CIT Interview Techniques: Summary Report

Interview Preliminaries

CIT Interview Techniques: Summary Report This paper contains is all about the information, techniques that have adapted from the lecture, which examines methods of achieving goals, and strategies with regards to have effective consulting, management and leaderships. This is a summary report of interviews, which have submitted last week. The purpose of this paper is using methodologies, approaches, theories that have been touched in lecture, on the interviews. Those interviews were designed to provide a picture of some of the skills and abilities that help a person to succeed in their organization (Younger, 2008).

 The interviews have created by The Critical Incident Technique, which is a robust research method for collecting direct observations to get the knowledge of performance. Basically, it is a well-defined set of principles, which is simple to apply.  This techniques help to explore specific human activities to seek for further research. In this case, the information, which collected by CIT, clarifies the research about practical problem solving, performance enhancement and learning (Hughes, 2007). There are five clear steps for conducting a CIT: setting goal, establishing the plans, obtaining and analyzing, interpreting and reporting the data (Butterflied, Borgen, Maglio, & Amundson, 2009).

There are three individuals who participated in interviews; a mayor, a businessman and a school counselor. Those interviews built via gathered information about the status of participant, their experiences, and practices and as well as approaches by self-reporting. And according to CIT methods, interview questions are prepared with in frame of, goal orientation, planning skill, problem solving, and self-control.

Methodology

There were three participants represented who live in Turkey and US. The interviews were conducted during January 29-30, 2016.  First, the participants were contacted by telephone and set a convenient date and time for the interview, and two days later all interviews were conducted by telephone via different time zone. The lengths of the interviews were between 30 to 70 minutes. The process of interviews helps to identify specific incidents in the leader’s personal life, which is the emphasis on incidents rather than vague opinions. The questions have asked the participants who had an important effect on the final outcome of the situations. To sum up, the participants were requested to focus on leadership moments with regards to directions, decisions and consequences.

Approaches and Experiences

At the end of the interviews, there were approaches and experiences that came in view, which is in this section regarding to course material and theories that includes leadership styles and traits, theories, cultural issues, emotional and workplace stress issues, quality of decision making and unintended consequences. From the leaders, there are many faces of leadership. Leadership has many different styles from leader to leader but mainly leaders provide directions, implement plans and motivates people in politic as on mayor, business as on businessman, education as on counselor and other fields (Younger, 2008).

Leadership trait theory suggests that people born as a leader. According to the interviews, it’s clear to say that those leaders were born as a leader because nobody teaches them how to generate empty and adapt on their behavior.  They have some traits like charisma, humanism, goal-driven, motivation, which helps them to be a great leader, however they also have to work hard to be success (Johns & Moser, 1989). For example; a mayor who is considered as charismatic leader and he was one of the most important actor in his political life (Leonard, 2008).  He gained appreciation of the people with his humanistic approaches. He got close attention and that shows him  more sympathetic. This attention covered his bad and even show more glorified in the eye of his people. He never learned to be humanistic, he was born with it. Before him none of leaders cared about those people, because they did not understand their situation. For example, counselors who have similar qualities to leaders in other areas especially they can be example of behind leadership. They cannot think only about themselves, their efforts for others success who are a part of their profession (Roop, 2014). Their leadership style presents also servant leadership, because they commit to the growth of people like the counselor made for his students (Sendjaya & Sarros, 2002).

Leadership is really coping with changes (Kotter, 2001). For example, the mayor had a dream/aim to change the country’s future, the businessman built a new strategies to stand for changes, the counselor was expert in science or mathematics areas but he helped an art student in his group.

Those leaders also have faced unintended consequences. If  leaders needs to be success, they should face  unintended consequences  and work on it, to overcome, as the leader’s did it. Those unintended consequences surely bring more tasks with re-designing their organizations. As well as, it takes the leaders come front of compressed work (Barnett, Gordon, Gareis, & Morgan, 2004). Compressed work, taking a lot of responsibility, being under the pressure can lead people in stressful life. And, unfortunately, stress can harm to decision-making skills and leaders also can make bad decision. The result of stress is anxiety and that might affect decision process. There were no bad decision making process had found on participants, but there were high stressful times (Doyne, 2014). According the signed article ‘Asking the Right Questions About Leadership’ (Hackman, & Wageman, 2007); when the leaders are emotionally mature, they are able to move toward anxiety; they learn from anything rather than moving away and try to reduce any kind of anxieties. Sometimes engaging with actions could be neccessary in order to raise anxieties to foster learning or change (Hackman, & Wageman, 2007). For example, like the businessman, who is able to inhibit impulses to act, when there are emerging problem, he exploit that an opportunity. He overcame with his problems.

It was meaningful to see that how leaders build trust in. It is clear to see that the leaders first inspire the trust. For example, the mayor, he gained the trust and his environment have trusted on one task which was about protecting religious values, that increased the trust on any other, even unrelated tasks. The counselor gained the parents trust then he was able to help. Trust is one of the essential aspects of leadership and as on interviews seen that there are factors of perceived trustworthiness like ability, benevolence, integrity (Mayer, Davis, & Schoorman, 1995). For example, being benevolent; like finding donations for poor people, solving problems in public hospitals, and presenting integrity by showing your purpose about religious value. Then, the mayor gained the trust from his followers. The Counselor’ s aim shows his integrity; how to help humanity by science. He has a group of abilities; being patience, acting like peers to understand the students circumstances, ability to handle their families, taking risk by helping the art student, which is not his responsibility in order to job requirements and then being benevolent, like devoting his self to help the kids.

There are also red flag conditions such as, the state of inappropriate self-interest, distorting attachments and misleading memories, which can lead leaders to make bad decision, but there are observations about any of those situations (Campbell, Whitehead, & Finkelstein, 2009). However, great leaders do not make bad decisions easily because they are able to understand how to balance the emotions. They are like a servant to protect their organization. Leaders face changes, uncertainties, anxiety, stress which can generate unfavorable reactions, but just like on the leaders managing those uncertainties correctly, and trusting their intuition and seek out opportunities which would help them to grove and generate success (Kase, 2010).

The participants described the meaning of the incidents; it is like an event or situation, which can be dramatic and non-dramatic, that creates a significant risk, because it is important for them. Those situations made them stop and think, and then raised questions about their behavior, values, beliefs and attitude. It has significant impact on their personal and professional life. Critical incident includes; criticism, conflicts, aggression and increases self- awareness, challenges for the mayor. It includes, communication problem, made him to feel inadequate, confronted and caused him to question his assumptions and beliefs for the counselor. It almost related to anything, especially in leaders life with regards to knowledge, culture, communication, relationships and beliefs (Fook & Cooper, 2003).

Conclusion

Analyzing a critical incident required to ask some questions to be answered in order to get clear result. Those questions were; why it seems like that, what assumptions seen, there could be any other interpretation, what other action could be more helpful, what would others do if they faced with a similar situation. In this case, using ‘Bloom’s Taxonomy’ helps with regards to; Knowledge represents recall of methods, process, facts, pattern, and basic concepts. Comprehension represents to classify, select and describe the ideas and concepts. Application represents to solve, use, and operate the new information in new events. Analysis represents to organize, compare, and draw the connection among ideas. Synthesis represents to select, argue, evaluate, judge and justify the decisions. Create represents design, resolve, collaborate and produce new original work (Assaly & Smadi, 2015). In conclusion, the leaders have interviewed and define and state the facts. Their ideas have classified by leadership trait