Listen to Episode 5
About the Series
At Change Matrix, we have been practicing training in, coaching around, and incorporating into our work adaptive leadership for the last 25 years. Based largely on the work of Ron Heifetz and Martin Linsky, we feel this practice is an especially equitable type leadership. We wanted to create this particularly timely podcast series to share what we have learned about and are learning as adaptive leaders.  Learn more about the inception of the Living Adaptive Leadership series.
What We Discuss in this Episode
Dr. Sharonlyn Harrison, President/CEO of Public Research and Evaluation Services
When evaluators were asked to name essential characteristics of evaluators and essential characteristics of leaders, those lists were very similar. Dr. Sharonlyn Harrison has been an evaluator who practices culturally responsive and equitable evaluation in academia, as a consultant and now leads her own organization.
Change Matrix Founding Partner Elizabeth Waetzig speaks with Sharonlyn about how she has has taken an adaptive leadership approach as an evaluator around the importance of data and the critical need to engage those most impacted in evaluation work.
Transcript of the Conversation:
Elizabeth
Good afternoon, Sharonlyn Harrison. Thank you so, so, so much for spending some time with me to talk about living adaptive leadership. I think this is the fifth in our podcast series, where we’ve talk to folks who are implementing adaptive leadership and youth advocacy in school, mental health and community-based equity programs. Today, we get to talk with you about adaptive leadership and how it shows up in evaluation. Particularly for evaluators who are looking to practice culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. Before we go very far, I’d like to ask you to tell us a little bit about yourself. Anything you want the folks listening to know about you?
Sharonlyn
All right. Well, I am an evaluator by training. That’s actually what my degree is. I started my evaluation work at Wayne State University with the Developmental Disabilities Institute, the University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities. From there, I opened my own firm in 2001. It’s called public research and evaluation services. Most of my work, even there while at the university and certainly as president CEO of Public Research and Evaluation Services, has been around equity, disproportionality, anti-racism. It’s just fitting that and I’m also a senior consultant for the National Center for Cultural Competence. I’ve been working with them since late 90s, we’ll just say. It’s just always been my passion and part of the work that I’ve had an opportunity to do around looking around at cultural competence, looking at the work that we do in communities and making sure that we are being respectful culturally responsive, again, competent around how we approach communities.
Sharonlyn
It just came naturally into the research and evaluation work I do. Even before they really started, or I had heard about this work that I had been doing since the late nineties. I was very excited to hear about the conversations and when I would learned about Korean culturally responsive and equitable evaluation and the lens and the processes we should use to make sure that priority communities or those with the lived experiences, are really telling us what we should be doing around being a part of the strength that they want to bring into their communities.
Elizabeth
What a wonderful you’ve had so far and probably so much more to do. Yeah. One of the questions I like to ask folks that I do these podcasts with is when they first felt like a leader themselves. Can you talk a little bit about that, Sharonlyn? When did you first feel like a leader?
Sharonlyn
I think it was when I would say probably once I got into leadership positions, if I looked really way back just into my life, it really started when I was quite young. I didn’t think about that until probably about two years ago. My daughter wanted to wear… I was a president of a high school club and my daughter wanted to wear my club sweater. You had patches on your sweater and I had a patch on my sweater that was P-R-E-S, which is also the acronym for my company. She was like, “Oh, you knew about pres back then?” I was like, “No, that actually was the patch for the president.” I was president of the club, president of the teacher’s union here. Just always found myself in leadership activities, but did not really look at it as anything besides just who I was.
Sharonlyn
It wasn’t until really my daughter noticed that on the sweater that I was like, wait a minute, I’ve done a lot of things in leadership throughout my life. I would just say again, I never really thought about it. I just always had a desire to be a spokesperson and knew that I had organizational skills, so wanted to be the person that can organize things to make something happen. I think, again, I never really thought about it really till just recently. One time I was, I also do a lot of leadership activities at my church and I was kind of taking a year off and this one guy caught me and he says, “Sharonlyn, you’ve got to do something. You’re a leader.” I was like, “Oh.” Just again, just never really thought about it until I started looking at different points in my life of things I had done over my life.
Elizabeth
Yeah. It’s so interesting that leadership, and I think this is true for the way we think about leadership as a discipline, that it comes with a role. Yet when we really think about who we are as leaders like who we are not doing leadership, but who we are, it comes from those early moments of, I have something to offer. I’m not doing it alone. I’m engaging with other people. Maybe I’m inspiring. Maybe I can coordinate, maybe I have a vision, but there’s something about that early life that instills leadership in our blood.
Sharonlyn
Yes.
Elizabeth
Would you agree with that?
Sharonlyn
Absolutely. Because actually when I thought back even further, like in elementary school, I took the main role in the Christmas play and it had a comedic line at the end and I was very comfortable with saying this line. I had to pretend like I was Donald Duck and I was in the fifth grade and I took that line and it was the closing of the play and everybody laughed. I was just thinking that had to be pretty courageous just for somebody that young to do that. Like I said, I ran in high school in a role. It is. It was just there. I don’t think you really think about it. It’s just that you say I have something to contribute. I didn’t win. I always wanted a recount, but anyway, I think I actually did ask for a recount, but anyway, it was just interesting when I sat and thought about I’ve been doing activities and leading for a long, long time. Yeah.
Elizabeth
Well, I want to ask you, thank you for sharing that about your earlier life. I wanted to ask you a little bit about when you first noticed that leadership has, is related to evaluation work. I think you and I talked about that earlier around expanding the bench and the work we did to integrate leadership approach or concepts into the work of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation, but sort of going a little bit earlier. When did it occur to you or what occurred to you around this integration of leadership and evaluation?
Sharonlyn
I think I noticed that I felt like the picture wasn’t full enough around evaluation, that most of the time when I’ve done evaluation work, I would say probably 97% of the time, it’s been around funded projects. Either I’m at the table when they’re developing the plan for the grant or the proposal, or I’m brought in pretty soon. I saw that often. An individual would forget what they wrote in the proposal. It wasn’t anything malice or trying to be not genuine or honest. They’d be excited about the money. Then they’d start kind of traveling along a different role. I would always go to meetings with two things, the RFP and the proposal. I would say, and even though I was the evaluator, and sometimes I would almost check myself like, “Why are you in there, guiding this project? You’re the evaluator.”
Sharonlyn
I finally settled with them myself. If I don’t help them stay on point, it’s going to be very difficult to evaluate the project. When it comes down to time to write the report or collect the data, we’re going to be on a totally different avenue. I realized, and actually, I started even telling clients, you are going to notice that I’m going to be the person that’s going to keep going back to the proposal. I’m going to be the person that’s going to keep going back to the logic model. I’m going to continue to pull up the RFP. I realized that other evaluators weren’t doing that. In fact, some evaluators would even say, if they were in the room to, why are you, “Why are you doing that?” Now that it’s definitely a hundred percent the way I work, I still do that.
Sharonlyn
If I’m on a project and it’s been funded, I’m the one that pulls up the grant and pulls up the RFP and say, “Let’s make sure we’re staying on the right track. We really didn’t say that we were going to do that. Of course, we have flexibility if it’s needed. Let’s make sure we’re able to tell that story. Let’s make sure we’re able to tell the funder why we made that shift. Let’s make sure that we’re hearing from the community if we’re going to make that shift.” That’s when I realized that my role was, I was expanding my role besides just being that person coming in and writing a plan and figuring out how to collect data and look at outcomes that instead as an evaluator. I was taking a role of making sure also, that we were again, staying on the right track, staying on the right road. Again, I realized that that was something unique that I was probably doing as an evaluator, because other people weren’t talking about it as much as I was.
Elizabeth
Yeah. You really talked about the need for an expanded role in evaluation, for evaluators, and that you really looked at your role as one of integrity. How do I think about integrity and the change process that these folks have proposed? How do I mobilize them to change in a way that has guardrails and guidelines to it so that they can tell the story that they intended to tell at the end of the day. I want to go back to that word, courage, that you used earlier, because I’m wondering if courage was part of the way that you defined the role and the way that you implemented it, because it doesn’t sound like it was the way most evaluators thought about themselves.
Sharonlyn
Yeah. It takes courage because you do feel like, again, why am I expanding my role? Sometimes I’ve gotten shut down on that. Particularly what I think that we’re heading down a road that’s not going to benefit the priority community or those with lived experiences, I’m really one that will come back again and again. Part of it is really figuring out when to keep pushing the needle and sometimes I’ll step back and just say, “Okay, maybe today’s not the day to have that conversation. Let me share some of the resources and information that I have around why I’m insisting. This is important.” I’ve been on projects before where I brought up the idea of our cultural competence and they’ll say, “Oh, well, we’re not going to work on that. We’re not working on that with this project.”
Sharonlyn
I’m going, “Okay, well, that’s really, who’s being affected by this thing that we’re trying to do, but I’ll come back.” I won’t just sit there. I’ll be disappointed, but I will wait and come back and find different ways of making informing individually. You have to wait sometimes. It requires a lot of patience. Two individuals get to a point where they understand or are willing to listen to what you’re trying to say. Courage and patience.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Courage and patience. I wonder if you might add the words persistent and strategic.
Sharonlyn
Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Important to be, to have a willingness, to be persistent and a necessity of being a strategic, you have to figure out a lot of different ways of communicating, of educating, informing. I even think about it when I’m negotiating contracts. There’s certain days and times is this the right time? Is this the right day to really talk about that? Do I need more time, because I’ve really found stepping back and thinking and not always having, and that just comes with growing up too, you don’t always have to say what you think should happen right away. Sometimes you need to step back and think about, and I think that’s important for leaders as well as evaluators.
Elizabeth
Yeah. It sounds like what you’re offering is that, it isn’t just what the story that you want to tell or the point that you want to make. It’s also understanding where the people that you’re with might be so that you can communicate things in a way that they can hear it.
Sharonlyn
Absolutely. That’s something I learned. I do a lot of diversity training still, meaning that I attend a lot of anti-racism equity training. That was something that they mentioned in courageous conversations about race that have to know when it’s time to have these conversations. I agree. Yeah.
Elizabeth
Yeah. When you think about the field of evaluation and I’m going to ask you two questions, I want to ask you broadly about the field of evaluation. Then I want to ask you specifically about evaluators from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. First question about the broad evaluation field. What leadership skills do you most think evaluators need to acquire or reflect on or make sure that they possess to do their very best work?
Sharonlyn
I think they have to know how to galvanize a team that is both made up of their own team and the organization. It can’t be two separate entities functioning. You have to develop this full partnership with the organization that you’re you’re working with. Then you have to help that organization develop a full partnership with the priority population or those with lived experience. That, to me, really requires time commitment, willingness to, to provide training and technical assistance on little points that you take for granted about evaluation that organizations or individuals that are living it day-to-day would need help on. I do a lot of training when I’m working with an organization. I think you also have to be infectious about evaluation and that’s what everybody, that’s kind of what people tease me. “Oh. Here she goes. She makes it so much fun. She makes us want to do data.”
Sharonlyn
I tell everybody that I work with, “You may not like data, but when I’m finished with you, I think you might like data a little bit.” I think it just, it’s also important for us to create that buy-in because data, we see where data is now, just even with big data, with Facebook, with Instagram, all these things are living and functioning based on what they’re learning from data. Besides the decisions we have to make on a day-to-day basis based on data. I try to get individuals, I’d like to demystify it. I think that’s another big example. I don’t walk in like I’m the big data Zarina, but instead making sure that you want to understand your data so that you know what’s going on in your organization, what’s going on in your project and you want to make sure that you have structures in place so that’s ongoing and not just a one-time thing.
Sharonlyn
I think just again, making sure that you’re creating this team that has respect and re and a willingness to really work together and to work things out together. That, that evaluator serves as kind of like that team coach, that’s helping both sides and including again, the community to come together, to do the work.
Elizabeth
Yeah, that reminds me of the Heifetz concept of the holding environment. As an evaluator, you are creating a container where people with different perspectives can come together, where they can share their perspectives and their ideas, but also they’re coming in with probably different attitudes about evaluation and data, different beliefs maybe, about the power of data, different values around evaluation as a whole, but also the different pieces of it. To be able to think through those differences of values and beliefs changes the way that we practice and you’re providing that space. I don’t often hear people talk about evaluators, being the ones to hold the container, to create the container, to hold the container, to facilitate it, to maybe make people a little uncomfortable sometimes, but also to have a sense of where that vision for data is. You come in with that vision and you create that shared vision, but the path to shared vision is fraught with barriers and challenges and disparate values and beliefs. You’re creating, you’re navigating through that, in that holding environment.
Sharonlyn
Yes. That’s what I try to do. That’s why, whenever I get projects, I immediately want to meet every week. I learned that from actually one of my clients, because he held weekly meetings and I was like every week, but I saw that we were able to stay on point. Eventually we could say, “Okay, we can meet every two weeks now. Okay. We can meet every month.” I never start a project without asking for weekly meetings until we’re going, because you got to get that shared understanding. You’ve got to get that shared responsibility, get on the same page. Every week, I like when I first started project, I says, “Kaitlin. I’d like to meet weekly.” I find that organizations feel then that you’re really committed to getting the work done. That you’re not just going to be somebody that they call once a month to see what’s going on, but I’m in here and I want to see you successful. I want to help you learn about what that what’s involved in getting there.
Elizabeth
That’s the infectious part, right?
Sharonlyn
Probably.
Elizabeth
The infectious evaluator. Let’s turn our attention to evaluators from different or diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, particularly around the practice of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation. How does leadership show up for them?
Sharonlyn
Well, I think fortunately now we’re probably seeing a different level of respect that we didn’t before. I remember when I first started, I was working at Wayne State running a research department and was working with a governmental organization, we’ll just say. They convened an evaluation team. We were coming up with indicators and data, coming up with an evaluation plan. Every time I would present something, it would be shot down by all of these evaluators. I was younger. It was at least 20 years ago, because my youngest had not been born yet. I remember just finally having to say to them, “This is not my dissertation committee. I’m a fully functional evaluator. I’m a fully functional researcher. Can we work together to figure this out?” I’m really happy that the conversation around [inaudible 00:22:15], the understanding that the opportunities that evaluators and researchers of color didn’t have, unless we created them ourselves, are finally starting to be recognized, talked about and sought after.
Sharonlyn
That was not always the way it was. It’s possible, I’ve seen projects before where I’ve been on for years and then they decided, “Oh, we need to go with this person because they’d been around since, before the flood.” Well, just like they’ve got to convene a team, I have to convene a team. Just like I’ve shown you that I have the capability, the qualities, the team that can do the work. There’s no difference here. I think that has been the struggle and the pain of being in this field, when you weren’t recognized for your contributions, your potential to contribute, you were just immediately looked at as being less qualified, less experienced, having less capacity to do the work. I’m glad that there’s now, again, that’s why I joined LEAD and applied for it once I heard about it, because I was really excited to hear that now there’s this focus on making sure that evaluators and researchers of color get the opportunities that others have.
Elizabeth
Yeah. Yeah. It’s been in your lifetime, in your career in your working life. It’s been an evolution, it sounds like. So I’m a little curious about the next steps in terms of supporting the leadership of evaluators of color. What are the next steps in that? What do you want to see for younger evaluators, from different backgrounds, finding their space, able to hold that container?
Sharonlyn
Well, certainly I’d like to see them get the big dollar opportunities. I think if we looked at the day that we would still see disparities there. We would see inequities. I would love to see the young, new evaluators not have to not have the opportunities that some of those of us that are on the back end of our career, not have those opportunities. I’d love to see because there’s some brilliance and that’s another thing I love about LEAD. Oh my goodness, the brilliance that is coming up. My daughter is also following in my footsteps, just going to be a brilliant evaluator and researcher. They have a lot more information available to them than, than we did. We’re kind of like going through it now, but that’s what they’re being trained on in schools and in workshops. I would love to see them have all the opportunities afforded to others so that they can have an opportunity to contribute to the change, to the information and to the decisions that we make about what’s worthy in our society.
Elizabeth
Their leadership means having a place at the table, having a strong voice in determining value and worthiness and effectiveness.
Sharonlyn
Even being the table, that they’re bringing in, the individuals and the table, again, that they have that full opportunity, that full, I don’t want to use the word power because that sounds… That influence, they have that same opportunity to speak up. We’re looking now. We’ve got a black woman, a black Asian heritage woman that is vice president who would have thought, and I love that our children are getting an opportunity to see that. I want them to also be able to see that in the field of evaluation and research, because it’s still not there. It’s still not there.
Elizabeth
It’s not there. I think that all of us have a responsibility, all of us have a to do what it takes to get there. Just, I guess in closing, what else would you like to say maybe that I didn’t ask you about that relates to evaluation and leadership and equity?
Sharonlyn
Yeah. I’m going to say two things. First again, making sure that the opportunities are there, the trust is there, that it doesn’t always have to be a university, which nine times out of 10, we’re running our own companies. We want to have those opportunities. If we are at universities that we want to be the principal investigators of the research, because there is a quality that comes when I’m living that experience or when I understand that community, when I have relationships in that community, when I’ve taken the time to make sure that I have ideas about what is important to that community. Even though I would not even trust myself, I would again, need to make sure that I am communicating, connecting, listening to involving being guided by the community with the lived experiences. My second idea around equity is making sure for real, that we don’t do that just as a perfunctory task. That we are really interested.
Sharonlyn
There are individuals in communities that may not have degrees that may not be evaluators, that have a lot of great ideas about what’s needed. Have the ideas about what’s needed to make changes and strengthen their communities. A lot of times evaluators, because of our background, academic connections, and particularly when we don’t share the background of the community, we think we can fly in and be the savior of the community. AI think we just have to keep in mind, we have to decide that we are not going to work any other way, but in a way that respects that community, that offers and makes sure that their voice is heard, that the voice of the community, the voice of those with the lived experience is guiding what we hope to see and learn. Again, if it means teaching them what it means to be involved in evaluation, I’ve done that before.
Sharonlyn
I’ve done that with communities. I had a project when I was at Wayne State where we worked with individuals with disabilities. We took them through one evaluation one-on-one and I’ve done that in other projects too. Okay. You’re going to be working with me and we’re going to be working together on the evaluation is a better way to say, the appropriate way to talk about that. This is some things you need to understand just around the field of evaluation. You can do it, and these were going to be coming up with tools. Am I asking this question the right way? Do you think this is the best way? Do you think this is an important question? Who should I talk to about there? Are there individuals in your community that I could learn more about who can connect, who can serve as a broker or connection?
Sharonlyn
I’ve heard many times, individuals say that takes longer it’s sure does. It’s also going to strengthen the work that we’re trying to do if we’re really committed to making a difference in this world and in communities where we’re seeing particularly difficult outcomes and circumstances. I even think about with COVID. I’m just waiting to see what is going to be done around looking at what could have been done differently around COVID and what do we even do now around making sure that we’re serving these communities that have been more impacted by the virus. You got to really need to hear from those communities. You’re also, it’s going to be important to connect with individuals who have relationships in those communities and shared shared backgrounds and experiences.
Elizabeth Waetzig:
Yeah. I think what you just described is some nested adaptive work. There’s adaptive work around who am I as an evaluator and who am I as an evaluator who leads? I think that’s adaptive work.
Sharonlyn
Yes, absolutely.
Elizabeth
The other adaptive work is what is our expectation about how good evaluation is done, because if we’re talking about the time it takes to engage community members meaningfully by folks who really know how to listen, know how to ask questions, know how to analyze data from the perspective of the community members, we have some work to do, to address those differences in beliefs and attitudes around that. I know you are leading that charge and I so appreciate all of your contributions to our lead program as faculty. I appreciate all that you do for the expanding the bench work. I appreciate your perspective on evaluation and leadership and that you are one of the first people I talked to that knew about adaptive leadership and saw the integration, saw the parallels and the ways in which they could enhance each other. I guess the last thing I’ll say is that it’s not a surprise to me that you were at the National Center for Cultural Competence and I bet Torah Good is very good friend of yours.
Sharonlyn
That’s my buddy. Yes.
Elizabeth
I knew it.
Sharonlyn
I love her.
Elizabeth
Yeah. I see similarities in the two of you.
Sharonlyn
We’re like sisters. We call ourselves sisters. Yes.
Elizabeth
That’s awesome.
Elizabeth
Well, Sharonlyn, thank you so much for your time and your wisdom and your gift to the world. I really appreciate it.
Sharonlyn
Well, thank you for having me. I was really excited about having an opportunity to do this. I really just see all the traits that come in with being an adaptive leader. You’ve got to be an adaptive leader to function because you’re bringing about organizational change. I have stories upon stories about the changes that evaluators bring about. You have to know that a technical fix is not going to prepare an organization for when you leave. That organization has to shift. You’ve got to be able to make changes, to help them make changes to their vision and how they work in terms of diverse, with their teams.
Sharonlyn
I really know that, that’s what’s so important too, in terms of being a leader in evaluation. You’ve got to understand that it’s a big job, and it requires you understanding how to be an adaptive leader, especially when you’re doing a developmental evaluation. You’re helping an organization figure out, but I’ve seen that in all my projects where I’ve had to really just help them sit down and think about where they are and where they want to go as an organization. Evaluation shifts an organization. It shifts the way people think. It shifts the way people work. It shifts the way people interact. You need to be sure your adaptive leadership competent as you seek to be.
Elizabeth
Well, I think that is an excellent place to close us out. I’m just, again, grateful.
Sharonlyn
Thank you.
