NORTHERN PLANNER

As promised.

We won’t cover the pros and cons of groups, but you’ll come across them at some point, like it or not. It may be useful to know what to expect.

We won’t cover the skills you’ll need to uncover true insight rather than mere information. That’s covered elsewhere, and there’s no better place to look than Truth Lies and Advertising by John Steel.

We’ll look at the art of how to manage the group itself. It’s a lost planning skill which is a shame. I think that every now and again, you should do your own. It saves a fortune if you’re pitching and there’s nothing like meeting real people face to face.

In any case, if you have a better idea of how groups work, you’ll be much better placed to work with your researcher.

But it is terrifying if you haven’t done it before. So do as many internally as you can. Bribe people in the office with sandwiches, do whatever it takes. It costs a lot to get 8 people in a room, you don’t want to waste that money. So get half good.

Two things are likely to go wrong:

1. No one talks and you can’t get the conversation going.
2. They’re uncontrollable and everyone insists on talking at once, leaving your agenda ruined.

So we’ll cover the key skills of moderating, interviewing skills and group dynamics. Then it need never happen.

Basic interviewing techniques

If you ask a simple question, you’ll get a simple answer. Qual is about depth, digging underneath what people say and do to understand why. Simple direct questioning never gets under the skin of the issue. And people rarely say what they mean. They overclaim, and the real attitudes are usually unconscious and difficult to put into words.

So good interviewing is about ACTIVE LISTENING. Constantly thinking about why people are saying what they are, looking for contradictions, reading body language. It involves constant probing. Here’s some rules of thumb:

• Reflect and echo what they’ve said. This will show empathy and relax people.
• Paraphrase and summarise what people have said in your own words. It allows you to check you’ve understood what people have said – if you allow them to correct you.
• Meta commenting – expressing what you believe is going in the group is great for drawing out bigger themes.
• How you behave is crucial. You’ll develop your own style – some are bossy and challenge, others are calm, warm and open. But common traits of good moderators tend to be transparency – appearing honest and truthful, being non-judgmental and interested in what people think and showing as much empathy as you can.
• Help people articulate what they’re saying. Prompts where you can to get more out of them – repeat the bit they said that’s interesting to get more (fresh garlic you say?) And get clarification….."You think that because…" "I’m interested in why you say that.."
• And body language helps getting out more – lean forward, look quizzical, nod as they speak.
• But use ‘Why’ sparingly – if you keep asking people to justify what they’re saying you’ll just piss them odd and they’ll go cold on you. Consider replacing it with, "How come?" "Why do you think that is?"
• You can really open up a line of questioning by slowly and gently asking things like, "i wonder what was in your mind when you said that?" But you can change the pace and finish off question with more closed versions, like, "So what’s the main benefit?".

Group Moderating

To me it’s a mix of two roles. One one hand you’re a detached neutral observer collecting data, but on the the other, you’re a dynamic problem solver wanting their help. It’s a neat trick to be detached AND sponge like, but no one said this was easy. Much of it comes down to group dynamics.

And those will be in tomorrow’s post.