Why I use coaching in evaluation and impact work...

In many projects, evaluation comes in only at the end. It’s something external, often time-limited, and sometimes a bit disconnected from the day-to-day reality of a team’s work. Reports get written, recommendations are made, and then it’s not always clear what happens next.

Over time, I’ve found myself trying to move away from that model.

What I am more interested in is how people and organisations build their own confidence with evaluation. Not just understanding frameworks or tools, but feeling able to ask: What matters here? What does change look like for us? How do we know if we are getting there?

That’s where coaching comes in.

For me, coaching is not about having the answers. It’s about creating space to think things through together, whether that’s developing a theory of change, making sense of messy or incomplete data, or figuring out what kind of evidence is actually useful (rather than just required).

It also shifts the dynamic. Instead of evaluation being something “done to” an organisation, it becomes something shaped by the people who are closest to the work. That includes practitioners, but also the communities involved, especially when we are working in areas like wellbeing and social inequalities.

In practice, this often means slowing things down a bit. Asking more questions. Sitting with uncertainty. Sometimes it means resisting the pressure to produce something neat and linear, and instead working with complexity.

It’s not always the most straightforward approach. But it tends to be more useful in the long run. Because when people feel more confident engaging with evaluation, when they can adapt it, question it, and use it in ways that make sense to them, it becomes part of how they work, not an add-on and a burden.

And that, to me, is where the real value of coaching in this area sits.