A strategic plan can tell you what an organization intends to do. A program manual can tell you how a process is supposed to work. Neither necessarily tells you how an experienced leader makes a difficult decision, builds trust with staff, or recognizes that an established model no longer fits the people it serves.
That is why a strong research plan cannot stop at reading. If you are trying to lead a ministry, improve a program, or build something new, much of the knowledge you need lives with people who are already doing the work. An interpersonal research plan gives you a deliberate way to find those people, learn from them, and turn what you learn into action.
Key Takeaways
- Interpersonal research reveals practical leadership knowledge that documents alone cannot fully capture.
- A community of practice is one component of a broader plan for learning from people and organizations.
- Choose model organizations based on the specific change you want to make.
- Prepare thoroughly for interviews and develop deeper relationships with the experts most relevant to your work.
Table of Contents
- Research the Knowledge That Is Hard to Write Down
- A Community of Practice Is Part of the Plan, Not the Whole Plan
- Match Your Network to the Change You Need
- Start by Mapping Where the Expertise Lives
- Find Model Organizations Before You Request Interviews
- Prepare for Every Conversation as If It Were Expensive
- Turn Individual Interviews Into a Community of Practice
- Keep Research Connected to Action
Research the Knowledge That Is Hard to Write Down
Research often begins with explicit knowledge: journal articles, books, reports, strategic plans, and other documents. Those sources matter. They help you learn the vocabulary of a field and avoid asking someone to explain what you could have discovered yourself.
Leadership also depends on implicit and tacit knowledge. This includes the practical understanding people develop through experience: how they adapt a model, why they make a judgment call, and what they notice before a problem becomes obvious. If your goal is to become an executive director, for example, reading about leadership will not replace learning how experienced executives actually lead.
In a Christian ministry, the question is not only how a practice works but why it belongs in the organization. You may want to change your organization, and thoughtful critique can help. But first understand its values, history, and reasons for doing things as it does. If you hope to lead it, you need more than a list of its shortcomings. You need to know what is worth carrying forward.
This also shapes whom you approach. For questions closely tied to mission and values, seek out people and organizations whose commitments align with yours. For a specialized technique, a secular practitioner may be the most accessible or experienced person to learn from. You can learn the technique while still evaluating its use through your Christian commitments.
A Community of Practice Is Part of the Plan, Not the Whole Plan
A community of practice brings together people who share a domain of interest, participate in a community, and develop practical expertise through their work. A group focused on Christian aftercare programs might exchange program models, discuss recurring challenges, and learn from what members have tried. You might belong to a separate community for fundraising.
That kind of peer learning is valuable, but an interpersonal research plan is broader. Depending on your goal, it may include:
- Model organizations and the documents they are willing to share.
- Interviews with experienced leaders and peers.
- Mentors, consultants, executive coaches, or board members.
- Associations, conferences, workshops, and programmatic networks.
- One or more communities of practice.
- A community of inquiry within a course, where peers share research and challenge one another’s thinking.
The point is not to collect contacts for their own sake. Each relationship should help answer a question or build a capability. A mentor who has made the move from program director to CEO may be more useful for that transition than a large conference. A program network may be the better place to compare recovery models across organizations.
Peer learning can begin close to home. Read classmates’ projects, share useful resources, and connect with people working on similar questions. Sharing research is not the same as copying someone else’s paper. It is one of the ways people improve their work in the real world.
Match Your Network to the Change You Need
Before making a list of experts, ask what kind of change you are pursuing. Are you improving an existing model, or do you need to reconsider the model itself?
Incremental innovation might mean strengthening fundraising, staffing culture, social enterprise operations, or an established program. Peer organizations and association conferences are good places to look for practices you can adapt. If your organization is healthy and your goal is to grow its capacity, you may not need to reinvent it.
More radical innovation calls for a different search. A ministry serving a substantially different population than it served years ago may need new programs and new ways of relating to its community. A shift from individual staff members raising their own support to centralized fundraising changes more than a procedure. Adapting ministry to a post-Christian context may also require learning from early adopters outside your usual circle.
This distinction is related to single loop and double loop learning. Single loop learning asks how to improve what you are already doing. Double loop learning asks whether the assumptions behind the work need to change. Your research plan should reflect how much of each kind of learning you need.
Look for organizations that have already made the shift you are considering. The best models for a new fundraising structure may not be the same organizations that have adapted well to demographic change. Build the right peer group for each question rather than expecting one network to answer everything.
Start by Mapping Where the Expertise Lives
Choose a specific domain, such as Christian aftercare programs, teaching kitchens, major gifts fundraising, or the transition from program director to executive director. Then make a rough estimate of where the useful knowledge resides. How much is in peer-reviewed research? Books and online sources? Organizational documents? Conversations with practitioners?
That estimate should affect how you spend your time. If you believe half of the expertise you need is interpersonal, it makes little sense to devote almost all your effort to reading. This is not an argument against academic research. It is an argument for aligning your effort with the knowledge your project requires.
I have seen this difference firsthand. I co-presented a workshop on aftercare programs with Chris Hedland of Hope Gospel Mission. I brought extensive research on the topic. Chris brought about 20 years of lived experience developing and running an aftercare model. Most of the questions went to him. That was exactly why I wanted him there: people needed the judgment that comes from doing the work.
The same principle applies when selecting interviewees. In a field where practical experience is central, the quality of your research depends in part on the quality and relevance of the people you learn from. Do not choose five organizations simply because they are easy to contact. Find out which ones have developed strong models in the particular area you are studying.
Find Model Organizations Before You Request Interviews
A useful search moves from a broad field to a short list of organizations and then to the people within them. AI deep research can help with the early stages, but its purpose is to guide your investigation, not finish it for you.
- Define the field. Identify your domain and the kinds of organizations that belong in it. If a peer list would be useful throughout your project, build one with organization names and websites.
- Scope the field broadly. Research a substantial list of relevant organizations, or search by a clearly defined category if you do not already have a list.
- Narrow to promising models. Identify roughly five to 15 organizations whose work appears especially relevant to your question.
- Research those organizations more deeply. Compare their approaches, look for recurring themes, and find available plans, program descriptions, or other documents.
- Contact the people behind the work. Use what you found to prepare specific questions for leaders and practitioners.
For example, I used a large list of rescue missions to research food services, teaching kitchens, and social enterprises. The broad search helped identify a smaller set of organizations for a deeper comparison. From there, the next step is not simply to accept a report as the answer. It is to examine the organizations and speak with people who can explain how their models work.
Make your research request specific. Describe your role, your organization, the peer group you want to study, and the topic you care about. Asking for best practices in vocational training among named rescue missions is more useful than asking for the best nonprofit programs anywhere. If AI helps you identify candidates, check that they are real, relevant, and appropriate before you reach out.
Prepare for Every Conversation as If It Were Expensive
An expert may give you an hour for free. Treat that hour as if you were paying several hundred dollars for it. Read what is publicly available first. Review the organization’s model and documents. Then prepare questions that cannot be answered by a quick search.
John Maxwell’s early approach to learning from leaders is a helpful model: he sought out people he wanted to learn from, offered to pay for their time, and came prepared. The preparation is what makes a short conversation valuable for both people.
You do not always need a long meeting. A half-hour request may be more realistic for a busy leader. During the conversation, ask how their model developed, what has been difficult to implement, and what they would do differently. Before you finish, ask who else you should speak with. That question can lead you toward expertise you did not know to search for.
Think of your relationships in two layers. Aim to develop 20 or more loose relationships that expose you to different models and emerging ideas. From those conversations, identify perhaps two to five deeper relationships with mentors, consultants, board members, or other leaders who can work through questions with you over time.
That is how I learned to design master’s and doctoral programs. I read what I could first, then returned to an experienced leader when I needed help understanding how the work actually functioned or how to handle a problem. I have taken a similar approach to partnership strategy, financial aid, legal questions, HR, and accounting. What got you to your current role may not give you all the expertise required for the next one.
Turn Individual Interviews Into a Community of Practice
Across a doctoral program, consider conducting 25 to 50 interviews related to your project and the capabilities you want to develop. You do not need to begin by announcing a formal network. Start with good questions, useful conversations, and introductions to other people in the field.
As common interests emerge, you can invite a smaller group to learn together. Make the commitment clear. An invitation to “join a community of practice” can sound like an indefinite series of meetings. An invitation to one Zoom conversation with peers working on the same challenge is easier to understand and may be immediately valuable.
Choose a natural boundary for the group. It might bring together chief program officers in similar ministries, Christian counselors developing private practices, or leaders experimenting with a particular program model. Give the meeting an agenda and questions that allow everyone to contribute. Share documents or findings that add value rather than asking people only to give you information.
When someone shares a document, clarify the permission attached to it. Is it for your use only? May it circulate privately among group members? Can you refer to it in a public doctoral project? A public strategic plan is different from an internal fundraising plan. Respecting those distinctions is part of building a network people trust.
Keep Research Connected to Action
An interpersonal research plan is not a contact list you complete once. Revise it as you learn. A conversation may reveal that your original question was too narrow, that a different organization has a better model, or that the change you want requires a different kind of expertise.
Keep other people involved through the full action research cycle. Discuss your initial plan and assumptions with them. Ask for input while you build and act. Learn from their observations as you measure what happens. Return to the group as you reflect and decide what to change next. Sometimes a short set of slides is enough to get useful feedback; you do not need to send someone a dissertation to start a conversation.
The opportunity is bigger than completing one project. You can use your research to meet the people already doing what you aspire to do, contribute something useful to their work, and build relationships that continue after the project ends. Do your homework, seek out strong models, and keep asking what you can learn from the people behind them.