How can you incorporate peer coaching into your leadership training program?
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Peer coaching is a powerful learning method that can enhance your leadership training program. It involves pairing up participants who share feedback, insights, and support for each other's development goals. Peer coaching can help leaders improve their skills, confidence, and performance, as well as build trust and collaboration among their peers. In this article, you will learn how to incorporate peer coaching into your leadership training program, and what benefits it can bring to your organization.
Before you start peer coaching, you need to clarify the purpose and scope of the process. What are the learning objectives and outcomes that you want to achieve? How will you measure and evaluate the progress and impact of peer coaching? How will you align peer coaching with your organizational culture and values? How will you communicate the expectations and roles of peer coaches and coachees? These questions will help you design a peer coaching framework that is relevant, realistic, and effective for your leadership training program.
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Jordana Cole, MAPP
It's important to help define what peer coaching is and isn't and the value of connecting with peers from a leadership perspective. As you rise in an organization, your purview broadens and your stakeholders increase. Because of that, partnering with others cross-functionally becomes even more essential. Start peer coaching in a low stakes way with an intention for individuals to learn more about other team's roles, goals, challenges, and needs from partnership. Then provide an opportunity for them to share back what they learned and connect it to their team. From there, you can build coaching more intentionally.
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Shivani Seunarine
I believe that practice makes perfect so I teach in order to constantly improve my skills. Project Management Practioner | Facility Manager Practioner | Agile Practitioner | Trainer |Business Owner
Firstly I look at a benefits register where we document why we are doing this. It all starts with Why. Thus we all understand the outcomes that we want. I use the benefits register to manage each benefit.
The next step is to select and train peer coaches who can facilitate the learning and development of their coachees. Peer coaches should have some experience and expertise in leadership, as well as strong communication, listening, and feedback skills. They should also be willing to commit time and energy to the peer coaching process, and to respect the confidentiality and trust of their coachees. You can train peer coaches on how to use coaching models, tools, and techniques, such as goal setting, questioning, active listening, feedback, and action planning. You can also provide them with guidelines, resources, and support for their peer coaching role.
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Vanita Kundapur
Head - Talent Management at Datamatics Global Services Ltd. | DEI | XLRI
Identify SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) within the organisation who are good at what they do. Once the functional is taken care of, we move to the behavioural aspect, while equipping them with requisite support - templates, schedules, repositories, HR handholding. Thus, giving them the confidence and providing the safety net to plan and conduct.
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Laura Lopera Noguera MD
Médica Alternativa y Estética - Entrenadora Clínica en Estética Médica Integral - Wellaging en Práctica privada
Es muy cierto y estoy de acuerdo en que primero se debe estar capacitado en liderazgo y coaching. Mal haríamos en tratar de ser mentores sin saber que se requiere para este fin. Que gran aporte sería además porque podríamos hacerlo interna y externamente. Pares que trabajen en nuestra misma organización o para nuestra organización. Interesante oportunidad también para actualizarse o enterarse de las mejores prácticas en liderazgo del momento actual.
Once you have trained peer coaches, you need to match them with coachees who can benefit from their guidance and support. You can use different criteria to match peer coaches and coachees, such as learning needs, interests, preferences, personality, and availability. You can also involve the participants in the matching process, by asking them to indicate their preferences or to choose their own peer coaches. The key is to ensure that the matches are compatible, mutually beneficial, and diverse enough to foster learning and growth.
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Abdul Razack Hussain M
Senior Training Manager at Kipi.bi || Winner - Jombay HR 30Under30 2023
Allowing the coachees to choose their coach could have immediate impact in terms of the desired outcomes as coachees would be more receptive, open to feedback and willing to work on it due to sheer admiration and respect they have towards their coaches. In such cases, the coaches also feel more accountable and invested in the development process.
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Vanita Kundapur
Head - Talent Management at Datamatics Global Services Ltd. | DEI | XLRI
As the key factor in any relationship is the intent of the people involved, seeking inputs and buy in from both helps make the relationship mutually beneficial with a clear focus on the 'Why'.
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After you have matched peer coaches and coachees, you can implement and monitor the peer coaching process. You can set a schedule and frequency for the peer coaching sessions, which can be done face-to-face, online, or by phone. You can also suggest some topics or themes for the peer coaching sessions, based on the learning objectives and outcomes of your leadership training program. You can monitor the peer coaching process by collecting feedback, data, and evidence from the participants, and by providing ongoing support and supervision to the peer coaches.
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Debika Chaudhuri
(She/Her) Gallup Coach, Author, Conversations at work Expert
Some of the questions to ask are “how will you know you’ve …. “ “What will indicate you’ve …” “How will you celebrate when ..”
The final step is to review and celebrate the peer coaching process and its results. You can conduct a formal or informal evaluation of the peer coaching process, by asking the participants to reflect on their experiences, achievements, challenges, and learnings. You can also measure the impact of peer coaching on the participants' leadership skills, confidence, and performance, as well as on their peer relationships and collaboration. You can celebrate the peer coaching process by recognizing and rewarding the participants for their efforts, contributions, and outcomes, and by sharing their stories and best practices with others.
Peer coaching is a valuable addition to your leadership training program, as it can help leaders learn from and with each other, and enhance their personal and professional development. By following these steps, you can incorporate peer coaching into your leadership training program, and reap the benefits of this collaborative and empowering learning method.
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Debika Chaudhuri
(She/Her) Gallup Coach, Author, Conversations at work Expert
It’s good to periodically assess the goals and the approach. It’s the small insignificant actions that matter more so deliberate on those apparently insignificant but necessary steps that improves the process. Celebrate every win.
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Keith Spencer
Career Guidance | Training and Instruction | Empowering and Educating Professionals to Support Successful Career Advancement
Depending on the length of your training program, formative assessments and periodic surveys can be incredibly helpful in determining the ongoing effectiveness of peer coaching. Regularly collecting feedback from participants can give you valuable insights and allow you to make necessary adjustments to improve the coaching experience for both parties.
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Rita Sever
Supervision Matters - author, trainer, speaker
I have supported informal and time-specific peer coaching for leadership or middle-manager teams. Help participants to understand the difference between "chatting" and coaching. Emphasize that a peer coach does not give advice but offers support and helps the other person think through their situation. Sometimes this informal approach works well as part of a team coaching process. The relationships and conversations might continue beyond the structured process - with no requirements or expectations. Give them tools to support each other and see what comes of it. This is very different than a structure peer coaching program but can be very effective in a different way.
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Sheri Bender ⭐
Changing workplace cultures and enhancing employee experiences through Leadership Training, Audits and Assessments, HR Consultant, Leadership Trainer, ACC, and Certified Diversity Executive (CDE)®
When initiated thoroughly, peer coaching can be very motivating in a leadership development program. This provides a meaningful outlet for the peer-coaches to share their expertise and enhance their own professional development while building the talent pipeline. So many managers/leaders are left to ‘figure things out’ and peer coaching offers a structured approach to gain insight and further develop as a leader straight from peers who may have ‘walked in their shoes’.