McGill began using Peer Group Coaching to support rebuilding a sense of community and to offer collaborative learning opportunities to 1700 managers and supervisors. Feedback from the sessions was overwhelmingly positive and participants kept returning and encouraging their friends to attend. The 90-minute learning format allowed people to engage in shared learning without missing a day, or even a half-day, of work. We can also set and guide the overall context to meet broader organizational needs. This is less expensive than sending one manager to a typical executive MBA program!

McGill launched a series of Peer Coaching Reflection Cafes (90-minute workshops) with managers and professionals from cross-sections of McGill University. These sessions were easy to administer.

The workshops provided immediate results. Feedback from the sessions was overwhelmingly positive and participants kept returning and encouraging their friends to attend. The 90-minute learning format allowed people to engage in shared learning without missing a day, or even a half-day, of work. There was rapid alignment among managers, and the networking and collaborative learning provided benefits beyond the material itself.  Clearly, the topics and guided conversation format gave us “permission” to talk about concerns that were critical to us. We had a context for surfacing important issues, without blame and realising that they were not alone in our experiences and challenges.

Within a couple of months, various units and departments began requesting peer-group coaching sessions for their management teams and some managers, in turn, adopted the approach with their small, intact teams. Managers who had volunteered to support and facilitate groups during the reflection cafes were now acting as champions, volunteering to support new management teams throughout the university.

The Peer Coaching approach allows us to have a very broad and deep impact—with low overhead. Departments are free to select topic discussion guides that suit their needs, internal manager champions support them, as needed, and we can set and guide the overall context to meet broader organisational needs.

One ‘unlimited use subscription license’ allows us to impact hundreds of managers. This is less expensive than sending one manager to a typical executive MBA program!