“Associate with those you can learn from. Let friendly relations be a school of erudition, conversation, and refined teaching…Enjoy the company of people of understanding.”
-Baltazar Gracián, 17th Century Jesuit Scholar
This maxim reveals what we’ve known for centuries (perhaps millennia): one of the best conduits for learning and growth is surrounding ourselves with others who possess knowledge, insight and perspectives we can learn from.
As technology and digital information have proliferated, we are faced with more 'real' and 'imaginary' roadblocks that inhibit our ability to learn in the '“old-school” analog way from others. It's like being tech-savvy wizards who have forgotten how to use a magic wand!
Leadership principle: Peer coaching leads to durable, practical learning and increases a sense of community.
At a time when nearly every organization is grappling with how to tap into the productivity power of AI, I see room to apply similar energy to one of the most time-honored forms of learning and growth - peer coaching groups.
Unfortunately, skepticism abounds (including my own) when it comes to peer coaching, and yet a recent experience has shifted my thinking.
Last summer, I received an email invitation to join a pilot for Mentora Life, a membership-based community of professionals united in their quest for both material and spiritual advancement through self-discovery, lifelong growth, and the pursuit of a purpose-driven life.
For some reason, when I opened this email from Hitendra Wadhwa inviting my participation, I felt a stirring to join and applied to be a founding member within a few days of the invite.
Why was that?
First, I had followed and been intrigued by Hitendra’s work since my MBA at Columbia.1
Second, the pandemic had exacerbated an erosion of my personal “face-to-face” community and I had been looking for something to help me jumpstart my efforts toward reinvigorating it.
Third, I intuitively knew that outer success and inner strength are inextricably linked and yet, I longed for an approach that combined modern science with spiritual wisdom as well as a community of likeminded people that could join me in this journey.
As the first session approached, client demands started to pile up, and new, unexpected childcare needs emerged. What this meant was that I was unavailable for the first session during the times that worked for the rest of the group.
When the decision was made to move forward with a date that didn’t work for me, it triggered my “status” threat button (‘how could they choose a date that didn’t work for ME?’).
Despite the initial soul stirring, my ego nearly got in the way of starting Mentora Life before it had even begun.
Fortunately Lauren (the program leader) and Hitendra (the founder) had the patience to help me get creative about ways to make the date work. And just having those conversations emboldened me to make some adjustments to my calendar and find the childcare I needed to attend the session in person. And man…am I glad I did.
Though I make a living advising influential CEOs and senior executives on leadership, it was clear that I needed my own leadership re-boot. And Mentora Life is delivering on this goal. It has been one of the best learning and growth experiences I have participated in outside of “my lane” in a very long time.2
How is this relevant for you?
Aside from how I’ve personally benefited from Mentora Life, it’s also helped to crystallize the ingredients required for effective peer coaching.3
Peer coaching groups are underutilized, yet highly effective tools to augment learning, especially when they exist in parallel with new experiences. In fact, when designed effectively, they are 5-7 times more effective than training alone.4
The challenge is that many efforts called “peer coaching” tend to be poorly curated.
Here is what quality curation of peer coaching groups looks like based on this Mentora experience:
Diverse participants with common ground: It is a carefully curated group of influential, likeminded yet diverse leaders who are self-aware and lifelong learners. It’s also important that we all “opted in” to this experience…it wasn’t required.
Incredibly high quality self-driven learning: The foundation for our work is Hitendra’s highly engaging and impeccably well-researched book Inner Mastery, Outer Impact, which is complemented by high quality and practical online content that elaborates on the Five Core Energies from his book.
Consistent “meaty” and “semi-structured” monthly meetings: The group is committed to monthly 3-hour group coaching sessions that focus on discrete themes AND that tie to the Five Core Energies. The group was facilitated by a highly skilled executive coach and facilitator (shout out to Petra!) who then handed over the reins to an amazing and generous leader within the group to facilitate (go Claudina!). These structures are complemented by both explicit and implicit expectations about our commitment to the group.
Collective experience sharing and problem solving: The combination of the first three factors contributes to an environment of openness where we all benefit and learn from the group’s collective wisdom. We solve real problems together through a combination of deep listening, vulnerability, reflection, inquiry and advice. On a personal note, it has also helped to normalize and make me feel like I am not alone in confronting the challenges in my professional and personal life.
And to think, I almost missed out on all of this, because of my “busyness” and my ego.
In addition to the design challenges, I think these same obstacles (“busyness” and ego) are why “peer coaching” punches well below its weight as a learning and development accelerator.5
Efforts like peer coaching get deprioritized, particularly at more senior levels in an organization, due to the tyranny of the “urgent.” There are also many “hidden” tripwires in coordinating and facilitating such a group. Seemingly logistical items like scheduling, group composition and facilitation approaches can all unintentionally activate some element of threat (Status, Certainty, Autonomy, Relatedness or Fairness)6 and when individuals feel threatened, they disengage. Once a few individuals disengage, especially influential ones, the whole thing breaks down.
Lauren and Hitendra's brief intervention — a text and a 15-minute call — helped me overcome 'busy-ness' and ego, suggesting that these obstacles to peer coaching might not be as daunting as we often believe, even in large organizations.
Moreover, companies often invest millions in learning and development tools that simply don’t deliver results. Despite their engaging nature, sophisticated learning management systems and online self-learning platforms like LinkedIn Learning or Master Class have limited effectiveness as standalone tools. Research shows that training alone contributes to just 5-10% improvement, and is not long-lasting, often fading within 18 months.7
These tools are important though, especially at scale. They just need to be complemented by peer coaching experience to maximize their benefit.
So, consider this week’s Friday Reflection a call to action. Find ways to experiment with peer coaching.8 Maybe even create a peer coaching group for how to best leverage AI in your work and life (best of both worlds!)
And if you feel a stirring like I did, check out Mentora Life…the application deadline for the next cohort is Tuesday, January 23.
Take Action: Practical and Proven Steps
Identify a skill or a behavior that you would like to develop. Start with something more modest yet important to you. It has to be something that is a 9 or 10 out of 10 in terms of importance to you.
Use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to pull together a list of the best books and articles on the topic. Do 1-hour of research validating the sources that ChatGPT recommends and select one or more of them as foundational content (condition #2) for a peer coaching group.
Set-up an experimental peer coaching group. Reach out to a group of three to ten people who would benefit from and care deeply about developing a similar skill. Reference the four best practices that I gleaned from Mentora Life (community, self-driven learning, structure, and collective wisdom sharing and problem solving) and curate the group accordingly. Once you have identified a group, make an intentional effort to determine the date and time you will meet each month for at least six months. Collectively commit to those dates as something “sacred.” Also, be specific and thoughtful about how to structure each session.9
Reflect: Some Questions to Consider
What is a skill, behavior or mindset where I would like to make progress?
Who are 4 people in my organization or in my network that would also want to make progress in this area?
What would it take for me to start (or join) AND sustain a peer coaching group on this topic for the next six months?
If this week’s Friday Reflection was practical or enjoyable (or maybe even both!), please share it with your colleagues and friends.
His course on Personal Leadership and Success has consistently been one of the most popular over the last decade and a half. It was so popular when I attended that I never got into the course.
You’ve probably also noticed the frequency with which I cite his book and research in this newsletter.
I say “outside of my lane,” because new experiences and hands on trial and error have most certainly contributed to 70-80% of my learnings in life. If you are curious in what specific areas I have grown as a result of this experience…feel free to ask me.
The membership and global community aspects of Mentora Life make it more premium and broader than a traditional peer coaching group and yet the learnings from its curation can certainly be applied to a wider range of peer coaching set-ups.
Helping People Change by Richard Boyatzis, Melvin Smith and Ellen Van Oosten highlights peer-reviewed research on the effectiveness of coaching and peer coaching.
In Boyatzis’s research and separately in Bob Kegan’s research on developmental organization, they also make the argument that peer coaching can also transform culture. A topic for another time…
I’ve referenced this SCARF model before and may write a future Friday Reflection on it. For now, here’s a nice summary article on how to use this neuroscience-based model as a tool for influencing - maximizing reward and minimizing threat.
Richard Boyatzis and his colleagues at Case Western have done fascinating research that evaluates the effectiveness of different styles of learning interventions. The learning that takes place as a result of coaching is 5-7x’s more effective and 4-6x’s more durable than training programs alone.
It’s a great way to strengthen multiple networks (strategic network, developmental network and soul network).
If you want a more rigorous “How to” on peer coaching, the book Peer Coaching at Work is a bit bland but offers a guidebook of tools and practices to make peer coaching more effective.
Great reflection. And thank you for the foot notes too!