Now ideally, you've helped your colleague, client, customer, friend, have a strong clear message, now's the time to actually do the first interview. But before you do that you need to give the person you're working with basic principles of how to answer questions in interviews. Now I have a whole lengthy section of that earlier in this course, you can refer to that you may have to summarize for again, what you'll see what I see time and time again, is people want to be too literal. They want to say no, that's not true. And you end up getting quoted saying things like I'm not a crook, or I'm not a mom, I'm not going to comment. So those are the common stumbles that people have.
They're too literal. They answer every nuance they rebut every premise. So you're going to have to give them the principles of how to answer questions in interviews. Then what I do is, don't waste a lot of time talking about the interview, hop right into it again, it's Got to be recorded. Don't spend 30 minutes doing a lengthy interview. Even if you have an eight hour day, I don't recommend you spend 30 minutes because typically, the things do people do well, they're going to do well in the first couple of minutes.
The things people do that really mess them up and get them in trouble they're going to do in the first couple of minutes or the first five minutes. So I typically am going to limit this to about five, six minutes. So go ahead and conduct the interview. You're the reporter. You ask the person questions, and you let them realize their goal is to hit all three messages and every answer of all the principals. That's the hardest for people to follow.
The natural reaction is to just answer the question. But if all you do is answer questions, you never hit your messages, you never accomplish your goal. So what I do and you see it earlier in the section on answering questions, it's actually good people With a template, where I asked them to grade themselves a check mark, did you answer the question a check mark? Did you hit message point one a checkmark digit message point to a check mark, did you hit message point three. So I have anyone I work with actually fill out this sheet watch themselves and I tell them now we're not grading you on whether you smile or your hands mood or any of the style stuff. Now, we're grading you in a purely quantitative level, you're going to get zero through four checks for every single answer.
If you answer the question thoroughly, brilliantly in great detail. That's all you do. That's one out of four checks, one out of 420 5% 25 in school math or any other subject, failure, f minus so I let them know nothing sneaky here. It's not like the hidden camera bit, the hidden recording. I am holding them accountable. I want them to hold themselves.
Accountable, because typically most people, by the second or third question, they just can't force themselves to hit all three message points every time they start sliding back to two and then the one and sometimes zero. Critically important lesson. So, do the interview right now, again, doesn't have to be long. And then make them great themselves. Now you should grade it to grade it. And let's see if we can get them to the point where they're really following the principles of answering questions strategically focused, and then hitting all their messages in every answer, but without sounding like a robot.
Again, it's all explained in the answering section of this course. But now's your time to implement it with anyone you're working with.