An Elephant Leap

Wow! I did it!!!

Last Sunday I made a major leap to add to my professional portfolio. I moderated focus groups in a language that is not my own.

About 3 weeks ago, I received a contact from one of my long-term client. She informed that she was going to conduct a new-approach workshop. She had said then, casually, "I want you to help moderate the groups, Tari. This is a new-approach focus group. They won't be held in a traditional research facility, but we're thinking to have it in a wine and dining lounge type of place."

"Me? Are these groups going to be in English?"

"Yes, you. And no, the groups are going to be in Japanese, but you'll be fine."

"You know I can arrange a native speaker moderator to help you in the session..."

"No, I want YOU to help me. I have a bunch of brand people who are native Japanese speakers, but they don't know research 'do's and 'don't's, so I want you to lead them."

"Sure, I'd do it... I guess..."

She really has got a lot of faith in me. She really does.

I was so sure that anytime after we had this conversation, she'd call up and say, "Now that I think about it, maybe you're right, we should arrange for a native speaker moderator."

Well, that call never arrived.

Last Monday, I came back from my 9 days off to be thrown into a really long research project. Next thing I know it was already Friday when we had a meeting to finalize the discussion guide and logistics for the field day. Only then I realized that my client wanted me to do everything. Not as a help, but as a lead moderator for this focus group. With less than 48 hours to go before the research, it was apparent that making drastic changes (i.e. calling a replacement moderator) would not be a wise choice.
Sure I'm an experienced moderator, and sure I'm an experienced researcher - but I had never done it in Japanese. Besides it is my firm's policy to always put forward native speakers to be in charge of moderation. So I couldn't help but wonder... "What if I lost all of my Japanese capability as I'm going through the discussion? What if I had no clue what the respondents were saying? How would this affect my company's reputation? How would this affect the quality of the research?"

I had planned to run an extensive study on Saturday evening before the session, to make sure I get all of the buzz words right in Japanese. By Saturday noon, as I was wrapping up another research, I realized that I had no energy to do any additional study, and besides I doubt that learning everything a night before the 'exam' day would help at all. So I decided to sleep instead.

Come Sunday, I woke up much earlier than usual. I guess that was my nervous unconsciousness. I took a long shower, had my breakfast and finally made my way to Ebisu.
There I met up with one of my colleague who's helping out on the logistics and I drilled her with questions for 15 minutes. Basically I asked her all of my questions in Japanese and asked her whether I made sense or not. After a few tweaking, we headed to the classy restaurant.

11:30 the first session started.
I was surprised and comforted that I progressed through the discussion just as naturally as I did in English. Except that I clocked a 7 minutes overtime.

14:30 the second session started.
I did better with my timing. Everything finished right on time.

*PHEW*

It's finished. I was able to get all of the information that I was asked to gather. My client was happy, and the respondents had a good time. My client said that from the next workshops, she wants me to help her again.

Well, this may be something small to all moderators out there - but because it was in a territory that is completely virgin to me, this was a relatively big achievement. I felt like I won an award for having completed this with no glitch. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. I know I could do it and I finally did it.

Thank you, Ms. O, for your faith in me.