speaker.

writer.
teacher.
leader.
Behavioral and Situational Interviewing
storyteller.

Y’know, when I went to put this together, I thought that I’d just put together a
page or two of information. I figured I’d grab a little information off the Web, maybe write
some original stuff, and there I’d be with one or two (or maybe three) pages.
Little did I know!
This document (yes, it’s a document – not just a hand-out) is the result. And I’ve forced
myself to stop. Because the information available – on the Web and in my head – is far
more than I had imagined when I started.
The topic is fascinating and challenging and thought-provoking.
The intent of this document is to provide you with some useful information, techniques, and
to help you improve your interviewing skills.

What’s the difference?

We’ll talk about the differences between behavioral and situational interviewing repeatedly.
But let’s kick it off here…
Behavioral Interviewing maintains a focus on actual past experience, and is used as a
predictor of future behavior.
Situational Interviewing presents hypothetical questions and is used to explore your
thinking, as well as your style and approach.
Of course, this all assumes that you are honest, accurately relate situations, and
understand the question!
You know the old saw that the thieves are always a step ahead of the locksmiths? If you’re
going to get the jobs you want, you need to be the thief to the interviewer’s locksmith!

There are no secrets here!

It’s certainly possible that there are folks who have not yet experienced behavioral or
situational interviewing techniques. But not in this room! At least, I hope that won’t be
true by the time we’re done.
So you know what it’s about. And if you don’t, you can certainly learn.
And they know that you know.
So the first question you should ask yourself is “What excuse could I possibly have for not
being good at this?”
The second question is “How can I get better at this?”

4815 W. Braker Lane, Ste 502, PMB 111 ● Austin ● Texas ● 78759 ● 877.349.4174
steven@anotherthought.com ● www.anotherthought.com
Reasonable and Unreasonable Assumptions
 The interviewer has put time and effort and thought into coming up with the questions
 The interviewer is skilled at interviewing and at interpreting the answers to questions
 The interviewer will recognize true from false; right from wrong; exaggeration from bare
fact
 I know what the interviewer is really interesting in

Behavioral Interviewing
This type of interview is readily becoming the most popular interview style. Thus, YOU
must be prepared!
Basically, an interview using behavioral interviewing techniques wants to hear you talk
about situations in the past.
In the Interviewer's opinion, past performance is a good predictor of future performance.

Behavioral Based Interviewing

This style allows the interviewer to examine whether you possess the skills needed to
succeed in the job. Questions are developed with the actual job skills in mind. The
interviewer will probe and ask you to provide details. You will be asked to describe
situations in which you exhibited desired behaviors.
These questions frequently start with: "Tell me about a time when...”
You must discuss examples of specific situations you've dealt with at school, work, or
extracurricular activities to answer these questions well.

STAR Technique
A good technique to use for behavioral based questions is the STAR technique: Situation,
Task, Action, Result.
Situation: Describe the situation.
Task: Describe assignments or critical incidents you faced concerning the situation. Think
of skills and knowledge that were called on to address the task.
Action: These are activities you engaged in to complete the task. For example, you were
assigned as a leader of a cross-functional group responsible for developing a new job
description format. You explain how you used facilitation skills to achieve consensus
within the team.
Result: This is the outcome of the task and action stated in quantifiable terms if possible.
Example:
Question: “Tell me about a time you needed to convince someone to do something they
normally wouldn't do.”
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Situation: "As a plant generalist, one of my wellness program objectives involved organizing
and conducting a day for the 250 production employees in the plant to have their blood
pressures checked. Just 50 employees signed up on their own--a disappointing turnout.
Task: I decided to hold a second drive with the goal of attaining a 50% participation rate in
the program.
Action: I had worked hard to establish credibility with the line so I decided best way to
increase participation was to recruit face-to-face. I went out on the floor and explained the
benefits of the program, making sure that I answered all of the workers questions. I
explained that results were for their information only and guaranteed complete
confidentiality. As an inducement to attend I decided to serve a variety of 'heart-smart'
refreshments.
Results: My efforts resulted in a 300% increase in attendance over the first attempt; about
200 employees participated in the program. The big turnout was especially rewarding
because wellness activities were a new concept in the plant. People distrusted the first
program due to lack of information about its purpose."

Preparing for a Behavioral Interview

A recipe:
1. List your key skills on a sheet of paper
2. Pair your key skills with those needed to do the job
3. Prepare thorough descriptions of situations that demonstrate those skills
4. Make sure each story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, using the STAR
technique
5. Be sure that the outcome or result reflects positively on you
6. Be specific and provide as much good detail as you can
7. Describe your stories in a positive manner!
This type of preparation is more efficient than trying to prepare for the 500 most common
interview questions or trying to “psych out” the questions you think an interviewer will ask
you!

Sample of behavioral based questions.

ARE YOU READY FOR THEM?
 Describe a time when something you were involved with didn’t turn out as you
planned.
 Describe an experience you had with someone who was hard to get along with.
 Tell me about a time when you exhibited creativity.
 Describe a time when you did more than was expected.
 Describe an experience where you had to resolve a difference in personalities.
 Tell me about the last team project you were involved in.

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  Give me an example of when you showed initiative and took the lead.
 Tell me about the last time you dealt with a conflict situation.
 Share with me a time that you had to sell a new idea to a group of individuals who
preferred to keep things as they are. How did you convince them to adopt your idea?
 Tell me about a recent situation in which you had to deal with a very upset customer
or co-worker.
 Describe a situation in which you were able to use persuasion to successfully
convince someone to see things your way.
 Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to
prioritize your tasks.
 Describe a situation where you made a mistake that had a negative effect on others.
Clearly, these kinds of questions are challenging, especially if you haven’t thought about
your skills beforehand. Make sure you examine your skills and abilities before you
interview! If you don’t do this, the interview will be a struggle.

More Questions
 What is one of the toughest problems you've ever had to solve, or decisions you've
ever had to make? Why was it difficult? How did you solve it? (Domino questioning)
 What science or advanced math courses have you taken? Describe some of the basic
principles.
 How would you figure our how many ATM machines there are in the U.S.?
 What criteria would you use to determine the top ten priority accounts for a new
sales territory?
 Give an example of a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to
get the job done.
 How would you motivate an employee who was performing poorly?
 What was the biggest risk you have ever taken?
 Give an example of a situation you've encountered where you didn't back down in the
face of adversity.
 Tell about an unpopular decision you have made. How long did it take to make the
decision? Why did the decision arise? How do you think you handled it?
 When have you felt overwhelmed? Tell me about it.
 What would you do if your co-workers were complaining to you about the company?
 Let's say your manager gave you ten things to do by 5:00 PM and you realized that
you couldn't finish them all. What would you do? How would you prioritize them?
 Tell me about a time when you've "bent" the rules. When is it okay to do so?

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Situational Interviews
As you’ve no doubt read in many places, the only difference between Behavioral
Interviewing and Situational Interviewing is between past experience and hypothetical
situations. That is, in behavioral interviewing, the interviewer is interested in what you did,
how you did it, why you did it, how you explain it, and your thinking and speaking skills.
In situational interviewing, you are forced to apply your principles, standards, behavior,
communication skills, and thinking on your feet to a hypothetical situation.
The temptation is, of course, to give a behavioral answer to a situational question. And each
circumstance will determine whether that is appropriate or not! Some interviewers are
quite content to hear an answer like:
You know, a situation just like that happened to me. May I tell you about that situation?

But there are also interviewers who want you to come up with a hypothetical answer to
their hypothetical question.
Challenging? You bet!
So how do you prepare for these kinds of questions?

Know Yourself
First of all, allow yourself to stop and think each time this comes up. No interviewer
expects you to be glib in providing an answer to a question that they view as challenging
and insightful. They may have worked hard to come up with the question, and it should be
treated with respect and admiration.
Don’t overdo it, but do give it its due.
Generally, however, you should have done a good job of assessing yourself in advance and
be able to fit the question into your personal framework.
Here are several areas of assessment. These are in addition to your specific technical or
job-related skills. You should give serious thought to these, and then put together your
own situational questions and do some mock interviews.
 Communication style – what are your goals in communication? How do you relate to
people when you communicate with them?
 Interaction style – what impression do you try to create in people’s minds? Whose
interests are foremost in your mind during different kinds of situations?
 Management style – if you’re a manager, or want to be, what is your approach to
management and organization? How do you get tasks and projects accomplished?
What are the nuts and bolts of your management approach/style/technique?
 Leadership style – leadership and management are most assuredly not the same
thing. If you don’t know the difference, learn it! How do you motivate people? How
do you set an example? How do you perceive leadership?
 Conflict resolution – many behavioral and situational questions address conflict
situations. How do you resolve conflict? Does it change if you’re the manager, peer,
or subordinate? If so, how? What is the goal of the conflict resolution?
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You know that bit about mock interviews? Let’s get back to it.
Do it. Ask your friends and family to help you. Make up your own questions and then ask
them to make up their own, too. Ask them to be as sadistic as possible! Yes! Get the
practice.
Deal with the ridiculous, incomprehensible, and challenging as much as you can so that
you don’t get flustered, confused, or offended during an interview.

Practical Advice
Practice clarifying the question. There are two basic techniques for this:
1. Repeat the question – you can rephrase or paraphrase, just make sure you
understand the question so that you can be sure that you’re answering what they
think they asked.
2. Ask a question in return – don’t guess. There’s no harm in asking a question to
ensure that you know what they want to know. This is not to say that you should
fish for the answer with your question. Just make sure you are reasonably confident
that you understand the question.
You can use both techniques, or either, but always use one. There are two reasons for this:
1. You keep the communication bi-directional, while demonstrating that you’re listening
and attentive.
2. You give yourself an extra moment or two to think about your response.
And while you’re at it, this additional bit of interaction may get you some hints about the
interviewer and their goals.

Situational Responses – Tune Your Answer

Remember that the same question asked by different interviewers may have different goals
or that the same answer may be interpreted differently.
A manager has a different focus than a teammate. They may not say so or think so, but it’s
true. Tune your answer to your audience.
This is not to say that you should be giving different answers to different people. It is to say
that you can phrase the answer differently, or apply a different emotional bias to it,
depending on your audience.
If you’re not sure what we’re getting at, try saying “I’m sorry” to:
 Your boss
 Your child
 Your best friend
 Someone you don’t have a close relationship with when you’re feeling guilty, and are
angry that you’re feeling guilty
 Your spouse/partner

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  A stranger with whom you collided while walking down the street – maybe they
bumped into you.
And so on. Get it? Same words, different emotional content.

The Bottom Line

Steven’s philosophy of interviewing and job seeking:
Everything you say, everything you do, the clothes you wear, the objects you carry,
the way you prepare, the way you follow up… everything contributes to the
impression you create.
Don’t create an impression by accident!

Good Online Resources

Quintessential Careers: http://www.quintcareers.com/behavioral_interviewing.html
Daniels College of Busienss:
http://www.daniels.du.edu/enet/forms/pdf/cpc/GettingReadyforaBehavioralInterview.pdf
Byte of Success: http://www.byteofsuccess.com/columns/guest1.asp

interview questions

Interview Styles:

In larger companies the interviewers are likely to be well trained, and will use more sophisticated
methods of interviewing than smaller companies, eg:

Criteria Based Interview:

A criteria based Interview is a structured interview designed around the key competencies of the
job you are being considered for. If the job requires skills such as: teamwork, communication
skills, interpersonal skills, leadership, problem solving, organisation, negotiation skills, then the
interviewer will ask questions designed to allow you to provide evidence of your ability in those
areas.

Behavioural Interview:

This is similar to criteria based interviewing, in that it is designed around the key competencies of
the job you have applied for. The interviewer will ask questions about your past behaviour as they
believe that if you behaved that way in the past you are likely to behave that way in the future.

Biodata or Biographical Interview:

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Explores your career history to date, to assess whether you have the skills and experience needed
for the job.

Targeted Interview or Criteria Based Behavioural Interview:

This is a combination of criteria and behavioural interviewing. The interviewer will seek to
discover whether you have displayed the skills required for the job in your past behaviour.

(The criteria based interview, the behavioural interview and the targeted interview are all very
similar and will use similar questioning techniques)

Situational Interview:

The interviewer will give you a hypothetical situation and ask you a question about that situation
to see how you respond. They seek to test your thought processes and your logical thinking.

Case Study:

This is a relatively new way of structuring an interview. You will be given some reading matter to
study and then be asked questions around the subject.

Telephone Interview:

Recently more organisations are using a short telephone interview to help them make the
selection of short list candidates. These usually last about 15 minutes. The interviewer will
probably have an interviewing matrix, which will be structured around the basic requirements of
the job. You will need to prepare well to ensure that you make an impression in this short space
of time.

Interview Preparation:

Interviewers may ask questions about: you; your school/university life; what you have
written on your form; your past work experience; your past life experience; your skills and
qualities; your knowledge of the job; your knowledge of the company; and in some cases
hypothetical situations.

The key to a successful interview is: research and preparation. You will need to research
three things: The Job B the Company B and Yourself. You will need to prepare by thinking around
the areas that you might be questioned on: What questions are they likely to ask you? How will
you answer those questions? What questions will you ask the interviewer?

Possible Interview Questions:

Questions about you:

Why did you choose to study History/English/Music/Maths (etc)?
Why did you choose UEA?

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What are your strengths/weaknesses?
How would your fellow students describe you?
What is the greatest asset you will bring to this company?

Questions about your university life:

Tell me about your university course, what did you like/dislike about it?
What have you gained from your course?
In what way do you feel the course has/has not prepared you for the working environment?
Do you feel your university grades are a good indicator of your ability to succeed in business?

Questions about work/your work experience:

What appeals to you about this job? Why should we give the job to you? What did you gain from
your holiday job at ... ? What do you know about this company? What interests you most/least
about this job? What would you say were the most important qualities of a good ... ?

Criteria Based Questions:

Give me an example of when you worked as a member of a team. What was your contribution to
that team? Tell me about the most difficult situation you have had to deal with. How did you
handle it? What was the outcome? What did you learn from the experience?

Behavioural Questions:
Tell me about a time when your work was criticised. What was your reaction?
Tell me about a time when you disagreed with a superior. How did you handle the situation?
Tell me about a time when you were asked to do something with which you disagreed. How did you handle
it?

Situational Interview Questions:

You are a trainee assistant manager put into a small department to supervise staff who are
experienced and valued members of the organisation. One of the staff is extremely resentful (as
he/she was turned down for the post of department supervisor) and is being unhelpful and
obstructive. How would you handle the situation and why?

A work colleague has told you in confidence that she suspects another colleague of stealing. What
would your actions be?

You are giving a presentation where one member of the audience is continually stopping you and
diverting you from the main part of the presentation. What would you do?

Write out open-ended questions that will encourage the candidate to give specific
experiences about the past that emphasize the behavioral and technical skills you identified.
Remember, sometimes one question may provide evidence useful in evaluating more than
one behavioral skill.

Below are some examples of behavior-based questions:

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Describe a time when your loyalty seemed divided between the customer and the company?
What did you do?

Describe a time on any job, which you've held, in which you were faced with problems or
stresses, which tested your coping skills. What did you do?

Give an example of a time in which you had to be relatively quick in coming to a decision.

Tell me about a time in which you had to use your spoken communication skills in order to get
a point across that was important to you.

Can you tell me about a job experience in which you had to speak up in order to be sure that
other people knew what you thought or felt?

Give me an example of a time in which you felt you were able to build motivation in your co-
workers or subordinates at work.

Give me an example of a specific occasion in which you conformed to a policy with which you
did not agree.

Describe a situation in which you felt it necessary to be very attentive and focus your
customer service skills.

Give an example of a time in which you had to use your fact-finding skills to gain information
for solving a problem-then tell me how you analyzed the information to come to a decision.

Give me an example of an important goal, which you had set in the past and tell me out your
success in reaching it.

Describe the most significant written document/report/presentation which you have had to
complete.

Give me an example of a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty in order
to get a job done.

Give me an example of a time when you were able to successfully communicate with another
person, even when that individual may not have personally liked you.

What did you do in your last job in order to be effective with your organization and planning?
Be specific.

Describe the most creative work-related project, which you have carried out.

Describe a time in which you felt it was necessary to modify or change your actions in order
to respond to the needs of another person.

Give me an example of a time when you had to carefully analyze another person or a
situation in order to be effective in guiding your action or decision.
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What did you do in your last job to contribute toward a team environment? Be specific.

Give me an example of a problem, which you faced on any job you have had and tell me how
you went about solving it.

Describe a situation in which you were able to positively influence the actions of others in a
desired direction.

CASE STUDY

INTRODUCTION

Franklin Pierce Law Center (FPLC) offers a Juris Doctor (JD), advanced degrees, and
certificates in education law and intellectual property. The Center is located in Concord,
New Hampshire and was recently ranked by U.S. News and World Report (2001) as the third
best intellectual property law school in the U.S. - ahead of top universities such as
Stanford, Columbia, Harvard, and Georgetown.

For the first year law student, legal studies can be emotionally taxing and
overpowering. Numerous legal cases and theories are explored to such an intense degree
that many students experience information overload. Many students start to perceive the
teachings as boring and become less engaged over the semester.

One pioneering leader/educator who is addressing the first-year law student

syndrome is Professor Hugh Gibbons. His integration of technology in and out of the
classroom has enhanced overall student learning outcomes and created a positive learning
environment that helps students apply what they have learned in legal classes. The author
interviewed several stakeholders and confirmed that Hugh Gibbons is perceived by FPLC's
administration, faculty, and students as a true leader with respect to revolutionizing the
way law classes are delivered to the learner. He has profoundly motivated those that he
works with to utilize technology in a pioneering way. After years of experimentation and the
development of several copyrighted authoring tools, Gibbons developed and implemented a
software learning package called Shelldrake. The Shelldrake Developer creates "…a
simulation that puts… users in a conversational situation, evaluates their performance and
provides tips on how it could be improved" ("Products", 2000). Shelldrake has been a huge
success for many of the legal classes at FPLC. Students, faculty, and the administration
have endorsed the Shelldrake software as an effective learning tool that has changed how
many law classes are taught (Click here to see two of the Shelldrake scripts created by
students as described in this paper)..

______________________________________

FIELD PROCEDURES

The author's fiancйe is currently enrolled in the legal program at FPLC and is taking
a class with Prof. Gibbons. After hearing about her enlightened learning experience with
Shelldrake, the author contacted Prof. Gibbons via email to set up an interview. The
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author's fiancйe also helped in this regard by describing to Prof. Gibbons the author's
doctoral degree pursuits and the interview project he was engaged in. On October 16, 2001,
the author interviewed Prof. Gibbons at his office located at FPLC. The interview was taped
and transcribed several days later.

______________________________________

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

The Situation

First year law students struggle with learning and retaining a tremendous amount of
case studies and legal theories that are necessary in successfully completing a law program.
To overcome this learning dilemma, Hugh Gibbons has developed and implemented a new
authoring software package, designed for students, that helps them learn and retain legal
material. The following are questions and answers conducted during the interview:

Q. Where did this take place?

A. Franklin Pierce Law Center, Concord, NH.

Q. When did this take place? How long did it take to complete from start to finish?

A. The use of my authoring tools at the Law Center started in the fall of 1982 and has
continued through to the present. Shelldrake is a cumulation of five authoring tools and is
by far the milestone of my work. The product represents 18 years of development.

Q. Who initiated this project? If you did, indicate your title and function at the time.
If someone else did, what was this person's relationship to you (supervisor, peer,
outsider, etc.)?

A. I initiated the project but my daughter has also been involved with the project since the
beginning.

Q. Who else was involved, either directly or indirectly, in the project? It is not
necessary to name everyone. Please just indicate their functional areas and whether
they were supervisors, peers, employees, etc.

A. My daughter has also been involved since the beginning. She is a mathematician,
software designer, and programmer. In addition to my daughter, I had another partner for
the third authoring system, called Oyster. She is an educational consultant and put up the
money for that version. Students have also been involved right from the beginning. They've
been writing tutorials or interactive multimedia since day one.

Q. What was your specific role or title in this project?

A. I am the President of Shelldrake Technologies. I'm the functionality guy and my

daughter is the interface designer. I wrote the functional spec, she wrote the design spec
and then implemented it. I do the testing.

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Q. What were the actual results of this project, both quantitative and qualitative?

A. Hundreds and hundreds of tutorials. We've also done research from time to time on the
effectiveness of it. For four years I correlated the tutorials with the grades that people got in
the course. The tutorials could be used voluntarily. I kept track of the people who made
use of the tutorials and correlated that use with their final grade. There was a very strong
correlation. I was curious about what caused it. Maybe the best students were the ones
who had used the tutorials, which would explain the correlation. I made a special effort to
ask weak students to use the tutorials. It turns out that the strong students were aided
much less than the weak students. Computerized instruction was ideally suited to the
weak student because they could do the tutorials again and again, at his or her own pace,
without having to worry that they were being watched. As we employed more tutorials, the
bottom tail of the grade distribution got chopped off. The tutorials didn't make anybody
brilliant, but they did make people competent in learning the material.

Q. Indicate any awards, bonuses, or other special recognition that you and/or your
group received.

A. I've had release time. The Dean has recognized me and the software has gotten awards
of recognition.

______________________________________

Opportunities and Challenges

Q. If you were the one to initiate this project, why did you want to do it? What drove
or motivated you? If someone else asked you to take on this project, what made you
believe that you could do it?

A. I wanted to introduce new ways to learn law. I didn't like law school when I was a
student. I looked upon electronic technology as a way of changing legal education. I also
looked upon it as calling for new skills – dealing with the graphics, audio and video—that
would just be more enjoyable and more fun. The new tools would create new ways to teach
with and give students new ways to think about law. What motivated me to do this project
goes back to 1968. Every summer I wrote a manuscript. A couple of those years I was paid
to do it. I wrote nine manuscripts. All nine died without ever being published and I got
sick of it. The editor would die or get fired, or they would cancel the project, or the
company would get bought out. When I first started teaching in 1975, I had a vision of
conveying the theory of law in an interactive, graphical, auditory, multimedia sort of a way.
I imagined it when the first microprocessor computer chips came out. This last summer I
finally did what I had imagined (Gibbons 2001). Twenty-five years later I delivered it. I
came up with it. I produced it.

Q. What did you do, if anything, to challenge the status quo, the existing ways of
doing things? What changes did you make? What novel or innovative things did you
do? What risks did you take?

A. I had to demonstrate what was possible by actually doing it; it's been a slow process. I
just had to show that it was feasible. I made the software available free. I've made my own
support available, and it's been effective. One of the crucial design requirements

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throughout this process was that everything we did had to be useable and voluntary. It
hasn't been required. Creating the tutorials and multimedia projects put students in the
role of the teacher. It didn’t feel like I was taking any risks. I did what I enjoyed, and it
improved my teaching.

Q. How did you challenge others to attain high levels of performance, to excel, to do
better than ever before?

The tough thing about using the technology in law is that law is just conversation—people
talking with each other—and that's not something that computers enjoy. They like
numbers, sounds, and diagrams. The challenge was to make the computer do a realistic
simulation of a person so the student could take on a role, becoming a lawyer or whatever,
while the computer played the other roles in the simulation. If the simulation is realistic
enough, I’ve found that everybody likes to learn this way.

Q. How would you describe your feelings at the beginning of this project? How did
you feel immediately after accepting or initiating this project?

A. It adds an extra dimension to teaching and makes it exciting to come to work every day.
It's not an empty experience. It's all leading to something. The better I understand the way
people think and learn, the better Shelldrake gets. If you told me it was going to take me 25
years to deliver on what I imagined in '75, I probably wouldn't have done it, but I'm glad I
did.

______________________________________

Destinations

Q. As you looked forward to the time when the project would be completed, what did
you dream you would accomplish? What was your ideal outcome, your vision, your
fondest wish for the project?

A. One huge milestone was this delivery of a theory of law through interactive multimedia
(Gibbons 2001). Here was an entirely new way of delivering otherwise didactic, dry,
uninteresting material. Making it live and making it available and meaningful to people.
My aim is to eliminate the barriers to learning. Law shouldn't be mysterious. The aim here
is to deliver law in such an engaging, intense, real way that we just eliminate the expert in
the middle. Make people able to understand what their rights are, how to enforce their
rights, how to write contracts, how to negotiate, and so on.

Q. If you used any slogans, metaphors, catchy phrases, logos, or symbols to describe
your dream or vision, what were they?

A. We have a bunch of tag lines on the web site. Shelldrake Technologies.

Q. How did you sell others on your project? What did you say to convince them that
they ought to enlist and sign up?

A. Institutionally my biggest achievement was to get the school to sign off on the idea of
building a media lab. To that, last spring a group of students and I showed the faculty

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what we had been developing. I had tried to get the faculty involved in it several times
before, but the response was tepid. Last spring was different; the faculty reponded to our
presentation with enthusiasm. It was the only time I'd ever been at a Faculty meeting where
a faculty presentation got applause. I couldn't believe it. It was from that meeting that
other faculty started to get involved.

Q. How did you build a sense of enthusiasm and excitement for this project?

A. Essentially by getting students involved. They're excited about anything that looks like
it will be good. It's very hard to enlist faculty members. They are comfortable with what
they've done and they generally want to keep doing it the same way. Students are the
inverse of that. They know what's gone before and they're not sold on it, and they’re game
for doing it better. So they’re very energetic, creative, and divine to work with.

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Involvement

Q. How did you involve others in planning and decision making? Did you use any
special methods or techniques?

A. Students have permeated the software from start to finish. They’ve gotten involved with
testing the software and made suggestions for features they would like to see added. We
worked in teams. Independent studies, sometimes in the context of class.

Q. How did you build a team out of the individuals who worked for you? Did you use
any special methods?

A. My daughter and I built a music synthesizer when she was seven years old. That got us
going with electronic technology. With students, look for particular interests and capitalize
on them. I've got a student right now who has an interest in educational rights for special
ed students. He looked at Shelldrake and wants to do an interactive program that explains
to parents what their kid's rights are in education.

Q. How did you foster cooperation and collaboration among those whose support you
needed, even if they didn't work for you? Did you use any special methods?

A. Nobody works for me. I don't have any employees. I got them [students and faculty]
interested in doing what they wanted to do. That was what it took.

Q. How did you develop trust and respect among those who worked on the project?
Did you use any special methods?

A. It was just flat; we all worked together. There was no hierarchy in the organization at
all.

Everything is strictly voluntary; the second someone wants out, they get out.

Q. How did you help your team members to feel strong and capable? Did you use any
special methods?

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A. Treating everybody as a colleague. That's the only way I know how to do it.

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Leader Actions

Q. For this project, what were the values that you believed should guide everyone's
actions? What were the standards to which everyone was accountable?

A. It wasn't about accountability. It was about friends and colleagues exploring this
untracked wilderness.

Q. How did you show others, by your own example, that you were serious about these
values and standards? How did you lead by example?

A. I just did it constantly 12 months a year. I never gave a speech to anyone.

Q. What structures and systems did you use to plan, organize, or control the
project?

A. Functional specs, design specs, and an implementation plan.

Q. What dramatic or unusual actions, if any, did you take to get people to pay
attention to important aspects of the project?

A. Nothing. I only explained and demonstrated to people how to do it.

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Encouragement

Q. How did your team celebrate its accomplishments, its milestone achievements?

A. I'd take them out to dinner.

Q. What festive events, if any, did you have?

A. None, unfortunately.

Q. How did you recognize individual contributors? Did you use any special incentive
systems, recognition programs, and so on?

A. Everything we developed belonged to whoever it was that developed it. So the

creators owned the copyrights; that was crucial. The rule around here is that if you get
paid by the school to do it, the school owns the copyright. If you do it as part of a class or
on your own, it's yours. Students paid for the software and hardware with their tuition so
what they do with it is theirs.

Q. How did you get the word out to the rest of the organization about your group's
accomplishments?
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A. We used it in class and made presentations at conferences, workshops; we put free
software online and supported it through our web site.

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