Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Hi, I am Joelle Greene, a Senior Director at ORS Impact. As evaluators, we often encourage clients to embrace participation, inclusion, and shared decision-making. I’ve found it equally important to practice those values within my own project teams.
Earlier in my career, I held a fairly narrow idea of what it meant to be a project director. I assumed that if I were ultimately responsible for the work, I needed to make most of the decisions myself. Generous colleagues helped me see another possibility: sharing power is part of accountable, responsible leadership, not a departure from it. It has supported my growth as both an evaluator and a leader, produced better outcomes for clients, and created more engaged—and more enjoyable—team environments.
Power sharing is still something I’m learning to practice. These approaches do not eliminate leadership responsibilities or erase every hierarchy. They have, however, created more opportunities for contribution, learning, and shared ownership of our work.
On many of my teams, we rotate responsibility for developing and leading meeting agendas. The meeting leader identifies discussion topics and invites teammates to contribute items in advance; a template with standing items can make the task easier. Co-creating the agenda gives every team member space to bring a question or challenge to the group, reducing the expectation that one person must have all the answers.
This simple practice gives team members greater visibility into the full project, reinforces that everyone can shape how the team uses its time, and creates regular opportunities to build facilitation and leadership skills. It also leads to some really fun check-in questions.
Budgets often stay in the hands of project directors and finance staff. I try to review project spending, remaining resources, and emerging considerations regularly with the full project team. These conversations help team members understand the financial context behind project decisions and invite them to identify possibilities, risks, or efficiencies I might miss. For example, I once overlooked the resources needed to produce a presentation deck for a major deliverable. A team member caught the error and helped us avoid a significant budget overage.
An added benefit of this practice is that team members gain experience interpreting budget information and understanding the financial realities of evaluation work.
Evaluation projects often require trade-offs, course corrections, and difficult decisions that benefit from the full team’s perspective. I try to be transparent about who will make each decision—whether I’m seeking input on a decision I will make or asking the team to decide collectively. Although my role sometimes requires me to make the final call, collaborative discussion strengthens the work by bringing in multiple perspectives and giving team members opportunities to sharpen their strategic thinking.
These practices are small, but together they have changed how I understand accountable leadership. Sharing power does not mean stepping away from responsibility; it means creating the conditions for more people to contribute to stronger decisions and better work.
The Equitable Evaluation Framework: This framework offers useful prompts for examining assumptions about expertise, authority, and knowledge creation. I have found it helpful for reflecting on how power shows up both in evaluation practice and within evaluation teams.Power Analysis: BetterEvaluation’s power analysis guide offers practical tools for recognizing visible and less visible forms of power, mapping influence, and examining whose perspectives shape decisions. It is a useful resource for evaluators looking to put power-sharing principles into practice.
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