OL-ECB TIG Week: Making the Most of Leadership Transitions: Practical Reflections by Michelle Borckardt

Date: Sunday, September 6, 2026

Welcome AEA365 readers to the 2026 Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) TIG Week! I’m Kathryn Lowerre, Evaluation Section Manager for the Injury and Behavioral Epidemiology Bureau at the New Mexico Department of Health. For the next seven days we’ll be sharing posts from evaluators working across a variety of communities and disciplines, all seeking ways to foster meaningful learning and capacity building in times of change. Please see previous OL-ECB weeks for additional insights into what OL-ECB is, further exploring why and how we practice it. And please consider joining our TIG members for deeper dives and engaged discussion at virtual OL-ECB events throughout the year. Thanks for reading!

Greetings from Wisconsin! My name is Michelle Borckardt, and I am an internal evaluator at Gateway Technical College. I recently completed my Ph.D. in Leadership, Innovation, and Continuous Improvement, where I explored how public and nonprofit organizations can most effectively use evaluation results to support organizational learning and change.

While completing my dissertation, I noticed a common pattern: many evaluation projects that led to meaningful improvements occurred during a leadership transition. Whether it was a new K-12 school superintendent, new board of directors, or new nonprofit program director, these transitions offered a unique window for evaluation, learning, and improvement.

Lessons Learned: Leadership Transitions as a Window for Evaluation Use

• New leaders are less entrenched. They are often willing to try things that previous leaders may not have considered. Longstanding leaders often have deeply held assumptions about their programs. A new leader is less tied to tradition and is often more open to exploring what the data actually says.
• The desire to “make a mark.” New leaders often want to understand what’s working and what isn’t so they can set a new direction and make their mark on the organization. Evaluation can be an important way to gain this understanding and surface opportunities for improvement.
• A shift in organizational culture. Leadership transitions inherently introduce uncertainty. During this period, the team pays closer attention to the new leader’s priorities and operational methods. If the leader arrives with a passion for evaluation and organizational learning, that helps cultivate a learning culture.

That said, leadership transitions do not always lead to positive change. I have sadly seen some new leaders erode psychological safety, create confusion, and destabilize team effectiveness. Evaluators must approach these moments with humility, empathy, and close attention to organizational culture.

Hot Tips for Engaging New Leaders

• Schedule a passion and goals exploration meeting. Request time to meet the new leader to explore their passions, why they chose to work at this organization, and what they see as the organization’s biggest challenges over the next 3-5 years. Foster their curiosity by showing them how evaluation can help them better achieve their specific mission and goals.
• Explore the leader’s prior experience with data and evaluation. Many leaders value data but may lack the specific skills to analyze and interpret it. Ask how they have seen data used effectively or ineffectively in previous roles. If they lack evaluation experience, offer practical support in framing evaluation questions, collecting data, interpreting findings, and identifying next steps.
• Involve the right stakeholders early. Leadership transitions also provide an opportunity to build shared understanding of the organization’s needs among the entire team. Encourage the leader to engage a diverse range of stakeholders in designing evaluations, interpreting findings, and using the results.
• Model the culture. Leaders shape organizational culture through what they communicate, the behaviors they model, and the behaviors of others they reward or sanction. Encourage the leader to communicate the importance of continuous improvement while establishing a psychologically safe environment. When a leader models and rewards data-informed behaviors, it signals to the rest of the organization that evaluation is a vehicle for learning and excellence, not for blame or punishment.
• Focus on professional accountability. The team may ignore even the best evaluation project if the status quo is more comfortable than change. Encourage the leader to hold the organization accountable to a high degree of excellence by assigning task owners, timelines, and follow-up conversations to track implementation of evaluation findings.

When the organization has a new leader, embrace this unique opportunity for change! It is a wonderful chance to embed evaluation into the organization’s future.

The American Evaluation Association is hosting Organizational Learning and Evaluation Capacity Building (OL-ECB) Topical Interest Group Week. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our OL-ECB TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please do so using the form on our website. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.