I’m All Ears: The Power of Active Listening in Evaluation

As a new evaluator in the ATE community, I have been fortunate to have met some amazing evaluators and experts in the field of evaluation. Each week, I add to my library of best practices—insights that help me work more effectively with grantees and project teams.

Evaluation often focuses on research, data communication, and reporting. However, one overlooked but essential skill is active listening.

Active listening can help to foster a culture of trust and true collaboration, where an evaluator can be seen as a true partner in the project, who understands the needs of the project and the people leading the project, not just someone who “checks boxes” to make sure the project objectives are aligned and accomplished.

Three Ways to Improve Active Listening as an Evaluator

1. Engage in Project Meetings – Commit to engaging with project teams, understanding their challenges, and acknowledging their insights throughout the project lifecycle. This could be accomplished by attending PI project meetings and advisory board meetings. Being present makes a big difference!
2. Communicate to Build Trust – Build stronger relationships with project teams by making them feel heard and valued, which in turn strengthens collaboration and enhances your role as a valued collaborator.
3. Make Listening a Habit – By incorporating active listening into every conversation, not just at key milestones, details can be uncovered that may not be captured through traditional data collection. Those details often enrich your evaluation process and help to tell a more complete story.

Listening and understanding the perspective of the project team can lead to more insightful and actionable recommendations for the project⎯and to long-term project improvements and sustainability.

Active listening enhances science communication by ensuring evaluation results are presented in ways that resonate with project teams, NSF staff, and the broader STEM community.

Each project is unique, and evaluators use different strategies for reporting⎯whether through storytelling, data visualization, or narrative summaries. Technologies and reporting tools evolve, but the art of listening remains constant. By truly understanding the project teams’ needs and concerns, evaluators can craft clearer, more relevant recommendations that drive meaningful improvements.

Additional Resources:

Check out EvaluATE’s ATE evaluation task areas page on engagement, especially their communication plan checklist for principal investigators and evaluators.