Skills for an Effective Repertory Grid Interviewer

 

The techniques of Grid don’t often figure in a university curriculum: personal construct theory is more widely taught, but there’s a world of difference between knowing about PCP as a theory, and conducting an interview or planning a large-scale project which brings you face-to-face with real live people who have expectations of you. Then there’s the added danger of discovering that you have collected data which you have no idea how to analyse, and that there is no program (and nor will there ever be) into which you can enter your data, press the Analyse button, and there will be your answer – because whatever analysis program you use, you still have to interpret what the analysis tells you.

I have often likened Grid to going into a church and hearing lovely music being created by the organist. You can admire the organist’s dexterity and the beauty of the music; but it is only when you stand behind the organist and see the huge choice of stops and keyboards which were chosen for this particular piece can you see the organist’s complete skill set; that out of possibly a hundred or more voices and up to five keyboards the organist matched this particular configuration to this individual piece of music. Good Grid interviewers similarly know that they must configure their interview or project to meet their needs, as well as performing the actual interview with skill and sensitivity.

To be an effective Grid interviewer, you need the skills and understanding described below:

• Understanding. Enough understanding of, and commitment to, Kelly’s core values and the way that Grid gives expression to them; and enough of the basics of Personal Construct Theory to help you in planning and analysis. You don’t need in-depth study of PCP to be a good Grid interviewer, but you do need to know that Grid was designed to give expression to a special way of understanding one another.
• Interview Design. The ability to design an interview protocol, from the universe of options available to you, which will support the purpose for the particular interview(s) and – where applicable – the project you have in mind. Designing a protocol means specifying the element class; the elements and how they will be created; the purpose for the interview; the qualifiers, which direct the interviewee to focus on the elements in a way that supports the purpose; and, crucially, the method(s) of analysis you will use. Don’t assume that you can leave the choice of analysis until later.
• Interpersonal Skills. The interpersonal skills needed for the interview. In some ways this is a different set of interpersonal skills than those you would use in a counselling or fact-finding interview – in particular, you need to suppress everything you may have learned on an ‘active listening’ course, to repress the urges you may have to summarise or re-phrase what the interviewee says, and to be unafraid of silence. Also, in the early stages of your experience with Grid, you need to manage the process of capturing the data – into a computer, which Enquire Within^® supports, or on cards – without being clumsy.
• Feedback skills. When and how you use these depends on the nature of your interview. In a counselling interview or similar, you might be incorporating feedback into the interview itself. On the other hand, there are some types of project where your main feedback could be to a group of managers. Good feedback, especially face-to-face, means that you have learned the art of silence (see the point above); you also need the capacity to analyse the interview as it happens, although you may do more detailed analysis later.
• Analysis skills. There are many different ways of analysing Grid data – and by no means all of them depend on using a computer – but you need to analyse what you have discovered, in terms of your purpose.
• Imagination and Inventiveness. Finally, as you become more practised, you should hope to acquire some imagination and inventiveness. You should know which rules you can break, if breaking them suits your purpose and you understand the consequences of breaking them. You should be able to develop more than one configuration to meet your purpose, which is possible in many cases. You’ll learn how to manage difficult interviewees, break log-jams, be able to spot when the interview is going off-course and adapt accordingly.

No set of written hints can ever compensate for the experience of learning Grid technique from a skilled instructor. However we hope that this collection, taken in conjunction with the other hints on this site, will be of some small assistance. At least, we hope, it will take you to that part of the Hippocratic oath that reads: ‘First of all, do no harm.’

Prepared by Dr Valerie Stewart

Skills for an Effective Rep Grid Interviewer

• Understanding George Kelly and Personal Construct Theory
• Designing a Session
• Learning the Repertory Grid Interview Process
• Construct Analysis
• Feedback
• Reminders, Tips and Wrinkles

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