Champions Fax Archive

Church Champions, like other consultants, need good interview skills to conduct effective church consultations. Tom Peters in his book, The Pursuit of Wow! Every Person’s Guide to Topsy Turvy Times, has a great list. Let’s apply them for Champions.

• "Don’t overschedule." It is not the number of people that you talk to in the church or organization. It’s talking to the right people and giving enough time to discover what they actually do know.
• "Find a comfy setting." Find a place where you won’t be distracted by phones, passers-by and other intrusions. Make it a venue where you can focus on the interview.
• Make them comfortable. Open with some small talk about them before getting down to the issues.
• "Prepare." Before you get to the church, you want to know as much as you can. You don’t want pre-conceptions but you want to at least have a rough map of the situation so you can know what some of the presenting issues are. Peters says to go with a list of at least three pages of questions, from the general to the specific. Use these as a guide and take-off point to other questions. Remember, those who you are interviewing are busy too.
• "Please give me an example." "These are the five most important words in an interviewer’s arsenal." We need examples as evidence and to help establish solution hypotheses. Ask for current examples of situations, not just what happened three years ago. If a behavior is recurring, it is standard operating procedure somewhere in the church. Remember to look for good and bad examples.
• "Think small." With key individuals, get down to the nitty gritty detail level. Have them describe an activity or process in detail. Have them sketch it out if they are visual.
• "Get to the front line." Details are on the front line. Don’t just listen to the children’s pastor tell you of problems in children’s ministry, talk to the front line volunteers and workers in that department. Measure your interview success by determining how many people on the front line you met with.
• "You’re being paid to ask stupid questions." Don’t assume you know. When things aren’t clear, don’t pretend they are. Misdiagnosis is often caused by misunderstanding of the problem to begin with. Each church has its own culture and you are anthropologically trying to understand it. Let the natives tell you about it.
• "Forget generalizations." When someone makes one, ask for specifics. The conclusions that the interviewee draws could be important keys to understanding the solutions.
• "Take me through that event or this past Sunday." This will reveal true practices more than idealized days that we carry around in our heads.
• Follow up quickly. "Don’t let your notes age." "You should always ask the interviewee for a time when you can call them back tomorrow." Some of the best questions and some of the interviewee’s best thoughts come after they have time to reflect.

For more of Tom's techniques, without my applications for Champions, see The Pursuit of Wow, Vintage Books. 1994.