The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership

One-to-one interviews

Such meetings have the common characteristics that they are

(usually) pre-arranged, require preparation and have a definite

purpose.

Unless it happens to be a dismissal, one-to-one interviews require

that:

• both parties know the purpose of the meeting (notified in
  advance)


• information to be exchanged should be considered in advance
  and answers at the meeting should be honest


• as interviewer you should keep control: stick to the point at the
  issue and the time allocated and give the other party adequate
  time to talk (prompting by questions if necessary).

The structure of the interview should be as follows:

• the opening – setting the scene, the purpose and a relaxed
  atmosphere


• the middle – stay with the purpose, listen, cover the agenda


• the close – summary, agree action, end naturally not abruptly
  on a positive note.
  Sometimes it is useful to ask the right questions to obtain the
  required information/exchange. Questions to use are the open-
  ended, prompting, probing, or what-if questions, whilst the ones
  to avoid (unless being used for specific reasons) are the yes/no, closed,
  leading or loaded questions.
  In performance appraisal interviews the aim should be to give
  constructive criticism in the following way:
  1 In private
  2 Without preamble
  3 Simply and accurately

192 The John Adair Handbook of Management and Leadership