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808 WORDS | READ TIME: 3.0 MIN

Hi friends,

Yesterday we explored the first three traits, practices, and techniques great interviewers employ to create memorable, deeply resonant episodes.

Today we’re building on those with another 3.

As a reminder, you can find the previous installments of this practical guide to better interviews here.

Oh, and if you’ve found this guide useful so far, I’d super appreciate you sending it to another host you think would find it helpful.

So far, we’ve discussed three of the traits that set great interviewers apart, including:

1. ​Great Hosts Are Personally Curious About the Topic & Guest​
2. ​Great Hosts Have a Vision for the Interview​
3. ​Great Hosts Have Done Their Research​

These are just the tip of the iceberg, however.

4. Great Interviewers Are Low Ego

One of the most common complaints podcast listeners have about hosts is when they “make the interview about them.”

This isn’t to say that the host should remove themselves from the interview altogether, however. Many of the best podcast episodes feature a balanced conversation between the host and guest with both making valuable contributions to the discussion.

The problem is when the host’s interjections and contributions are rooted in ego and insecurity.

We all have egos, of course. And we all want to be seen as smart, charming, funny, and likeable (especially if the purpose of our show is marketing for our business).

The problem is that while we often can’t see it in the moment, listeners can detect try-hard, insecure energy from a mile away... and then do everything they can to maintain that distance.

Great hosts are not immune from ego.

Rather, they have the self awareness to recognize their triggers—often by reviewing past episodes—and the confidence to suppress the inevitable urges to inject themselves into the interview when it’s not in service to the episode.

In fact, listen to enough great interviewers and it quickly becomes clear that the real flex is to have the courage to ask the dumb questions in service of your audience.

5. Great Interviewers Think In Themes & Patterns

The biggest aha moments in an interview never come from straightforward, linear questioning of the guest.

Instead, they come from connecting a specific topic or idea to another seemingly unrelated one… and then unexpectedly (and delightfully) weaving them together into a cohesive whole.

To achieve this, great interviewers have developed a keen eye for pattern and theme recognition.

The result is episodes with a regular dose of entirely novel insights and ideas and a show for which there is no substitute.

Intellectual ahas are just the start, however.

By recognizing particular aspects of a guest’s story and connecting them to larger, universal themes, the host is able to form an emotional bridge between the guest and the listener.

This makes for episodes that are not only interesting and engaging but highly resonant as well.

The basis for this ability?

A particular distribution of knowledge common among great interviewers, hosts, and creators.

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6. Great Interviewers Have T-Shaped Knowledge

While great podcast interviewers are often legitimate experts in a small number of fields, they supplement that expertise with a high level of competence in many more (which are often entirely unrelated).

This combination of breadth and depth of knowledge allows them to ask intelligent questions on a variety of topics and connect disparate ideas back to the core topic of the show.

What’s more, knowledge is an enabler of curiosity and a refiner of intuition.

Which means hosts with T-shaped knowledge distributions tend to find their way into the more interesting, less explored nooks and crannies of a topic than their counterparts with only deep or wide knowledge.

Great interviewers tend to accrue this knowledge through obsessive consumption of vast amounts of information across a wide variety of topics, generally following their own personal curiosities, hunches, and fascinations.

This level of consumption is a trait that doesn’t get talked about enough but is the backbone of most great interviewers, and by extension, interviews.

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What Else Makes For Great Interviews (and the People Behind Them)?

Thanks so much to everyone who's already contributed thoughts, ideas, personal reflections, and resources for this series.

I'll be including all of these in a wrap up issue to close out the series as well as in the finished guide.

If you haven't already contributed, hit reply and let me know:

• Who is one of your favourite interviewers and what do they do better than others?
• What’s a common trait you see among great interviewers?
• What's a bad trait or habit on the part of an interviewer that reduces the quality of an interview?
• What makes for a great interview episode from a listener perspective?
• What makes for a bad interview?

Be sure to include the name of your show so I can give you a backlink :)

Stay Scrappy, If you're looking for an honest, no-punches-pulled assessment of why your show isn't growing and/or converting clients & customers, followed by a personalized step-by-step gameplan for your show, I have 2 spots left before my wedding break this summer. On these audits, I spend 10-15 hours studying every aspect of your show and then put together a 1.5–2-hour video report of the precise issues that are stifling your growth. Following the audit, we meet up to discuss the findings and next steps, then I build you a hyper-actionable growth plan showing you exactly what to do to get moving in the right direction. There's currently a 6-week waitlist to get started, but if you're curious about grabbing one of the last couple spots, reply to this email with "Interested!" and I'll send you all the info. How to nail your podcast guest pitch emails.

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