aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Matt Healey (First Person Consulting)

Typically, evaluators are seen and presented as all-knowing experts across a never-ending range of areas: quantitative, qualitative and mixed research methods, engagement approaches, cultural competencies, reporting tools and platforms. On top of this, is a need to understand the constant change within and across social, health and environmental arenas, exponential changes in technology and the implications for evaluation. In many ways, it is impossible for evaluators to know everything - even more so for evaluators at the earlier stages of their career.

During an emerging evaluators panel session at aes18, one of the key themes that emerged when emerging and early career evaluators discussed how to move out of the intermediate "fuzzy middle" towards becoming 'experts' was the need to be both comfortable in uncertainty and confident with themselves, their knowledge and their practice in evaluation. While the AES competency framework emphasises competence in a range of areas, the need to be confident (and develop confidence) is only implicit across domains, and only explicit in the context of building confidence in others, and in statistical methods!

This session will draw on practices and principles from the presenter's own experience in developing his confidence in the context of presenting, facilitating and dealing with large audiences. Through a mix of lightning talks, light-hearted hands-on activities and reflective small group discussions attendees will leave with tools and approaches immediately implementable during and post-conference. Ultimately, this highly interactive skill session will make explicit the unspoken (but crucial) soft skill of confidence.