Peer Coaching: The Future of Leadership Development

June 14, 2010

Dear Attendees,

It was a pleasure to have you join Unbound Ideas and Joe Gonzalez for Peer Coaching, a webinar presented by Dr. Andrew Thorn on June 10. Thank you for providing feedback and participating in the conversation.

At the beginning of the presentation, Andrew discussed the ROI of coaching and the important role it plays in increasing engagement. He cited research that showed that when people are trained, the increase in productivity is 22 percent but when that training is followed up with coaching, the increase is 88 percent. This speaks to the impact of coaching.

Nevertheless, while the popularity of coaching has exploded in recent years, it has become increasingly expensive. In many organizations, coaching essentially functions as an executive perk. In order to spread the benefits of coaching, some organizations have trained HR people to be coaches, but even this fails to meet the full needs of the workforce. Peer coaching is being turned to as a means to extend the reach of coaching across the organization and to make coaching even more cost effective.

In terms of engagement, the impact of coaching is also clear. Drawing on the pre-event survey that he sent out to participants of the webinar, Andrew noted that most respondents were not satisfied with the leadership development opportunities in their organization. He also noted a Harvard Business Review article from May 2010 that 75 percent of employees prefer to learn from their peers, affirming the openness most have to the practice of peer coaching. Andrew and Joe discussed the engagement value of forming strong relationships with peers through mutual training and development.

After more discussion of the potential ROI of peer coaching, Andrew described the mechanics. Human Resources is the sponsor of the program, but although they are supportive and involved, most of the work is done externally. The peer coaching program is offered to volunteers initially. Not everyone who volunteers is chosen, but this “enrollment” aspect ensures commitment and openness. The initial number is kept small at around 50 participants. A 360 assessment of each participant follows. Next, Andrew works with the HR department to “pair” the participants. HR advises on this, but Andrew retains the final say, and bases his decision on the 360 assessment. The participants are trained to be supportive, thinking partners in coaching. The final piece of the program is to monitor and track progress through monthly meetings and brief surveys.

93 percent of the participants are found to have been improved in terms of leadership effectiveness by their colleagues. Comparing this to a thorough study on the effectiveness of executive coaching by Jim Underhill on work done at Agilent Technologies, Andrew finds the peer coaching method to have similar individual impact with wider reach at much reduced cost. The other interesting aspect of peer coaching is that it invokes a significant responsibility shift from the organization to the individual when it comes to leadership development. Individuals learn to take charge of their own development.

It was an insightful and impressive presentation, and we expect that many of the participants will be interested in pursuing more information about peer coaching, or investigating how such a system can be installed in their organization.

There were many detailed questions from the audience, some of which Andrew did not have time to address, so we will follow up on those in future messages. We encourage you to contribute your own observations and questions by emailing us or emailing Andrew directly.

On behalf of Joe Gonzalez and Andrew Thorn, we thank you again for joining us, and look forward to the next occasion.

Warm Regards,
Unbound Ideas