IAM2299 – Director Trains Organizations and Individuals on Rapport-Based Interviewing

Mark Anderson is a retired special agent and former instructor at the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Academy. He is an expert in interviewing and investigative techniques.

Mark is the Director of Training and Development at Anderson Investigative Associates. He has worked with the FBI, NRC, and the New York State Office of the Inspector General.

Mark Anderson shares his extensive background in interviewing and training, emphasizing the significance of listening skills in communication and relationships.

Mark discusses updating his curriculum with the latest interviewing research and explains his process for identifying client needs in interview training.

Mark shares his habit of reviewing current research to stay effective in training and offers advice on understanding others and focusing on people over the business.

He highlights the importance of caring for the people who matter most and staying safe in professional and personal life.

Website: Anderson Investigate Associates

LinkedIn: Mark A. Anderson

Previous Episode Link: iam255-investigator-develops-programs-to-address-effective-interviewing-and-investigations

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Transcription:

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Mark Anderson Teaser 00:00 

I don't go into this clients and provide the same training every time. I'm going to build it based on what their needs are.

And then I'm going to go back to them and say, do you see that return on investment? Did we hit the areas?

Are you seeing improvements in certain regard that are going to benefit you. So that's kind of how we deal with the clients that come into us.

Intro 00:22 

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview?

If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:50

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have an awesome guest back on the show today. I have Mark Anderson. Mark, excited to have you back on.

Mark Anderson 00:58 

Well, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. It's good to catch up again.

Gresham Harkless 01:03

Yes, absolutely. It's always great to catch up. And that's one of the things I'm most excited about the podcast is to get to have awesome guests back on the show.

And of course, before we jump into having that great conversation, I want to read a little bit more about Mark so you can hear about some of the awesome things he's been working on.

And Mark is the Director of Training and Development with Anderson Investigative Associates.

He is a career interviewer in the audit and investigation arena who believes interviewing is a skill at the foundation of our best and most complete work.

He's a retired special agent with the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, who served as a program manager and instructor at the Inspector General Criminal Investigator Academy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia.

He also serves as a special agent with, he had also served as a special agent with the FBI, NRC, and a Deputy Inspector General with the New York State Office of the Inspector General.

He now trains interviewees nationwide on scientifically research rapport based interviewing. And one of the exciting things is, like I mentioned, Mark was previously on the show episode number 255 of our I AM CEO Podcast, which was absolutely awesome.

One of the things that I remember is we talked a lot around not just how interviewing is really dedicated to law enforcement and things like that. It's actually used in all aspects.

So I say so often we forget about the human part of business and frankly about life to actually hear how that can be used in so many different ways is so powerful.

And I was actually reading one of his LinkedIn posts and he said that many people seek to improve their communication and interview skills.

They want to be better questions, questionnaires. They want to be better at presenting evidence.

They often ignore something equally important, listening, building good listening skills and you will improve your relationships, enjoy more success and improve your knowledge base.

So Mark, excited to have you back on the show, excited to do a lot more listening. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Mark Anderson 03:03

Absolutely. I'm excited about it.

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Gresham Harkless 03:05 

Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, that's rewind the clock. Hear a little bit more on what you've been working on. We'll let you get started with all the awesome work you're doing.

Mark Anderson 03:12

Okay. Well, first of all, Gresh, man, you talk about contemporary references. You just referenced a blog I just posted today. I mean, that's not even been out there for more than 8 hours.

So kudos to you for being on top of it, man. That's impressive. I was listening to it and I was saying, wait, what? I just did that one.

Listening is so important, and you obviously were listening enough to pick up on that and then and then recite it here.

And I actually listened well enough that I knew you were referring to that. So that's good stuff because listening is so important to what we do.

And you're absolutely right with what you just said about the fact that I may have come out of that interviewing and investigation and auditing background, but these communication skills are across the board.

And I'm not sure they don't have more applicability in the leadership realm and the management realm than they do in the interviewing realm.

So many things we make harder for ourselves because we don't ask good questions, we don't communicate well, and we don't listen real well.

So kudos for you on catching that one. What are we doing? We're still doing more or less the same thing, but there's been a lot of changes in the research and the science with regard to interviewing.

So I just started a huge push to rework a lot of my curriculum so that I've got the most recent techniques and gotten rid of things that there isn't scientific proof for.

There's stuff that we can change all the time in order to become more effective at the way we communicate.

So we've been focusing on that. We've been doing a little bit more leadership training and training of human resources people with regard to the whole issue of interviewing people that we're bringing on board.

I mean, there's some statistics that say that 70% of resumes that are submitted for jobs have material fault statements in them.

And man, we want to know about that before we hired a person. So how do we know about that?

We ask better questions when we're interviewing them. So we've been spending a lot of time working in that area of interviewing research in order to be up to speed so that we can serve our clients better.

Gresham Harkless 05:37

Nice. So I know you touched a little bit upon like how you work with your clients. I want to drill down a little bit more if you could take us through a little bit more on like what that looks like and how you're serving and working with the clients that you have.

Mark Anderson 05:48

A lot of times, and this goes back to the statement you just made before, so I'll play off of that.

There's an awful lot of people with regard to this issue of communication that say, well, you've been talking your whole life.

There's no reason you can't sit down in a room and ask some questions. I mean, we can all talk, you know, so they want us to get training on this electronics or that electronics, but we don't need training on interacting with people, you know.

So, I mean, I spent most of my career in the field with very minimal training on how to do interviews.

So I learned by screwing up a lot and then deciding not to do that same thing again. We still see that same thing within management and leadership, an awful lot of times with regard to these communication skills.

Anybody can do it. A lot of times what happens with my customers is that a client will call me and say, hey, look, we need some interview training.

And so it becomes an extensive process that they might not sign up for. I ask them why you need interview training.

I ask them what they're seeing that tells them that they need interview training. I want to drill down and find out where they're seeing weaknesses in their system in order to get rid of those weaknesses.

Now they'll have other things to deal with, but I'm going to build the program based on what they tell me in that regard.

And a lot of times they don't know exactly where it's located. So I ask a lot of questions that would help me to focus in on what they need and how to optimize that which we deliver.

Because I mean, I've got enough curriculum to probably teach a couple of weeks of full time of training and nobody has the time for that.

So it's like, how do we build this in a way that maximizes your return on investment? If you see that return on investment, then maybe next year you'll give me a call again and say, hey, let's do a little bit more of this stuff.

But the key with the way I do business with them, especially people that are up to speed and have been into business for a while, is I build that program based on what they need.

Now I might throw in a couple things they didn't think they needed, but are contemporaneous and scientifically validated that's going to benefit them in the long run.

But I'm going to build that. I don't have any off the shelf training. I don't go into this clients and provide the same training every time. I'm gonna build it based on what their needs are.

And then I'm gonna go back to them and say, do you see that return on investment? Did we hit the areas?

Are you seeing improvements in certain regard that are gonna benefit you? So that's kinda how we deal with the clients that come into us.

Gresham Harkless 08:34 

Nice. I almost wonder if that is maybe part of what I like to call your secret sauce. It could be for yourself, the business, or a combination of both. But I feel like you have that ability.

Again, I'll go back to seeing the forest for the trees. But I also feel like I'm going to use this kind of analogy of conversation almost being like being on the dance floor, so to speak.

Mark Anderson 08:52

I think so. It's probably too, because you look at me, you realize I have a little bit of age on me.

I've been around for a while, gotten run over enough, had enough bad experience in life. You look at situations differently than you did in the past, certain amount of that is experience of, I've worked in a lot of different areas, so I've been exposed to a lot of different people.

But I think it does come down an awful lot to the issue you just hit upon is we don't go out in the dance floor and do the same dance step every time. The steps that we're gonna do depends on the person that we're on the dance floor with.

So that empathy and ensuring understanding of the people that we're with becomes so relevant to fashioning a solution for them in moving forward.

Gresham Harkless 09:44 

Yeah, And that's such a huge thing. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack.

So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have, but what's something that you lean on that makes you more effective and efficient?

Mark Anderson 09:58

Probably what I lean on most is I don't wanna ever think that I've got a corner on the market of what needs to be provided.

So I spend a lot of time reviewing research and scientific studies and other people's work in this regard to make sure that number one, everything I have is current.

Everything I have is research and scientifically based and everything I have, I can communicate in a way that it is practical and useful.

So I want to be paying attention to other people in that regard. I want to be paying attention to the research that's currently going on.

And I want to continue to challenge my view of these things. I think some of that stuff, I was probably much more sure about 40 years ago than I am now.

I'm probably sure about it out of my own ignorance more than anything else. So I want to challenge myself on those issues all the time.

And I have people around me that I ask to challenge me along the way. If there's somebody in the class, I do some training for the Association of Inspector Generals.

I do it a couple times a year, and people sit in that class that have heard me before, people that know me, and I expect them to challenge me if I say something that's not clear, something that isn't scientifically based, something that could cause confusion.

And I need to be willing to hear that and respond effectively to that too, which means what do I have to do again? I have to listen to it, even if it doesn't make me feel good.

So I would say that's probably the key to this from my standpoint in order to stay relevant and stay useful and practical to the people that do business with me.

Gresham Harkless 11:46

Yeah, that ends up being such a huge thing. So what would you consider to be a little bit more CEO nugget?

So this could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell your favorite client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Mark Anderson 12:01

I think that we have to be very understanding of where other people are at. I think we have to be very understanding of where we're at.

I think that we get so caught up in the role, the title maybe it is that arrogant or pride thing of being the business owner.

And we lose sight of those around us. And what's going on around us can change us remarkably for the rest of our lives.

And we need to be attuned to that. And I think that if we're attuned to that, then we're going to much better serve those that we have a responsibility for serving.

Because we're going to hear needs, wants, desires in those individuals' lives better if there isn't so much noise in our own lives, just directing us to be focused on the business, the business, the business, the business. Focus on the people.

And I think that that will make a huge difference in the long run and certainly give you, well, certainly gives me, I can't tell you what it would do you.

It certainly gives me more joy and more feelings of accomplishment than focusing on the business by itself.

Gresham Harkless 13:17

Yeah. So I want to ask you now one of my absolute favorite questions with the definition of what it means to be a CEO or goes to have different quote unquote CEOs on the show. So Mark, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Mark Anderson 13:28

What it means to me is having a unique opportunity to serve individuals that are out there in a community, serve them with materials and training and interactions to hopefully improve the quality of their lives.

Both from a work standpoint and from a personal standpoint, not only professional, but a personal standpoint with regard to how they communicate with others.

And if I can make a difference in that in people's lives, that's going to improve their interactions at work.

With coworkers, that's going to improve their interaction with suspects. If it happens to be an investigator, it's going to improve their interactions with their spouses and their children.

Because we're talking about being able to communicate more effectively and getting rid of stuff that are obstacles to that communication.

So to me, having the opportunity to serve in that regard is probably the most valuable aspect of being a CEO.

But I think that's because I'm older and I'm not focused on maybe some of the things from a business perspective.

But to me, that's what the difference is. That's what brings me joy and that's what I hope brings people more contentment and success in their lives. And if I'm doing that, then I think I'm being very successful.

Gresham Harkless 14:57

Well, Mark, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more.

So what I wanted to do now was pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know.

And of course, how best people can get out of view, find out about all the awesome things that you're working on.

Mark Anderson 15:12 

You can reach me on my website. If you enter information in there, it'll come directly to my email.

So that's www.andersoninvestigative.com. Connect with me on Facebook or on LinkedIn, either on my personal side of it or the business side of it.

If there's something I can provide for you, if there's something that you need help on in a certain area of this communication or interviewing, just drop me a line. I will be glad to share with you whatever I have that would be beneficial to you.

And I'm always here if you are working for a company or working in an organization, you're having some difficulties with communication or interviewing, reach out.

We'll see if we can come to find something that would be beneficial or I'll find you somebody that will come up with something that will be beneficial.

So that would be my last words for today. Be safe out there and take care of those that mean a lot to you.

Gresham Harkless 16:08</strong

I appreciate you so much again, Mark. And of course, we're going to have the links and information in the show notes as well too.

So that everybody can find out those blogs, the website and of course all the awesome things you've been posting as well on LinkedIn. Of course, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:21 

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CB Nation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase it's a community want to level up your business even more read blogs listen to podcasts and watch videos at CBNation.co.

Also check out our I am CEO Facebook group this has been the I am CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening

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