Promising Approaches, Tools and Resources For Evaluating Collective Leadership

1. Developmental Evaluation (DE)

Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman, and Michael Quinn Patton. Getting to Maybe. How the World is Changed. Random House Canada. 2006.

This book describes developmental evaluation as follows:

• DE asks the right evaluation questions at the right time and asks them in a way that energizes rather than stifles social innovation.

• DE integrates creativity and critical thinking.

• DE involves long-term, partnering relationships between evaluators and those engaged in innovative initiatives and development.

• DE offers a process for periodic reflection – systematically looking back and seriously looking ahead – to gauge progress, harvest important lessons and rigorously examine what’s working and what’s not.

• DE supports standing still as a foundation for the next move.

• DE treats mistakes and unattained objectives as learning opportunities and chances to make corrections or to take a new path (not as failures).

• Developmental evaluators ask probing questions and track results to provide feedback and support adaptations along the emergent path.

• The developmental evaluator, even by observing, becomes part of the action and therefore part of the intervention.

2. Utilization-Focused Evaluation

Michael Patton. Utilization-Focused Evaluation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 1997.

3. EvaluLEAD

The purpose of the EvaluLEAD methodology is to assist in the exploration and documentation of a leadership development program’s complex results. The methodology recognizes that, as an increasing number of graduates exit from any given leadership development program and begin to exercise their new learning and insights, there is a corresponding increase in the quantity, quality, variety, and duration of outputs, outcomes, and impacts whose emergence they may have helped influence.

John T. Grove, Barry M. Kibel, and Taylor Haas. EvaluLEAD:  A Guide for Shaping and Evaluating Leadership Development(download). January 2005.

4. Most Significant Change

This is a technique developed by Rick Davies for collecting significant change stories that emanate from the community or field, and the systematic selection of the most significant of these stories by designated stakeholders or staff. This process enables whole teams of people to begin to focus their attention on program impact.

Rick Davies and Jess Dart. The ‘Most Significant Change’ (MSC) Technique:  A Guide to its Use (download). April 2005.

5. Social Network Analysis

Peter Plastrik and Madeline Taylor. Net Gains:  A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change. (Version 1.0), 2006.

This resource has sections on “Taking the Network’s Pulse: Monitoring and Evaluation” and “Visualizing Networks: Maps that Reveal”

Madeline Church et al. Participation, Relationships and Dynamic Change:  New Thinking on Evaluating the Work of International Networks (download). 2002.

This resource includes a checklist of characteristics that networks tend to share and some potential questions to ask when evaluating networks. (pp. 36-27).

Bibliography on Leadership and Social Network Analysis prepared by Bruce Hoppe and Claire Reinelt

6. Learning Histories

“Learning Histories" are used in action research projects to enhance organizations' learning capabilities. The approach documents change as it facilitates individual and organizational reflection. George Roth with the Center for Organizational Learning is a leader in developing the learning history approach.

[http://www.solonline.org/res/wp/18004.html

|Learning Histories: Using documentation to assess and facilitate organizational learning.]

Sustaining Change by Learning from Collective Experience

7. Communities of Practice Rubric

Rebecca Gadja has developed a rubric for evaluating Communities of Practice.

http://udrive.oit.umass.edu/rgajda/aea2006/

Click on CopCAR EV with citation.pdf

8. Journey Mapping

Journey Mapping is an on-line platform developed by Barry Kibel for capturing the spirit as well as the data of programs and initiatives. It is particularly useful for programs that are aiming for developmental and transformative change in individuals, families, teams, organizations, and/or systems.

9. Critical Moments Reflection Process

This method was developed by the Center for Reflective Community Practice at MIT. Its purpose is to enable practitioners to investigate and document their own knowledge so that they can advance their own work on the ground, inform policy-making, and share with others working on similar causes. The process involves engaging participants in identifying inquiry questions to guide their reflection, setting the timeframe for the inquiry, naming critical events during the time period, and selecting critical moments that offer the most insight into the inquiry questions..

Ceasar McDowell et al. 2005. Building knowledge from the practice of local communities. Volume 1(3): 30-40 www.km4dev.org/journal

Joy Amulya. Summary of Critical Moments Reflection (download).

10. Photovoice: Social Change Through Photography

Photovoice has 3 main goals: (1) to enable people to record and reflect their community's strengths and concerns; (2) to promote critical dialogue and knowledge about personal and community issues through large and small group discussions of photographs; and (3) to reach policy makers.

11. Kellogg Leadership for Community Change Framework

This framework defines a four-stage change implementation process:

• Build trust

• Co-construct purpose and strategic plan

• Act together

• Deepen, sustain and make the work a way of life

Outcomes for each stage are articulated for each of the following elements:

• Community as context: the power of place, culture and history

• Crossing boundaries: the power of shared relationship

• Giving one’s best: the power of developing one’s own gifts

• Making it happen: the power of change

Patricia Hughes. The Framework:  A Tool to Develop Collective Leadership for Community Change (download).

12. Systems Concepts in Evaluation: An Expert Anthology

This is an anthology by many of the leading thinkers and practitioners who are using systems concepts in evaluation. The book may be downloaded from the W.K. Kellogg website here