By: Polly Parker

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When it comes to coaching, one of the most overlooked, low-cost and under-utilized methods you can employ is peer coaching.

Tens of thousands of executives and entrepreneurs meet every single month in peer coaching groups. Millions more meet in mastermind groups.

For some reason it hasn't quite caught on in companies. The authors of Peer Coaching at Work aim to bring the power of peer coaching to companies around the world.

This is your playbook for making it happen. We'll explore why this is so important in today's marketplace, and a 3-Step method for making it work at your company.

Let's get started.

VUCA: Why we need this now

We all understand that we now operate in a world that is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). We have been hearing for years that the pace of change is accelerating, but it's finally reached a point where we need to do something about it.

Today, it's not enough to execute flawlessly on what's right in front of us. We need to adapt to the world around us, and develop the capacity to see around corners. Continuous improvement and development used to be buzz words - now they are an imperative.

In this type of environment, we need to find the antidote to each of the VUCA elements - vision, understanding, clarity and agility. Let's dig into these elements one by one.

Vision, when it's done correctly, is a collaborative activity. As you and your team try and make sense of a complex environment, the more eyes on the issue the better. Getting alignment on how to deal with volatility is critical to your success.

Understanding is making meaning out of many and diverse signals. This means that you need to look at and integrate a large number of data points. Again, the more people you have looking at the landscape, the more likely you are to detect patterns you can use to find a path forward.

Clarity - a close cousin to understanding - is what you get on a team where everybody shares what they are experiencing in their role within the team. Each person on your team is seeing something different, and bringing them together to share those things is critical for everybody to be clear about the whole.

Finally, agility might not seem like a "more is better" type of scenario. However, the better the communication you have about the bigger picture within your team, the quicker and more responsive you can be as a unit.

A VUCA environment requires that you learn as quickly as possible and from as many angles as possible. In this quest, accessing the knowledge of other people on your team is indispensable.

There are two methods suggested in the book. Peer coaching in pairs, and peer coaching in teams or groups. For the rest of this summary we'll be focussing on groups.

Step 1: Building the Relationship - Creating a Positive Holding Environment

Once you've decided that accessing the full knowledge and skills of your team is a good idea to deal with the VUCA challenge, it's time to start thinking about how to build your program out.

As the authors point out, an effective peer coaching process requires a strong and trusting relationship between the people on your team.

Let's assume that you are building a peer coaching group to discuss best-practices in your roles at work, or exploring how future trends in your market might effect your business.

There are 4 sub-steps here.

Mutual, Compatible Selection

First, people are more likely to benefit from participating in peer coaching groups if they attend with a genuine desire to learn about and develop themselves.

If they are forced to join the group, you'll find that some people won't participate fully, which will create a dynamic that is uncomfortable and decrease the effectiveness of the group overall.

While it's normal to have some resistance to a new "thing," making participation optional will ultimately create a better dynamic.

Creating a positive holding environment - promoting a group culture of psychological safety

The next thing you need to consider is how you'll make the group members feel safe in this environment.

If it becomes an environment where people feel like participating fully will leave them vulnerable and exposed, the participation levels will be on the surface level, leading to surface level conversations that never get to the heart of an issue.

It's critical that you set some ground rules for the meetings, like maintaining confidentiality, acting respectfully towards others in the feedback process, and demonstrating compassion.

Checking In

In peer coaching sessions, it's important to design the session so that everybody has adequate time to express themselves. This should usually happen at the beginning of the meeting, and it gives everybody a chance to transition physically and mentally into the meeting so they can give it their full attention.

Some suggestions for a check-in include tabling agenda items, giving a progress report or discussing any key victories that have occurred since the last meeting.

The need for a working agreement

Finally, in order to ensure full participation and that these sessions achieve what you want them to achieve, you need to have a working agreement about how the meetings should be run.

You should review it at the beginning of the meeting to reset expectations, and review it at the end of the meeting to ensure that you got what you wanted out of the meeting.

Here are some issues that you should consider including as part of your working agreement:

• how the group handles conflict and disagreement
• how roles are assigned, with a particular view of making sure that they don't undermine the learning of others
• how the group will assume responsibility for the learning process and how you'll hold each other accountable for the outcomes you are looking for.
  
  

Step 2: Creating Success Through Honing Relational Practices

Creating success in peer coaching groups requires building self-awareness among the members, and developing relational and social skills.

Let's discuss those in turn.

Building self-awareness

No matter what theme you create for your peer coaching group, people need to feel safe experimenting and exploring new ideas. This means that there needs to be a sense of interpersonal trust between each other.

In order for there to be interpersonal trust in the group, each member needs to have self awareness which includes understanding personal emotional responses, individual strengths and weaknesses, and having a strong sense of self-worth.

As the authors point out, self-aware people bring clarity about what they need to develop within themselves, and what they can offer their peers.

There is also the issue of self-regulation, which includes the ability to manage difficult and potentially disruptive emotions like frustration, anger or anxiety. Like it or not, frustration, anger and anxiety are going to be a regular part of the group coaching dynamic.

Developing relational skills

As you start getting into the meat of your peer coaching sessions, the ability to provide construction feedback to members and providing social support to try out new behaviors and ideas becomes critical.

There are two proven methods for doing this - the council model and the forum model.

The council model allows each member to articulate feedback, voice a concern, or otherwise participate in the discussion. There are a few common steps:

1. A timekeeper is nominated so that the group stays on track.
2. Each person presenting an issue has a maximum of three minutes to present.
3. The rest of the group has three minutes to ask yes/no or short answer questions.
4. After presenting and questioning is completed, the council has ten minutes to share advice with the presenter.

The forum model is an alternative structure that does basically the same thing, but has a single-person focus for a longer period of time. This allows for a deeper dive into a particular person's issue, but limits the number of people who get to present each session.

Step 3: Making Peer Coaching a Habit

Peer coaching is likely to be a new skill for most of the people on your team. Like anything new, it takes time to develop into a cohesive process and for it to start producing results.

For that reason, it's important that you think about how to make peer coaching a habit, and how they can practice these skills both inside and outside formal sessions.

The overarching goal is to promote peer coaching groups as an everyday practice and integral to the organizational culture.

There are three things you can do to ensure that this happens.

First, think about how you can extend peer coaching skills into everyday interactions and engagements. What can you do to help your team share what they are learning - either through experience or though other content - with one another.

Second, think about how you can promote the value of peer coaching groups to other people in your company. Well-performing groups focus on functional roles and on solving problems. With that in mind, are there other functions in your company that can benefit from what you are doing? Invite them to sit in on one of your sessions, and ask them to consider doing the same with their teams.

Third, as the leader, model behaviors that support mutual and interdependent learning.

From Peer Groups to Individual Coaching

As you ask your team to start thinking about integrating peer coaching into their everyday work, you'll want them to keep in mind some principles.

Principle 1: Effective help occurs when both giver and receiver are ready. Don't offer your help if it's clear the other person isn't ready to receive it.

Principle 2: Effective help occurs when the helping relationship is perceived to be equitable. Check in to make sure that the advice you are giving is not overwhelming to the receiver.

Principle 3: Effective help occurs when the helper is in the proper helping role. There are multiple ways you can help somebody - as an expert (you have specific knowledge or skills), as a doctor (you can help diagnose a problem), or as a process consultant (helping to determine what help is actually needed).

Principle 4: Everything you say or do is an intervention that determines the future of the relationship. Even if you avoid acting in a situation where a person needs something, that action has consequences. In every relationship, the little things matter.

Principle 5: Effective helping starts with pure inquiry. Even if you are confident that you know what is right, consider the new request as something that is very new to you.

Principle 6: It is the client who owns the problem. Do not be seduced into claiming the problem because of your prior experience with this kind of issue.

Principle 7: You never have all the answers. Even if you are a content expert in the area of issue, do not trap yourself into assuming an expert role and providing the solution.

Conclusion

Like we stated in the introduction, peer coaching is one of the most overlooked and valuable forms of learning you can tap into while you figure out how to navigate this crazy world we live in right now.

These days call for all hands on deck, and this is your playbook to get there.