Open AccessUsing People Styles for Interpersonal Competence: Encouraging Purposeful Reflection on Communication Behaviours
Author(s) -
Tiffany Smith
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
canadian journal of program evaluation/the canadian journal of program evaluation
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.341
H-Index - 15
eISSN - 1496-7308
pISSN - 0834-1516
DOI - 10.3138/cjpe.69576
Subject(s) - interpersonal communication , psychology , competence (human resources) , learning styles , reflection (computer programming) , social skills , reflective practice , interpersonal relationship , context (archaeology) , applied psychology , medical education , pedagogy , social psychology , computer science , psychotherapist , medicine , paleontology , biology , programming language
The purpose of this article is to revitalize the idea of soft skills as an important part of evaluator training through reflecting on the use of the People Styles Assessment Inventory (Bolton & Bolton, 2009) as a reflective exercise in a course with masters and Ph. D. level evaluation and measurement students. This paper provides an overview of the recent conversation in the literature surrounding interpersonal competency in evaluation, highlighting the need for and lack of emphasis on interpersonal skills in evaluation training, then describes the teaching practice context for engaging in the People Styles assessment and reflective activity. The People Styles model is described in detail along with key reflections on the use of the model for training future evaluation practitioners.