Peer Coaching


could be involved in peer coaching, an administrative platform is required. The platform is useful for:


• supporting employees in developing their purpose in getting started with peer coaching


• finding a pairing match for each employee


• structuring the development of an agreed and specific outcome for the engagement


• providing tips to make the engagement run smoothly • providing a tool to administer and track progress


Paul Donovan, School of Business, Maynooth University


Is technology lending itself to


a different style of coaching? A while back, in a piece for this magazine, I noted that new learning practices, under the banner of social learning and 70:20:10, were affecting our roles in learning and development. I argued that there were positives and negatives to come with these changes and that we had better get ready. In this article, I want to discuss one of these changes, peer coaching, and to look forward as to what else might be to come in these general trends.


Peer coaching happens when two employees collaborate to grow skills, reflect on experiences, aspirations, and to solve problems. Part of peer coaching is to help employees uncover insights about themselves and their work. Peer coaching encourages employees to teach one another.


If you thought that all this sounds a bit like the job of the manager, you would be partly correct. Over the past 30 years, we have placed many of the traditional responsibilities of management, especially with respect to employee learning, on the shoulders of the employees themselves. The 70:20:10 model itself facilitates a greater emphasis on social learning and learning in general outside of the classroom. Peer coaching is a natural consequence of this emphasis but it is not mentoring.


Mentoring relies on knowledge transfer principally from mentor to mentee. Peer coaching relies on the process of getting people together for short bursts where employees activate and validate knowledge. Mentoring often relies on hierarchy and can be problematic in matching up pairs. Peer coaching is open to all and can engage all employees in social learning.


Peer coaching is social learning. The proponents of 70:20:10 predicted that 90% of our learning would take place working mainly with peers. Accordingly, the 10% that we reserve for formal learning is less significant. This is because the organisation in general and managers in particular, are not the only source of knowledge in the firm.


Because of the scale of interactions, when everyone in the firm 27


With most systems, the engagement begins with the development of the employee objectives. Usually the system achieves this by using a special inventory or questionnaire that unearths the needs and the reasons why the employee is engaging in the exercise. This becomes the starting point for opening conversations about themselves and their needs. It enables both parties to conduct a useful and effective conversation with one of their peers and it makes them comfortable in disclosing.


An employer may choose to conduct a matching exercise independently of the system, but this is not necessary. The system has the capability to do this automatically based on the profiles and assessments of registered individuals. We can program systems to use algorithms and thereby create logical pairings among employees which renders the system to be self-administering.


Each proprietary system has its own unique structure. Imperative™ uses a three-meeting structure over three/four weeks with each meeting lasting around 45 minutes. Reducing engagements to such short durations controls the amount of time expended in these relationships. It also keeps the interaction fresh and participants are likely to focus more to extract the maximum benefit in a short amount of time. As such, the pairings and the interaction are unlikely to stagnate.


Peer coaching systems enable structured coaching conversations. Participants are encouraged to work from the goals and objective of their partners, and they lead each other through an engagement grounded in each other’s needs.


Prompts appear and the structure enables the pair to engage in a cycle of sharing, reflection and assessment. An unstructured coaching event might become unfocused and rambling in the hands of inexperienced participants. However, peer coaching systems usually demand that participants follow the prompts and engage in active listening and note taking for each other. This builds intimacy, disclosure, and a level of reciprocity.


At the end of each conversation and the entire engagement, each participant writes down their reflections on the initiative. This enables their learning to be copper fastened for maximum retention. The participants also generate a real action item to pursue and achieve. As a result, peer coaching interactions offer ways of measuring effectiveness and results.


Peer coaching, as mentioned earlier, is one more change to emerge from a wider movement in L&D. This is a movement where responsibilities in L&D have shifted on to the shoulders of employees – and there is more to come. Already, ‘always-on’ feedback systems are enabling staff to give feedback in real time.


Could widespread peer performance evaluation using hand-held technology become an option? What effects might this have on managers? Indeed, what effects might this have on the role of management itself?


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