Capacity development in evaluation and communication: Prompts for facilitators

Through this primer, the authors tell the story of how their mentoring in evaluation and communication with selected groups across Latin America, Asia, and Africa unfolded over a four-year time frame (2018-2021).

This resource and the following information were contributed by Ricardo Ramirez.

Authors and their affiliation

Ricardo Ramírez, Dal Brodhead & Wendy Quarry, DECI Project

Key features

This guide is primarily meant for facilitators of capacity development and organizational learning. This includes professionals from various fields including evaluation, communication, organisational learning, adaptive management, and multi-stakeholder planning.  Those with a background in evaluation will find it most relevant. Through this primer, we are telling the story of how our mentoring in evaluation and communication with selected groups across Latin America, Asia, and Africa unfolded over a four-year time frame (2018-2021).

We acknowledge the support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa) which has funded and promoted the DECI projects since 2009.

How have you used or intend to use this resource?

We often refer this guide to other facilitators of organizational learning. The primer elaborates on our mentoring approach as a capacity development and decision-making framework. We highlight with examples, the ‘how’, the value of teamwork, the benefits of ‘just-in-time’ mentoring, and the notion of practical wisdom.

Why would you recommend it to other people?

This primer is very practical; it provides 12 prompts for facilitators:

• Work in pairs to bring two sets of ears and two voices to the table (listening and telling)
• Spend time with organization to assess organization’s ‘readiness’ to take on this mentoring
• Be prepared to wait if the ‘readiness’ factor is not present, i.e. make sure you have another job so you won’t starve while you wait
• Do your best to start where people are “at” - where possible let them determine what they want to start with and where they want to go with it
• Move at the mentees pace - from time to time this may require a ‘nudge’ but not a push
• Listen hard - try to have the mentee ask the questions - move the dialogue and talk about what they want to learn
• Be patient - and wait until the next move presents itself (rather than push the agenda)
• Be prepared to ‘push the agenda’ sometimes if things appear to be stalled
• There are times when the mentor needs to ask some questions and try to elicit stories from the mentee that will reveal their thinking
• Have a goal in mind but make it flexible
• Gauge when the time might be right to suggest that the mentor show an example from another client such that the example might illustrate the issue better than conversation
• Know your stuff yourself but not be rigid - be prepared to learn from the mentee and accept that your knowledge of the subject may require new thinking