ASSIGNMENT #1 Self-Reflection & Interviews With Significant Others The purpose

of this assignment is three-fold:

1)  To reflect on your perceptions regarding your strengths and opportunities for improvement with respect to your human relations skills and interpersonal behavioral tendencies.

2)  To get useful feedback about your human relations skills and competencies from those who know you well and can offer useful insights.  (You can conduct this activity multiple times with people from different spheres of your life including family members, close friends, work associates, people you might work with in a volunteer capacity, and others who have seen you in action.)

3) To provide you with an opportunity to reflect on your current strengths and opportunities for improvement with respect to your human relations skills and interpersonal behaviors.

Assignment formatting instructions:

Please use Georgia 11 point font (or Arial will do, if you don’t have Georgia), and 1.5 line spacing, and 1 inch margins.  Also, please use the SECTION HEADINGS (see below) to separate out the various parts of the assignment as you are writing it up.

Process:  For this assignment, you’ll respond to the seven questions below (the Interview Guide questions).  Then you’ll arrange to meet with at least two people who you know well (and with whom you are comfortable having an honest conversation).  You’ll conduct a brief qualitative interview with these people about their perceptions of you (asking the seven questions included in the Interview Guide below).  Then you’ll write up your results and perceptions regarding the experience.

Before writing up this assignment, you should take the following steps:

Review the PowerPoint Presentation “Interviews With Significant Others – Assignment Details” which you’ll find that in Week 1, under the Lectures / Presentations tab.

Print out the following interview guide sheet / interview questions.  Take a close look at it, and answer the questions yourself – from your own perspective as honestly as possible prior to conducting any interviews.

Decide how many interviews you want to conduct. Be sure to interview at least one from your work life and another from your home/personal life. (Minimum of two interviews)

Conduct interviews:

Select people to interview who know you well, have known you for a relatively long time, and have a somewhat intimate knowledge of how you operate.

Schedule a time that is mutually convenient in a location that is private. Be sure you schedule at least 30 minutes for each interview to ensure you have time to get as much feedback as possible.  (Also, remember, in qualitative interviewing it’s OK to stray some from your original questions, or to add questions, if you hit on something particularly productive that you would like to explore further.)

• You will want to record the interviewee’s comments in some way. You can take notes (difficult at best), or much better, tape-record the session. Helpful tip:  There are many smart phone / computer / iPad applications that makes recording easy.  Reinforce (with the interviewee) that the data will only be used by you for the purpose of your own development and that their name / personal details will not be shared with others.  Request permission to record the interview.

Remember, you’ll be conducting a minimum of two interviews – at least one from your work life and another from your home/personal life.

Write-Up Instructions: (Use Section Headings in your write-up)

SECTION 1:  Answer the interview guide questions yourself first (prior to conducting your interviews) – Include the questions and your responses to each here.

SECTION 2:  Write up a 2 – 3 page summary of your thoughts (800-1200 words), answering the following questions:  (Include each of the questions, as well as your response to each in your write-up.)

What did you learn about yourself as a result of this process?

Were there any surprising results from your interviews?  Explain?

What might you have done differently to obtain even better information regarding your own behavioral tendencies?

How will you think differently, and what will you do differently, as a result of this assignment (self-monitoring, working on developing certain skills, etc.)?

SECTION 3:  Include your interview guide sheets / interviewee responses (at least two interviewees).  Include / summarize their responses to each of the questions separately (Interview #1 / Interviewee #2).  Please combine this information into one document for the purposes of assignment submission (don’t submit multiple separate documents).

Tips for doing well on this assignment: 

1. The interview guide that I provide below has a series of questions that I want you to be sure to ask.  I also would like you to consider adding some of your own questions (as applicable for each interviewee), as well as probes and follow-up questions in case your interviewee isn’t very talkative.  In the write-ups, short answers to these questions (two or three sentences) are generally NOT acceptable.  I would expect that each response would be at least a couple hundred words. 
   If your interviewee is providing very short answers, it will be up to you to draw that person out, and to try to get as much meaningful data as you can through the interview process.  Sometimes a manual note taking process can yield short responses on the paper due to incomplete note taking or poor note taking skills.  This is why a strongly suggest that you RECORD each interview.  That way, you can play it back and do a much better job of capturing the depth and detail of the interview.
2. Be sure to review the PowerPoint presentation “Interviews With Significant Others – Assignment Details” which you’ll find in Week 1 under the Lectures / Presentations tab. Take a copy of your interview guide with you to each of your interviews so that you can be sure to cover all the necessary items – and (as stated above), consider including some of your own questions as well as probes / follow-ups to allow you to get more detail of interest, as applicable.

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