Jim Capraro's One-on-one Engagement Interviews

The steps to follow in one-on-one engagement interviews in the comprehensive community development process.

(1)  Identify interviewees.  Create a list of community leaders to be interviewed, including resident leaders and leaders who are heads of agencies, institutions and organizations. Find leaders who aren't known by the steering committee. Find leaders from as many constituencies of the community as possible.

(2)  Create a script for the interviewers.  Keep it simple. Not a dialogue, not a conversation. A good method is to ask about the neighborhood's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.

(3)  Determine how the findings of the one-on-ones will be reported back. This is done through a neighborhood meeting. Also includes a written report.

(4)  Determine how the responses of the leaders will be recorded during the interviews and how they will be clustered in the report.

(5) Recruit and train interviewers.  Emphasize the main job is to listen. Silence is your friend. Make notes of what the leader says. Tell the leader about the report-back meeting and report.

(6)  Harvest the names of other leaders during the one-to-ones. Interview those leaders.

Creat your own one-on-one engagement interview script (for a community listening campaign) with this template.