Facilitation Skills for Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Practitioners

About the Course:

At some point in their careers, Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) practitioners will be placed in a position where they have to communicate M&E work to a group of people. This may be to project staff, policy makers and other stakeholders. Sometimes, the meeting will be comprised of people who are not fully versed with the technical M&E jargons, or to people who may not be receptive to the less-than-positive findings from an evaluation report. Likewise, the group may consist of people with diverse backgrounds and competing interests, yet their consensus is needed.

This is where skills are needed to navigate the group (and power) dynamics to effectively facilitate a meeting that is engaging, elicits participation and produces tangible results.

This course covers:

• The facilitation process
• Facilitation roles and responsibilities
• Various facilitation techniques, including when and how to use them for best effect
• Active Listening
• Group Dynamics
• Characteristics of Good Facilitation
• Energisers and Ice breakers
• Addressing difficult people situations

The course is highly interactive with role-play and simulations. The live Zoom sessions are scheduled for Monday, March 21, Wednesday, March 23 and Friday, 25 March 2022 beginning at 12 noon EST. Run time is 2 hours. The Tuesday and Thursday of that week will be used for homework/assignments and self-paced study on an online learning platform, which will be provided before the course begins.

Key Canadian Evaluation Society Competencies:

4. Management Practice competencies focus on applying sound project management skills throughout the evaluation project.

• 4.1 Provides leadership to the evaluation project.
• 4.5 Uses group management and facilitation skills.

5. Interpersonal Practice competencies focus on the social and personal skills required to communicate and interact effectively with all stakeholders.

• 5.1. Uses communication strategies appropriate to the cultural, linguistic, social, and political context.
• 5.2 Demonstrates effective and appropriate written and visual communication skills.
• 5.3 Demonstrates effective, appropriate, and respectful verbal and non-verbal communication skills.
• 5.4 Uses a variety of processes that result in mutually negotiated agreements, shared understandings and consensus building.
• 5.5 Builds partnerships within the evaluation context.

About the Facilitator:

Ann-Murray Brown is Jamaican and is an independent consultant based in The Hague, The Netherlands. She has provided professional services to several international NGOs such as the UNDP, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the European Commission on programmes related to Migration, Governance, Child Protection, Poverty Reduction and Gender.

As a facilitator she delivers workshops in Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) to strengthen organisational capacity and designs evaluation manuals.

She is the holder of multiple advanced degrees in Sociology and International Development and is a member of professional bodies such as the American Evaluation Association (AEA), the European Evaluation Society (EES), the Dutch Evaluation Society (Vide) and the Caribbean Evaluators International. She also maintains a blog on Monitoring and Evaluation (https://www.annmurraybrown.com/blog ).