Five Tips to make SME Interviews Less Stressful
After a decade of professional experience, I must say that communication plays a vital role when initiating a meeting with Subject Matter Experts. The following 5 tips will help you to make SME Interviews less stressful:
1. Spell out the Agenda and Set Expectations
Often SMEs takeover the meetings because they are expert on the subject and can talk about it hours and hours. But, knowing everything doesn’t let you get away with who scheduled this meeting in the first place. Initiate those meetings by spelling out the agenda and set clear expectations.
Share your analysis and explain how their expertise could help to fill those gaps. This will make SMEs curious to know more about your findings and willing to find creative ways to solve the riddle. Congratulations! Now you change the mode of this meeting from “I know everything” to “I would like to help you with anything.”
2. Avoid Open Ended Questions
Never ask an open ended question such as “Can you please tell me about this product?” There is a huge probability that you will get overwhelmed with the information overload. Get familiar with the product before initiating the meeting and be very specific when you ask questions about the product.
3. Ask for More Information
Prioritizing your dialogs is important. After finding a hinge of the course, it’s better to talk about the course structure. It doesn’t matter if you were given a book already. Asking for more information will not only help you understand the processes, but it will also show your interest.
4. Be A Good Listener
Listening is the most important principal of communication skills. Once you have addressed your expectations, now it’s time to listen what the Subject Matter Expert thinks or has to say about them. Give them some time and start mapping what you think is relevant for your course. If you find something irrelevant or cutting the edge, then take a note but don’t interrupt. Let him/her finish first and then address your concerns.
5. Sharing the content will not replace you.
Clear any doubt you think SMEs might have about their job security. Explain the values they would bring in the project. Most of the times, you will see a huge communication gap between SMEs and Stakeholders. You will be the one filling those gaps through proper communication.
Conclusion
We all know that SMEs have different personality types, some will ask you so many questions to find out what’s going on behind the scenes, and some will try to hide the information from you. Some will get into the product way too much and make it too technical for you to understand and others may feed you irrelevant information. Although SMEs have different personality types, I think, it’s our responsiblity to communicate their values towards the project and try to divert the conversation to the correct path.