Informational Interview

For this assignment, you will apply the process for defining coaching success by conducting an informational interview with the leader of your choice. The leader should be in your chosen career field (either your current career field or the field you wish to enter). You will need to make arrangements with the leader to conduct the informational interview early in Unit II.

Goals of the Informational Interview

At the beginning of the coaching process, you will define what success will look like for that coaching experience. To do this, you would conduct an informational interview to: (a) identify the competencies needed for the leader to be effective in his or her role within the organization and (b) determine which of those competencies the leader would like to improve, by asking questions about challenges that the leader faces in the position and within the organization. Through this dialogue, you will pinpoint the competencies to focus on throughout the coaching experience. (Keep in mind that for the purposes of this course project, the leader will not be involved beyond the informational interview.)

Develop the Informational Interview Questions

Develop the informational interview questions that you will ask in order to accomplish the goals of the informational interview (see above). List those questions in your field notes. Take care in developing your informational interview questions because the richness of information you glean from an informational interview is largely dependent upon the questions you ask.

Be sure to use the information from the Unit II lesson, video, and readings as you craft the questions to ask during the informational interview. Also, be sure to review the rubric that will be used to grade this assignment. This will give you direction for developing questions designed to elicit rich information about the leader's insights into the competencies needed for his or her leadership role within that particular organization and within that industry.

Conduct the Informational Interview

Meet with the leader. Ask questions, listen, observe nonverbal behavior, and record the leader's responses and your observations about his or her nonverbal cues. Record this data in the form of field notes, as described below. Be sure to number your interview questions, and record the detailed responses and nonverbal behavior below each corresponding interview question.

Field Notes Format

The assignment should be submitted in the form of field notes. Your assignment should list:

- interviewer's name (your name);

- leader's name and job title;

- organization where the leader is employed, as well as the organization's type of industry;

- date of the informational interview;

- place where the informational interview is conducted;

- the time you began and ended the interview, showing the length of time for the informational interview;

- informational interview questions;

- leader's responses to the informational interview questions; and

- notes on any nonverbal communication you observed as the leader was responding to the questions.

This unit includes a two-part assignment. These two parts will be submitted in a single document within Blackboard and will be graded as a whole.

1. Informational Interview Field Notes: Record the questions and responses from the informational interview. Also record any non-verbal behaviors, or body language, that you observe as the leader is talking. Together, the verbal and non-verbal information serve as the data you are collecting, in order to guide the Leadership Coaching Plan.

2. The First Segment of the Leadership Coaching Plan: Defining Coaching Success: Use the field notes from the informational interview to identify the competencies that the leader would like to improve through the coaching process.

Leadership Coaching Plan:

Defining Coaching Success: Based on the information in your field notes from the informational interview: (a) evaluate the competencies needed for that specific leader to be effective in his or her role within the organization and (b) determine which of those competencies the leader would most like to improve, by the answers about the challenges that the leader faces in the position and within the organization.

With this information, write a paper, a minimum 2 pages in length, to explain how coaching success would be defined if you were to coach this leader. This will serve as one segment of your Leadership Coaching Plan. Use the heading "Defining Coaching Success" for this assignment section, and feel free to use subheadings as needed.