Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

21 Oct, 2020

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-08-18T10:24:31-04:00October 21st, 2020|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program design, program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

I enjoy coming up with things on the fly, and today’s Try This is one of those moments.

I was hired by a client organization earlier on in my consulting business to conduct several focus groups for their program participants, all of whom were young high school girls attending a 6-week summer program.

During the first two focus groups, one question I asked was, “What would you change about this program?”

Interestingly, the participants enjoyed the program so much that they didn’t have any ideas on how they could improve the program.

When I got to the last two focus groups, I decided to change the question.

Before I share how I changed the question, let’s make one thing clear: It’s very possible your program participants really do enjoy your program, and there’s a lot of information to glean from this. But this client organization specifically wanted feedback on how to evolve the program and they noticed that, outside of exclaiming they enjoy the program, participants didn’t give in prior feedback on what they enjoyed and what they’d like to see based on previous evaluations.

In response to my client’s request, I shifted the question.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Whatever setup you use for focus groups (though this can also be created as a survey, key informant interview, or as a World Cafe)

The steps:

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16 Oct, 2020

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:53-04:00October 16th, 2020|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Self Care Corner|0 Comments

My day-to-day didn’t change much, if at all, when the current pandemic began. As the months passed, my mental health and self-esteem slowly declined. Much of it, outside of the psychological impact of dealing with a virus that still has many unknowns and sheltering in place, was due to my own expectation to continue to perform optimally.

I had a laundry list of tasks to complete and tried to show up to my work as though a pandemic and racial injustices weren’t occurring, even when my clients asked for grace as they pivoted to support their staff and program participants.

While I still have many items on my to-do list, most of these items aren’t tackled on a normal day. As we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I’m lucky if I’m able to knock out 1-2 high-level items. The more items I crossed off my list, the more accomplished I felt…but most of these items didn’t move me towards my bigger goals in any significant way.

Several years ago, I came across the concept of a “well done” list. I tucked the concept away and thought about it the other day as I looked at my ever-growing to-do list.

What’s a “well done” list? Similar to a to-do list, it’s a list of tasks. Instead of focusing on the number of items you cross off your to-do list, a “well done” list acknowledges the quality of what gets done.

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7 Oct, 2020

Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:32-04:00October 7th, 2020|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

As we head closer to the end of 2020, I’m starting to think about where I want my business to go and who I want to be, have, and experience in 2021.

Considering we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, it feels futile to plan anything out. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about the types of client and partnership opportunities I’ve had in the past year. With each year that passes, my projects and client interactions become more complex. I’ve developed a routine that affords me to be more intentional about who I work with, but that didn’t come without any hiccups.

I took my own advice and evaluated each project using the following prompts:

How did I feel about this project overall?
How did I feel about my role in this project?
How did I feel while working with this client/partner?

As I reflected on this year’s projects, I also thought of prior projects and decided it would be fun to share two experiences that I consider my best and my worst time working with clients.

Because I’m focusing on me, I won’t be naming the specific clients nor the focus of the projects (because that’s messy), but If you’ve been a reader of my blog over the years, you should know that my client projects tend to fall somewhere in the sexual and reproductive health, rights, or justice space, young women’s empowerment, and the like. I’ll focus instead on what I learned during these processes and how they’ve shaped my process in being intentional of who I work with, what I take on, and how I choose to work.

Let’s start with the worst client experience:

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8 Jul, 2020

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:56:28-04:00July 8th, 2020|Categories: Strategic Planning & Sustainability|Tags: program design, Strategic Planning|0 Comments

I don’t like flying, but I do because I enjoy experiencing new locations, plus all of my family lives in Georgia and the majority of my current client organizations are not based in Washington, DC where I’m located.

It’s already unsettling being propelled through the air at 36,000 feet in a cylindrical tube, but one of the scariest aspects of flying for me is knowing that a twin-engine aircraft can fly with just one engine, at best, At worst, that aircraft can lose power in both engines and still travel for another 70 miles before reaching the ground.

Something like this should be scary, but what keeps me somewhat calm is knowing that pilots are highly trained and can handle most mechanical and weather situations (turbulence, ugh).

Can you imagine if pilots had to figure out how to land a plane without practicing? In addition to hours of training and the lessons learned in past aviation incidents, pilots learn how to communicate the relevant information to Air Traffic Control and flight crew.

So how does this apply to implementing your programs and services?

I once had a supervisor that would tell staff, “Your Plan B should be stronger than your Plan A”.

If your Plan A is strong enough, there would be no need for a Plan B, I thought.

As I move through the COVID-19 pandemic along with my clients, I see that my former supervisor and I were both right.

We’re living in uncertain times, and this was before the coronavirus pandemic. We’re used to routine and structure (Plan A). Even if everything is going well, there’s always something you can do to strengthen your programs and services (Your Plan B).

Planes are designed that in the event one or both engines fail, you can still glide and land safely. So, how can you build your Plan B?

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1 Jul, 2020

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:53:38-04:00July 1st, 2020|Categories: Equity & Justice|Tags: activism, Ask Nicole|0 Comments

I received an overwhelming number of responses from one of my recent blog posts, “Your Values Always Come at a Cost“. So much so, that the majority of that post’s comments came directly from subscribers to my Raise Your Voice newsletter via email replies.

This comment came from Amanda, a public health student:

One thing that’s given me solace during this time is that so many people are looking for Black voices, in all professional fields. And I want to capitalize on that! Your quote “There should be no question where you stand and you should only want to surround yourself with people who share the same values” really resonated with me. As I matriculate through my MPH program, I’m discovering the importance of raising my voice, as you always remind us to do. But I feel like, no matter what I try to bring awareness to, no one hears me. I know that I have to promote myself in creative ways outside of the traditional resume, and I’ve been utilizing social media to share my thoughts on issues I care about. But I feel discouraged because, between Instagram and Twitter, I don’t have many followers (combined it’s like around 700 total). How can I raise my voice when no one is around to hear me? Hardly anyone likes, retweets, or comments on my posts. Is it because what I’m saying isn’t resonating or that I’m not articulating myself in a way that would make people want to listen to me?

My consulting business began as a Tumblr blog. I used that blog as an outlet to share my thoughts on what eventually became my business’ vision, mission, and core services.

Over the years, I’ve slowly built up a social media following, where I’ve been more intentional about connecting, networking, and highlighting what I can do. But what I’ve learned along the way is that there’s more to building an audience than likes, shares, and retweets.

While these metrics can tell you how you’re resonating with your audience, unless you ask every single person why they’re following you, these numbers don’t tell the full story. Some of the most engaged followers you’ll have are the ones that don’t do these actions, but they’re still paying close attention.

I would consider myself to have a small social media following, but while promoting myself on social media as been part of the job, I’ve never landed a client based on something I’ve posted on social media.

How did they find me? They either asked around or they Googled something and came across one of my blog posts. Possibly an older blog post in which my voice and message weren’t as strong as it is today. They perused my blog and website and noticed how my voice has evolved and strengthened over time. I’m also sure my Raise Your Voice newsletter subscribers who have been around since my first newsletter have noticed this as well.

I took the time to get clear on who I am and how I wanted to show up for my audience, especially my clients. I wanted to position myself so that a prospective client could look at me and say, “She’s the right person for the job”.

Raise your voice regardless of the size of your audience. Use this time to strengthen your voice and message for the followers who are here right now.

The last thing you want is to suddenly gain an influx of followers and you haven’t strengthened your voice and message.

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Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

Your Plan B Should Be as Strong as Your Plan A

Ask Nicole: How Can I Raise My Voice When No One is Around to Hear Me?

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