Impression Management
Impression management, known as IM, is a conscious or subconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event. They do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. Almost 55% of an individual’s first impression is based on appearance and body language, 38% tone, pitch and pace of your voice, and 7% is what you actually say. When you first meet someone, they form an impression of you within seconds, and if their impression is negative, and it is usually negative most often, then everything you say to them subsequently will be filtered through their negative impression. It is imperative for the interviewer to understand and prepare for what preconceptions may exist and create a more positive association in the subject’s mind. Impression management also involves learning about personal branding and priming techniques. We will teach why impression management is important and how to make a positive first impression giving you distinctive advantage going into the interview or meeting.
Preparation & Planning
The success of any engagement between interviewer, interrogator, negotiator and respondent is often dependent upon planning and preparing ahead of time. Preparation and planning involves gathering factual data and intelligence, preparing and rehearsing opening lines, branding and priming, and planning and preparing for predictable responses by the interviewee. Preparation and planning is also essential if you are conducting an interview with a partner and potentially an interpreter as well. The respondent may not just be assessing you and your credibility during the interview but also your partner’s and how you interact among each other. As the lead interviewer, interrogator or negotiator, understanding your communication with any partners present during the engagement will absolutely help determine the success of the engagement. Preparation and planning allows us to design a questioning strategy or plan using approaches and techniques that will be most receptive to the interviewee thus increasing information gain.
Influence & Persuasion
Social influence and persuasion are two basic and important elements of communication and their effectiveness is often overlooked and misunderstood.
Our thoughts and actions are influenced by other people, whether we are passively observing their behavior or actively complying with their requests. Persuasion is a form of social influence in which a respondent is intentionally encouraged to adopt an idea, attitude, or course of action by symbolic means. We explain exactly how and when to use various types of communication to influence and persuade the beliefs and behaviors of others.
Active Listening & Communication
Often when people talk to each other, they don’t listen attentively. On average, individuals devote approximately 60% of conversations talking about themselves. Research also suggests that we remember only between 25% to 50% of what we hear.
Active listening is a very effective communication and rapport building technique. It is a way of listening and responding to your subject by employing various techniques, i.e. repeating words back to your subject, summarizing the main point of the conversation, using effective pauses during the conversation, and using minimal encourages (i.e. head nodding) and phrases (I.e. “go-on”, “please continue”). Research tells us that employing these active listening techniques improves mutual understanding between two people. In active listening, you make a conscious effort to hear not only the words that another person is saying but, more importantly, try to understand the complete message being sent.
Motivational Interviewing
Motivational interviewing is a goal-oriented, interviewee-centered style approach.
Motivational interviewing attempts to move an individual away from a state of indecision or uncertainty and towards finding motivation to making positive decisions. Motivational interviewing skills include the ability to ask open-ended questions, the ability to provide affirmations, the capacity for reflective listening, and the ability to periodically provide summary statements to the interviewee. Motivational interviewing is used strategically while focusing on a variety of topics. We will teach you the five tenets of motivational interviewing and how to effectively apply them in any necessary assignment.
Interviewing & Interrogation
It is often assumed that there is a stark contrast to both interviewing and interrogation when applied and that both techniques will look differently to the respondent.
We address the communication, memory and motivational aspects of interviewing and interrogation and we will teach you how interviewing and interrogation can seamlessly be intertwined within any engagement so you can gather relevant details and accurate information.
Cognitive Interviewing
Cognitive interviews were developed in 1984 by researchers Edward Geiselman, Ronald Fisher and their colleagues in response to the ineffective police interviewing techniques used in the past. Their goal was to suggest methods that increased the accuracies of eyewitness testimony. Cognitive interviewing is extremely effective at gathering richer and more accurate detail from the interviewee. Cognitive Interviewing comprises a suite of interviewing elements focusing on memory retrieval and promoting the interviewee to provide extensive detailed responses. To understand implementing cognitive interviewing, the practitioner will learn how the basic memory encoding process works. Again, rapport is essential and the interviewer needs to be socially skilled in order to put the interviewee at his/her ease and give him/her license to tell their story in detail. The primary technique in cognitive interviewing is “context reinstatement” whose main purpose is to return the interviewee in their mind to the context in which the experience occurred. We will teach you to be able to perform the cognitive interview and you will notice a substantial difference in the amount of detailed information you will collect from the interviewee.