

Interview Skills

It’s surprising how much sound that comes out of our mouths is not helpful to effective communication. Sometimes vocal sounds are there to indicate it’s our turn to talk, to create a space where our brain can formulate what it actually wants to say, or are just habits. Effective speaking is a skill, so in order to develop the skills, practice is unavoidable for most people.

[podcast_episode episode=”6585″ content=”title, player, details”]

---

Unconscious Pauses

So firstly, let’s tackle unconscious tics. But how to stop doing something that you’re not conscious of ? Want some examples ? Listen to this episode of our podcast.

The first step in controlling these speech elements is to bring these unconscious ticks into your conscious mind. If we’re conscious of them, we can control them. If we don’t even know we’re doing it – they’re out of control!

Listen back to a recording of yourself and list out all of the voice ticks that you want to reduce or remove from your future interviews: “um” “ah”, lip smacking, “you know”, “kind of”, “like” ,”so”, “errrr…..”. Why do you say that or make that noise ? Does it serve a purpose ? If you think it does, then carry on….. but if you think removing it could improve your technique, let’s do it!

Write down that list of vocal nonsense and take it with you. Read it out when you have a spare moment: In the car, in the bath, where ever you like to talk to yourself – making it audible only to yourself may make you appear less of a nutcase. But really say it out loud.

We want to bring those utterances out of the subconscious and into the conscious mind, so they can be controlled by your will. You can decide if you wish to make those sounds, just like your choose any other words – and this is the way to do it.

Phrasing

Training your mind to think in Open Questions can be a productive technique. The goal being to always present a question which invites a longer response, rather than a short “yes/no” answer.

CLOSED: “Would you say that was a helpful experience?”
OPEN: “Would you explain the experience and what you felt about it?”

Follow Up Questions

We’re often so grateful to get good guests on our podcasts that we eagerly give control over to them. Common factors are giving questions for pre-approval and giving final edit approval. The heart of a good conversation is spontaneity. We don’t want the guests to simple trot out their pre-prepared, washed ready-to-eat answer (the same one they give to all the other podcasts that they’re on). We want them to get fired up and present something or think something that they have never shared before – to give us some authentic, fresh content.

This is where you’ll need to be on the ball and listening to each reply. Asking a follow up “off the cuff” question will make your interview feel more like a genuine conversation, and that you have a relationship to the topic rather than having an interview “on rails” whatever the response. Tease out details and fuller explanations from your guest so that the topic is explored naturally and there’s a real interaction between you and your guest on the topic of the conversation.

Images in this article, thanks to:
Photo by neil godding on Unsplash
Photo by Stock Photography on Unsplash