“Interviewing is a grossly underestimated skill. If you are not collecting rich stories in your interviews, it’s gonna be really hard to identify opportunities,” says Teresa Torres, Product Discovery Coach, whose clients include Spotify, CapitalOne, and Snagajob. According to Teresa, most product teams ask users direct questions out of context: “Do you like watching Netflix? How do you decide what to watch there?” and get superficial answers. It’s more helpful to ask open-ended questions, such as: “Tell us about the last time you watched a movie?” This allows you to hear details, insights and pains of the user, and most importantly, needs that they didn’t even realize they had.
When I studied the Focusing psychotherapy practice, mastering the six basic steps was easy. The harder part was not asking the client pattern questions or repeating the answers like a parrot, but rather seeing the unique personality and understanding the context from which the speech emerges. Therapy was successful when a “shift” occurred within the client. This was only possible when the person expressed exactly how he (or she) bodily felt his problem and was really heard by me. For this I needed openness, that is, the rejection of all preconceptions, categories, and forms. Otherwise, either the “thusness” of person-in-context did not reveal itself, or it passed through my fingers like sand.
No matter what we are talking about - SaaS-product discovery or psychotherapy. Valuable opportunities and breakthrough solutions reveal themselves only through the experience of a living person, but the questioner himself needs to “come alive” to get a real answer.
Yours sincerely,
-Alexander
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”Who are you and what do you do?"
As a business therapist, I help tech founders quickly solve dilemmas at the intersection of business and personality, and boost company value as a result.
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