I am the "new guy" at my job right now. I'm the one that people know the least about (I'm not weirdly silent, or anything, I just don't frequently behave in the usual "here is my disarming response to your obvious insecurities...I can relate, also here is a funny joke" way, just yet). There are contextual reasons for this (My cube is isolated and I have a LOT of work to do...I stress "a LOT of work to do"). Anyway, as much as this relative, momentary isolation is stressful, it is also preserving my outsider's eye. It is forcing me to be a "truer" researcher, like in the Jane Goodall sense ("I am watching you, and watching me. AND I'm watching you, watching me, watching you, and I would like honest feedback about you feeling me watching you, and you watching me, watching you, etc."). I am noticing social platitudes more acutely: who wants to be liked, who gets their work done, what the actual structure is, what methods people use to get what they want (or "get their needs met," which, in this scenario, is really the same thing as "get what you want," but less sociopath-y sounding), etc.
Essentially: all of the things I will need to notice in the future when I assess the "climate" of the organization (part of my job), will be partially lost and biased once I am fully integrated into the social milieu. My ability to blindly assess programmatic details in global terms will ultimately be marred by "feeling some kinds of ways" about meaningless details and daily minutiae.
Inherent in the process of engagement is the concept of transparency. In other words, people are more likely to give you honest answers to questions when they feel: comfortable or "safe," that they aren't being judged, and feel that they "know" who is asking the questions. People tend to report feeling "comfortable" when they sense that they are not being judged or scrutinized. A really quick and easy way to prove that you "aren't judging," is by offering what they (the people you need data from) perceive to be equally or similar information about yourself, function, role or purpose. In other words, people feel more comfortable telling me, a stranger, intimate details of their life when I say things such as:
"seriously though, this is just a form, it goes into a HUGE database, we don't even know whose answers are whose. It's all coded, like instead of your name, there's like, random letters and numbers and stuff. I mean, I have a problem remembering names of people in my regular life, I'm definitely not like, watching and remembering the little boxes you check on this form."
Have I said these words before? Yes, I have. This has always put respondents at ease (always). Are the words that I say to respondents true? No, they are not necessarily entirely true, but I get the point across in language I wouldn't normally use (I try to sound a little less intelligent than the respondent. I play dumb. I ask questions under the guise of pure naivete, which, technically it is, this curiosity isn't a guise at all). I'm almost speaking a foreign language in order to get a more robust and thorough response. I have to hide myself for the sake of accurate reporting.
Yes, all identifying information is coded, and kept under lock and key. Yes there IS a HUGE database, and no, I don't really care about what boxes respondents check. However, I will remember their name, and I will certainly remember if respondents behave in markedly different ways in response to certain questions. Do I attribute responses given to personal character flaws? No, usually, I do not.
People also respond really well to free food. "Here is a bagel, fill this thing out." Just sayin'
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