Concepts for interviewing

What's challenging me at the moment is pitching the interviews right. As I wait for official confirmation from the R&D departments of the organisations in which I am recruiting, I'm refining my interviewing technique by practising on colleagues and reflecting on what worked well and what didn't. I've tried a number of different ways of framing interview guides, topic guides and am moving towards the idea of a concept guide. Although the idea of phenomenological interviews is to allow the participant to lead the way through a conversation, it is probably also true that going into an interview situation naively could result in data that is less useful than if the researcher was able to steer the participant through the conversation in a way that would enrich the data. I'm thinking here of getting myself into a position where I am able to probe emotional states, emotional labour, identity talk, motivation, job satisfaction and so on. Without being conversant in aspects of these concepts that I suspect to be applicable to the mentor experience, I'm not sure whether I might miss opportunities to pick up on these in conversation.