The Six C’s of a Good Evaluator
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If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times - evaluation is a strange profession. For many of us, we stumble into it after doing research and taking an interest in it. I don’t know the stats but I would guess there are far more people who call themselves an evaluator and don’t have a degree in evaluation, than evaluators with a degree in evaluation. Even then, is having a degree sufficient enough to call yourself an evaluator? I have a degree in nursing, but trust me you wouldn’t want me taking care of your mom if she is in the hospital. So if education doesn’t make a good evaluator then what does? Here are the six six C’s that make a good evaluator:
1
Competent
Professional evaluation organizations like the Canadian Evaluation Society and the American Evaluation Association have spelled out a suite of competencies evaluators should have. In fact, the Canadian Evaluation Society has a credentialing program where evaluators can become a CE (Credentialed Evaluator). Having a CE means the person “has provided convincing evidence of the requisite skills, knowledge and practical experience identified by the CES as those necessary to be a competent evaluator”.
2
Credible
All evaluations are different and so are people’s practical experience with evaluation. Just because someone has experience conducting multiple short-term 10K evaluations, doesn’t mean they are qualified to take on a longer term, multi-country evaluation that has 50x the budget. Likewise, there are various methods, approaches and types of evaluations; a developmental evaluation will look a lot different than a summative evaluation. A credible evaluator is one with street cred - someone who has demonstrated experience conducting that specific type and scope of evaluation.
3
Curious
So they have the skills, knowledge and practical experience - what else? Curiosity is VERY important. Evaluators often act like three year olds. I’m not referring to the temper tantrums we can occasionally throw when people dislike our evaluation reports, but the ability and courage to ask that all important question - why? Why do you do that? Why do you think that will happen when you do that? Why are you collecting that? Why don’t you try this? Sometimes it is scary to ask why, especially if you are conducting an evaluation in a field that may be the evaluator’s subject matter expertise; this is when hiring an evaluator with different subject matter expertise could be beneficial. The evaluator without any subject matter expertise can be what creativity expert Duncan Wardle calls the “naive expert”.
4
Communicative
There are so many aspects to an evaluation that require those cliche “strong communication skills” so often referred to in job postings. But no really, strong communication skills are so critical to a good evaluation experience. Evaluators need to not only know the right questions to ask (getting back to the curiosity trait), but need to be able to phrase the question in a way that will illicit discussion. And then when people start talking a good evaluator needs to listen, listen some more, unpack complex information and then begin simplifying and compiling it in a way that people can actually understand and then use.
5
Creative
Let’s be honest most people aren’t super stoked about evaluation. (I know, how is that possible?). A lot of people have had bad evaluation experiences where they have been dragged through long boring meetings where a lot of evaluation jargon was thrown around, they were told what they needed to collect, they did it, gave the data to someone, and then either didn’t see what happened with that data, or they received a 100 page text heavy evaluation report and were left wondering “so what”? A good evaluator finds creative solutions throughout the evaluation process. Whether that is using: a) interactive facilitation techniques during evaluation planning meetings, or b) employing non-traditional data collection methods, or c) reporting in a visually appealing and narrative style, there are often many opportunities to get creative. I promise you if you do that people’s engagement level will sky-rocket and subsequently so will use of evaluation findings - and really isn’t that the end goal?
6
Common sense oriented
There are lots of decisions and possibilities when it comes to evaluations; a good evaluator will discuss with you what really makes sense to do in your evaluation. If you’ve been collecting data for years and no one has done anything with it then it probably makes sense to stop. If you need to make a decision in January and you’re not going to get your report with the information you need to make that decision until March, then it probably makes sense to move the report deadline prior to January. It’s like they say, “common sense is not so common”.
So there you have it, the six C’s to a good evaluator. When you find that evaluator remember to hold on to them and never let them go!