Peer coaching is a form of learning and development where two team-members work together to reflect on current practices; expand, refine, and build new skills; share ideas; teach one another; or solve problems. It’s used in some Hygge Companies to improve internal communication and foster personal development of the team-members. These conversations rely on feedback giving and receiving skills.

Peer Coaching Policy Template

Every 3 months (Jan 1, Apr 1, Jul 1, Oct 1) we devote some time to self-study and practice feedback during the peer coaching process. It’s up to you to decide whether you’d like to benefit from the peer coaching opportunity or not. It isn’t evaluation or performance review. For the most of us, it’s a good reason to connect to anyone in the team and talk. You might not have peers, that are doing the same job, but sometimes everything you need for solution is just fresh eyes, other people to weigh in.

Take time to analyze your job.

Questions that can support you research:

What did you do well this quarter?
Which goals did you meet? Which goals fell short?
What 2-3 things will you focus on in the next quarter to help you grow and develop?
What are your 2-3 strength that help you to get the job done? What can empower you?

As soon as you complete this research, pick at least one other member of the team to be your coach. Don’t just pick your buddies, it has to be someone who can provide a useful feedback. It can be someone you look up to and want to learn from, or an intern who is learning from you and can tell you how good you are at explaining things to others. Even if you feel you don’t really have any peers, you can always pick the team-member from the project you work together, or somebody who seems experienced in the areas you have difficulties with.
To start, you set up a 30-min call with this person and have a chat about what you are doing and the difficulties you are having. You can share your thoughts from job analysis or concentrate on some particularly difficult goal. At the end of the call, together you identify things that you might start, stop or continue doing to address the issues that you were talking about. Peer coaching is a good opportunity to calibrate your perception and get additional valuable inputs. Your peer is welcome to share additional points that you are good at and should leverage as your competitive advantage, as well as things that are dragging you down and get in the way.
Over the next 3 months track your progress with things you discussed during the first call. You are in charge of scheduling at least one additional catch-up of your progress with your original coach. To make the process more efficient, you can schedule 10-minutes calls every week to check on your progress. It is important to be open to feedback, as your colleague is volunteering their honesty and trust that you will listen and collaborate towards improvements, just as you have for them.
At the end of 3 months, pick another team-member and repeat the same process (can’t be the same person you had for the last review).

You don’t need to share the details of your conversation or notes with anyone if you don’t want to. The coaching process is there to help you grow, not to keep tabs on you.