Adam Grant of the “Re:Thinking” podcast spoke with Andrew Ross Sorkin of CNBC and the New York Times about his interview process.
Here is an excerpt:
Adam Grant: What are examples of speed bumps?
Andrew Ross Sorkin: Tough questions. Uh, something that they’ve done where maybe they’ve made a mistake or they didn’t do something right. Oftentimes those can be great educations actually for the audience because there’s oftentimes a lesson embedded in the mistake. And by the way, I think when the question’s posited like that, the guest feels a lot more comfortable talking about what that mistake was because they do know there was a personal lesson for themselves. Sometimes asking a guest about a critique of them or a critique of something they’ve done. So one thing that I’ve always found can be helpful in that context is to read a critical quote to them, and it could be about them. And the reason to approach the question that way is two reasons. One is it takes it out of being your critique, right? It’s somebody else’s critique. And two is the truth is, because most people are vain enough to actually read about themselves, they’ve probably read the quote before. They’ve probably thought about the quote a lot before. It might even pain them, the quote, but they have an answer for the quote. So in a way, even though you may have never told them that you plan to ask the question, it’s not out of the blue. Look, the other thing that I feel like I often do ahead of a difficult question is I say, this is a difficult question. Or, here’s a complicated question. And it’s just another way of trying to meet people where they are and acknowledge to them that I understand that this is not easy and that we’re gonna try to grapple with this in some way together.
Adam Grant: This is so interesting. So I, I love this approach of saying, Hey, here’s, here’s a critique of you. Respond to it. I think, I think you’re right. It takes you out of sort of the attack position and makes you almost a neutral moderator, arbiter. Maybe even a sympathetic one, because you’re giving them a chance to counter whatever the critique has been. I wonder, is, is there a boundary condition on that? Which is to say, you can’t do that if you’re doing investigative journalism or some kind of interrogation. It only applies to the kinds of interviews that you and I both do, which are, I’m fundamentally here because I think there’s something to learn from this person, and I wanna make sure that the audience doesn’t miss out on their teaching.
Andrew Ross Sorkin: Oh, totally. So there’s a couple of different kinds of interviews contextually that I do, but the truth is actually that oftentimes the same kind of approach can work. I don’t think that it has to necessarily always feel like a full on interrogation. And by the way, sometimes there’s an ordering of your questions so that you’re going from one thing to another where you’re trying to lead to a place where you know, okay, now it’s gonna be a little more complicated for the other person to slip out, if you will, of actually answering the question, because they’ve answered three other questions in a very specific way.
To listen, go here.
