Making a difference to relationships and behaviour
29 October 2010
Effective relationships are key to capacity building. AusAID’s ‘Making a Difference’ training programme is helping advisers and counterparts to improve their working relationships by reflecting on their behaviour and attitudes.
The Australian Agency for International Development (AusAID) invests a considerable portion of its funding to Papua New Guinea (PNG) in the form of advisory support, often full-time positions lasting two or three years. Reviews of this support show that the quality of the relationship between an adviser and his or her ‘counterparts’ – the PNG government officials with whom the adviser works most closely – is crucial to the effectiveness of the assistance for capacity building. Anecdotal evidence from advisers and counterparts suggests it can take six months to establish an effective working relationship based on trust, respect and a common understanding of roles, objectives, expectations and values.
When recruiting advisers, agencies such as AusAID increasingly give capacity building skills and experience as much weight as technical skills. However, such advisers are still uncommon, particularly as there is still a lack of clarity over just what skills, approaches and philosophies are involved.
The MaD programme
In recognition of this skills shortage, AusAID has funded the development and provision of a six-day programme entitled ‘Making a Difference: Practical capacity building’ (known as MaD). The programme is attended by advisers together with at least one, and preferably two or three, counterparts. It currently runs in PNG and the Solomon Islands, but is available to other countries on request.
The programme consists of three modules, lasting two days each, and develops practical skills for capacity building at individual, group and organisational levels. Advisers – both internal and external – and managers need these skills in managing their staff, bringing changes to their units, and improving services to internal and external customers.
An important part of the programme is developing the relationships between advisers and counterparts (and between managers and staff). This is done through sessions looking at the ‘ideal adviser’ and ‘ideal counterpart’, developing listening and coaching skills, giving and receiving feedback, and planning for and handling difficult conversations.
Listening and coaching are important aspects of capacity building. Too many advisers and managers are ‘addicted’ to problem-solving, wanting to be seen as the experts. The programme helps them to see the value of breaking this habit and gives them practical tools to help others solve their own problems – by connecting to their own resourcefulness and expanding it.
Each module ends with a planning session, in which the adviser–counterpart team jointly develops an action plan to implement their learning. The programme also provides informal opportunities for participants to get to know each other outside the work environment, and develop a common understanding and language relating to capacity building.
Good practice
The programme models good capacity building practice. For instance, it is co-facilitated, thus modelling working effectively in partnership. There is little traditional training; the approach is facilitated learning – providing opportunities for participants to discover for themselves, learn from each other, and make explicit and validate what they already know. In keeping with this principle, people decide themselves how to engage with the material and approaches. Their responses depend on their prior knowledge, willingness to be open to learning, and preparedness to reflect on their own behaviour and attitudes.
This means there is variation in engagement levels. Some participants just learn practical methods and tools to apply at work. Others are prompted to reflect on their behaviour and attitudes, and realise they need to make changes to themselves. One senior adviser said he significantly changed his approach after completing the ideal adviser session, when he realised he was the ‘adviser from hell’. A counterpart reported that he had started asking his staff for their views, rather than just telling them what to do – and discovered he had some bright people in his division.
The sessions on managing change start with reflections on feelings and emotions from individual experiences, which become the basis for developing principles of organisational change. Participants comment that they can better appreciate the impact of their work on other people, as they now recognise that effective capacity building is about change.
The last word on changes in attitude goes to the participants themselves:
‘MaD was a real turning point ... I had not experienced this approach before and it truly changed my approach. In Australia, we are trained to be problem solvers and if we don’t we are not doing our job well … here I needed to change, to stay quiet.’ — Adviser
‘Other programmes are general and theoretical about supervision, management and just talk to the brain. This course was different. MaD talks to a person’s inner being and the inner being is where real change comes from.’ — Government of PNG official
