Peer Coaching Part Two
As promised, I will describe some other elements from the peer coaching process that I began in the last post.
The next section we work on after “ADD moments and victories” is described as “working on exercises”. In this section, anyone in the group who has taken on a longer project shares on their progress. The longer project could be setting life goals, or a budget, or following a process found on the Internet, or elsewhere, that seems useful to that individual. This is followed by “report on success with goals set at the last meeting”. Here we talk about progress or success, stumbling blocks or any readjustment in plans to accommodate obstacles. I should point out that there is no interchange in these sections. Participants do not comment or ask questions until the next section which we call “requests for feedback”. Then and only then do we ask questions or comment on something someone has said and only on the part on which they have specifically requested feedback. Our exprience tells us that we are sometimes prone to make comments or criticize other participants efforts and lose sight of our own activities. The final section is “plans for the period until the next meeting” and this section is divided into action items, with notations for what is to be done, how, and by when.
There have been people arriving on our doorstep who share just about experiences–mostly negative. Nothing is said to them, but after awhile they either notice that no one else is sharing in the same manner or they run out of things to say and drift away. We call our process peer coaching for a reason. It is not a support group in the usual sense.
Peer coaching is not a replacement for the personal coach. The two founders of the group both used a coach for a period of time and benefited from it. Peer coaching is an alternative…perhaps even a supplement. If you were to ask me, I would probably say that it is not as effective as personal coaching but it is a lot less expensive. We are still fine tuning the process. What we don’t have is a way of checking in as most personal coaches do but hopefully we will find a way to do this and experience the same benefits. What I do like about peer coaching is the sense of independence and this may sound weird since we do it as a group. The key feature is that there is no professional in charge. We are in charge and this idea can be quite liberating.