Facilitating insight gathering: conducting the interviews

For the interview, I asked the leaders to allocate a time slot for a total of 2 hours. Based on my interview guide and the number of questions to be covered, and with consideration for how much time I found it reasonable to ask for in terms of both the leaders’ availability and their endurance in the interview setting, I estimated that each interview would last for a maximum of ninety min.

A total of 2 hours allowed for an additional thirty minutes for initial small-talk and getting settled in the interview situation, establishing report and introducing the interview before conducting the interview. I also considered that a time span of 2 hours in total would allow for a proper wrap-up and closure of the interview setting, giving both me and the interviewee the chance to make sure that the leader felt comfortable with the procedure and had a clear idea about the proceedings (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2012).

After initial small-talk and settling in the chair with a cup of coffee or tea, every interview had a warm-up phase where I expressed my gratitude for the leader’s positive response to my request about an interview, and also provided the interviewee with a repetition of the information I had already provided each recipient with in the first e-mail when I first contacted them; a brief summary regarding the practical circumstances of my PhD project, my affiliation with CBS as research institution, and the time scope for my PhD studies as a total. This was to facilitate for a comfortable interaction with the interviewee, and to prepare for a ‘funnelling’, starting out more generally, to gradually narrow and direct focus for the conversation (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2012; p. 61).

I also explained how the actual interview would be carried out, that I would use a voice recorder and also take handwritten notes in addition, and that I had estimated for a maximum of 90 minutes for the interview. A repetition of this information and the leader’s response to it was for me a way to better understand whether the leader already had a clear idea about who I was and why I had asked for an interview, and to make sure that the leader was familiar with the context for and the purpose with the interview. As far as I could know from the written and read communication, only one of the twenty leaders communicated with me and managed the booking of the interview appointment via her secretary. From what I could determine, the remaining 19 leaders communicated directly with me, using singular first-person pronouns in their correspondence with me. Still, considering the busy life of a leader and how many e-mails with meetings- and interview requests these twenty leaders would potentially have received in addition to the one from me, I regarded it as a prerequisite to ensure that the interview context and my research agenda- and role was explicitly communicated to each interviewee also in the actual interview setting. While providing this information and paying attention to the interviewee’s response, I was careful with keeping eye-contact and demonstrating active listening. Only when the leader confirmed that he or she was clear about and comfortable with the interview context and purpose and ready to proceed with the interview, did I put on the voice recorder and take out my interview guide and pen.

I started each interview session with explaining that I would conduct a semi-structured interview with an exploratory and also appreciative point of departure, not looking for faults, flaws or the

‘right’ as opposed to the ‘wrong’ kind of leadership, but paying attention to the leader’s own experiences with and perceptions of what it means to her/him to be a leader. I was careful with stressing that the semi-structured interview guide was meant to support, but not rigidly direct, our conversation, and that I wanted the leader to resonate and speak as freely as possible about whatever came to her or his mind as I introduced the different topics I wanted to ask about.

For the interviews, I used a professional voice recorder, notebook and printout of the interview guide for my own note-taking. As noted by Johnson and Rowlands (2012), the use of a voice recorder for in-depth interviews is crucial for the validity of the interview data. I focused on using notes to efficiently underline certain aspects and passages in the interviews, indicate and make cross-references between different topics and interviewee’s responses, and draw a map for my own interpretative use as the conversation unfolded (see appendix 2).

Beforehand, I did not send the interview guide to the interviewees, and neither did they receive a printed copy during the interview. This way, I allowed myself to adjust and modify the order and

framing of each topic throughout the interview, and facilitated a setting where both I and the leaders could go with the flow, follow our intuition and spontaneity, follow the rhythm of the conversation, and not feel restricted by a certain scheme (Johnson & Rowlands, 2012, p. 107).

I deliberately chose this strategy to obtain the most intuitive and spontaneous responses possible in the actual meeting, to minimise premade answers, evoke a mindful attention and incite honest and reflective dialogue on the various lines of inquiry. I believed this would allow me to go with the flow with each leader in the moment of the interview, and it also made an in-depth pursuit of topics possible as well as of details that appeared to me as particularly interesting, independent of where in the conversation they were raised. The idea was to be able to be both flexible and intuitive in the role as an interviewer and facilitate natural conversation with each leader, while I could simultaneously manage the interview aligned with the confines provided by my research interest, rather than to play to a forced ‘scientific’ setting.

As is often the case in semi-structured interviews (Smith, Flowers & Larkin, 2009; Wengraf, 2006), I experienced how the conversations developed and unfolded in unexpected directions.

One topic led to another, digressions and thematic connotations continually interfered with the main topics, and these interferences frequently led to interesting details of the leaders’

experiences, dwelling on particularities I had not expected. Even if the leaders were well-informed about the aim of our conversations and how the interview was being taped for further analysis, they appeared highly out-spoken, frank and easy-going in the interview situation.

A continuous course of questioning in the qualitative interview is central to grasping the unfolding lives and perspectives of others (Agee, 2009). Effective research questions can never guarantee equivalent high research quality; however, poor questions are likely to create equality issues and dilemmas in every subsequent step of the research process. Because I angled the interview from the phenomenological side, inviting the interviewees to share their life stories as leaders, I paid careful attention to phrasing the questions as open-ended and exploratory. This meant that I viewed the interview as a way to explore dimensions of meanings with the interviewees rather than confirm or verify a certain perspective (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin 2009; Johnson &

Rowlands, 2012).

I paid attention to be fully present in the interview situation so that I could take full advantage of the semi-structured design and go with the flow together with the interviewee, and to improvise by prompting to follow up on something the leader said. I also was careful with trying not to distract myself from engaging in active listening during the interview. This meant paying attention

to not doing things like comparing, rehearsing, filtering, judging, advising, sparring, being right or derailing (Wengraf, 2006; p. 203).

I wrapped up each interview when I considered all the elements in my interview guide to be covered as thoroughly as possible and I found all the relevant topics to be “emptied”. When I recognised this to be the situation, I told the interviewee that we had completed with the questions I had prepared for and the relevant topics that I had a particular interest in. I then invited the interviewee to add to the conversation by adding, adjusting or elaborating to what had already been said. Initially allowing for 90 minutes for each interview, the actual length of the interviews varied from 45 minutes to approximately 90 minutes (see appendix 1). The majority of the interviews had a length around 60 minutes. Considering the amount of interview questions, the actual length of the interviews corresponded to established practice for qualitative interview (Smith, Flowers, & Larkin 2009).