What examples of creative confidence do you see in your neighborhood? Have a think about someone in your own family or community who exudes this kind of confidence – how do they show it and live it?

From the Inspiration Interview Toolkit:

Great insights start with people – so for our Creative Confidence Challenge we encourage you to think about who you could talk with to build our collective awareness around this exciting topic.

We’re eager to consider people from diverse cultural backgrounds, professions, ages and abilities. To help us understand more about multiple perspectives on creative confidence, we’re keen for you to interview folks to gain greater insights.

Your interview will be preferably face-to-face but could also be by phone, Skype, etc – or if those options are not available, perhaps via email. With any method, do your best to keep your interviewee feeling comfortable. Let them know this is more like a friendly chat rather than being faced by a researcher.

1. Start by sharing some background on the nature of our OpenIDEO Creative Confidence Challenge and our collaborative, solution-seeking community.

2. We’ve included some question pointers below, though feel free to make up your own or build upon these. Effective interviews are all about listening – so you might find that your interviewee takes the conversation in their own direction. It’s important to go with the flow as you can’t predict when insightful comments will find their way into the conversation. There’ll be plenty of time after the interview to review your notes and make decisions about what would be most inspiring and relevant to share with our community.

3. Remember to check if they want their names mentioned or to stay anonymous.

4. To provide some visual goodness for your post, you can doodle on our Interview Highlights capture form below.

5. And don’t forget to thank your interviewee plus show them what you’ve posted later on. They might even be encouraged to join our challenge themselves and enrich the conversation.

Tip: Start broad, then go deep. It helps to structure your interview so that you start with general questions and probe more as your interviewee relaxes into the process and becomes more reflective. The introductory questions are mostly to set the tone: relaxed and friendly. Be sure to check how much time they have to chat and give a broad overview of what you’re here to chat about. Feel free to make up your own or build on these:

1. Can you tell me a little about yourself – such as where you live?

2. Can you describe a time in your life when you showed creative confidence?

3. What about a time you can remember where you faced a crisis of creative confidence?

4. Who and what has supported you in building creative confidence?

5. What positive results of creative confidence have you noted in your community?

6. Do you have an example from your life when an early failure led to a later success?

Show & tell
You might encourage your interviewee to draw their responses while they are talking you through their experiences. This will lead to a richer conversation.

Listen then dig deeper
Be patient and allow your interviewee to tell their own story . Once they are done, you might try prompting them to expand on their answers:
+ How did that make you feel?
+ Why do you think that happened?
+ How did your community respond?
+ Can you think of motivations and enablers that led to this?

If your interviewee seems keen to keep going then by all means carry on with the flow of the conversation. Otherwise – wrap it up here with a big thanks for helping on our challenge for social good.