A good skill come from a good hardwork (Imelda Victoria)

Sometimes we ask ourselves when to ask? am i asking properly? Is it okay to ask? What reaction i should give to the answer? is it needed to ask? is it polite? Such confusion may lead us to not asking,as we know playing with word sure isn’t easy. If we can’t ask, how can we do interview? yes, questioning a people that we haven’t met before must be hard. But when we want to do interview, we must do it, especially interview in psychology. Therefore basic skill in interviewing is needed to able us doing interview. There are six basic things explained on last monday class, which is: rapport, empathy, attending behaviour, questioning technique, observation skill, and active listening. First is rapport, this is the one that we need to build on the very first day of interviewing. It was same like when we are going to befriend a stranger. The way we welcoming the interviewee, greet them, our expression, our behavior, our speech, and also our fashion that day were all important thing to please them. If interviewee feel respected sure they will give us a good impression.But it is important to be noted that if we become so ‘friendly’ with the client who we never met before, they might feel awkward and annoyed instead of having a good impression. So i think we just need to act naturally (by mean honest to ourselves) and politely.

The second is empathy, it is important to differ between empathy and sympathy. Giving an empathy to the saddening event, surely, doesn’t by crying together with the interviewee. Imagine, when we want to find strength by talking everything out of our mind, someone crying together with us. How did it feel? As for me, I would think, he/she didn’t experiencing my experience so why did he/she cry? The hope of gaining strength for someone were gone. An interviewee/client come to us with the hope we could give them an exit from their problem, a solution. Giving an expression like we well understood their feeling at that time surely give nothing to ease them, only a hopelessness emerged. Both empathy and rapport, linked with our attending behaviour. If we sharply starring on the interviewee’s eyes, sure they would feel scared, we failed to build rapport. If we didn’t look forwardly to their face, they would also feel like being ignored, we failed to give empathy. So, the question is look at them or not? Yes, we must look forward to them. But we didn’t do it by starring their eyes, Mrs. Henny taught us to learn by looking at the person’s forehead (in the center between left and right eyebrow). It’s better than eyes because if we starring on someone’s eyes, it feels like we want to interrogate or inspect them. Not only our contact, our body language and our speech is important too. Using our formal language with appropriate words and grammar is needed, and it is also linked with our questioning technique. Interviewee/client can’t understand us if we speak unclearly (informal language and a bad speed and tone). We musn’t force them to answer us too. If they only answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’, we couldn’t force them to explain even if we need the explanation. We couldn’t wait them forever too, therefore we need to play with the words, so when they answering us they explained it to us because they want to make clear everything they told to us. Observing the situation, the interviewee/client’s condition, is a must. By oberserving may be we could know when and how to ask them. An unimportant thing sometimes become important in certain condition and situation. Active listening also help us to get more information from the interviewee/client. When we telling everything we’ve got from the questioning session, an interviewee/client sometimes give us more explanation or correcting us. They did it because they want everything to be clear, we understand their stories fully as what they hope. If we re-tell the story wrongly, they would disappointed with us too. Our eyes (observing), ears (listening), and our heart (empathy, trust, etc), all must be used fully while interviewing.

So, i think all basic skill are linked with each other. We need to mastered it all, not only one. It’s a difficult thing but if we practicing it, soon we are used to it. Try to practice with our family, our friend, or our acquaintance. Practice will sharpen our skill. A good skill will come from our hardwork. That’s all, thank you for reading :)

17 Maret 2013