Three Things Evaluators Can Learn from Psychologists
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Different professions have unique strengths and skills! Recognizing these provides us as evaluators with a great opportunity to learn from other professions to enhance our own work.
February is National Psychology Month here in Canada, and in honour of our counselling, clinical, and educational psychologist friends, I explored what we as evaluators can learn from psychologists to improve our practice! While evaluation and psychology practices are different in many ways, they also share quite a few similarities. For instance, both professions often involve working with people, using evidence to support our work, using tools like interviews and questionnaires, writing reports, and continuing professional development.
By looking closer at some of the skills that are essential to psychology practice, we can borrow some ideas to grow our own skills as evaluators. Using this lens can help us discover new strategies to try or remind us to be more intentional about things we may already be doing without thinking!
In this article, I’ll share three top tips we can learn from psychology practice to support our work as evaluators.
Communication and active listening
The first tip is about communication. Psychologists spend much of their time communicating with clients, families, and other professionals. To make these interactions go smoothly, psychologists learn how to communicate effectively. For example, they often practice active listening in their interactions.
Active listening is a communication strategy that goes beyond simply hearing someone’s words. It involves showing understanding through both verbal and non-verbal cues. To practice active listening, psychologists might use techniques like the following:
Attending (being present, showing interest by nodding or saying, “I see,” for example)
Paraphrasing (restating what they hear in other words to show understanding)
Reflecting (expressing an understanding of the other person’s feelings)
Silence (encouraging the other person to continue or providing an opportunity for reflection)
Psychologists also pay attention to their own communication styles and might choose to adapt how they speak or interact to match a client’s style. For example, with a client who uses plenty of jokes and avoids eye contact, a psychologist might also intentionally incorporate some humour and limit their eye contact too. This helps the client feel more comfortable and builds the relationship between two people.
What can evaluators learn?
Evaluators also spend a great deal of time communicating in our work! Whether it’s conversations with coworkers, clients, project staff, or collecting data from interviewees, evaluators rely on the information we gain from our interactions. We can practice active listening to make sure we understand what someone is sharing by listening carefully, asking clarifying questions, and allowing silences. Active listening also supports relationship-building by letting others feel heard and seen in conversations.
To make our communication as effective as possible, we can also tune in to the other person's communication style by noticing their body language, volume, tone of voice, use of humour and metaphors, or the specific terminology they use (for example, “partner” vs. “spouse” or “patient” vs. “client"). We can then consider mirroring certain elements to create shared understandings, such as by matching their volume or referring to a metaphor they used.
2. Interdisciplinary and collaborative work
Most psychologists don’t work in isolation. Psychologists who work in agencies or healthcare settings often need to collaborate with other professionals, like social workers, nurses, or housing workers to support their clients. Psychologists in private practices may consult with other psychologists on their cases to seek advice and discuss strategies.
Collaboration and working with professionals from other disciplines can be valuable for psychologists. It can help them understand a client’s experiences (e.g., dealing with a chronic illness or navigating the legal system) and offers them diverse perspectives to inform their approach. Psychologists can also discover new resources or learn new skills and techniques to incorporate into their work.
What can evaluators learn?
Collaboration can benefit evaluation practice too! Whether it’s with other evaluators or people from other disciplines, collaboration provides a great opportunity to problem-solve, learn new ideas, and build relationships. Asking someone to help you talk through an issue (I like the phrase “being a soundboard”) and paying attention to what others share about their work are two easy ways to start regularly incorporating collaboration into your work.
Even people who are the only evaluators on their team can incorporate this tip! Get involved in professional organizations like your local Canadian Evaluation Society chapter or check out interdisciplinary advocacy or learning events in your area. You can also stay connected to past fellow students or colleagues on a site like LinkedIn to expose yourself to new developments in other fields.
It can also be useful to seek out learnings in casual interdisciplinary interactions. Any interaction with someone from another field or background, such as a project manager, an academic researcher, a nurse, or the Executive Director of a non-profit, can be a built-in interdisciplinary learning opportunity! Here are a few simple ways to make the most of these opportunities.
Reflect on any differences in how they approach their work compared to how you approach yours. Could any of these differences potentially be beneficial to your work?
Pay attention to the kinds of tools they use in their work, such as tools for collaboration, decision-making, or productivity. Could any of them be useful for you?
Ask questions when you feel curious or when you don’t understand something.
Think about how they do training and professional development in their role. Are there any resources you could learn from too?
3. Documentation
Psychologists need to document everything! From intake forms to case notes to communication logs to insurance documents, psychology practice requires strong procedures for documentation while protecting client confidentiality and privacy. Because they have so many records, many of which contain confidential information, psychologists typically follow clear processes for creating, sorting, keeping, and destroying documents. They often schedule blocks during the week to create case notes or update other files, for instance, and they adhere to record-retention procedures set by their professional organizations.
What can evaluators learn?
While evaluators may not use the exact same kinds of documents as psychologists, it is still important to be intentional about the ways in which we create, organize, and retain documents.
It’s a good idea to create a strong digital file organization system to help keep track of project documents, notes, and deliverables. Here at Three Hive & Eval Academy, we use a standard folder setup for each project (such as folders for Planning, Data, and Reporting) so everyone knows where to find a document. The organization system you use is up to you—create whatever categories make the most sense for your work—but just make sure you have a system! It’s also important to have clear record-retention and destruction policies and ensure everyone on your team is aware of them.
Evaluators can also take inspiration from the communication logs that psychologists might use to keep thorough records of any communication you have during a project. It’s helpful to schedule regular time to track these communications to avoid losing anything essential, make it easy to refer back to previous interactions, and create transparency in case you need to demonstrate what has been carried out. You could track emails with clients, survey invitations, meetings, phone or face-to-face interviews, or documents shared with you—and that’s just a start! What types of communication do you think could be helpful to track in your work?