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When your team wants to learn a new skill, where do they turn offset? Google? YouTube? Their corporate grooming programs? No. According to a written report conducted by our company, Degreed, more than workers offset turn to their peers (55%)—second merely to request their bosses. Peer-to-peer learning tin be a powerful development tool that breaks through some common barriers to skill-building — and it has other benefits every bit well.

Yet many organizations have nevertheless to create a formal structure for peer-to-peer learning. In a McKinsey survey, Learning & Evolution officers written report that while classroom training, experiential learning, and on-the-job awarding of skills are now in regular utilize as learning mechanisms, less than one-half of organizations have instituted any kind of formal peer-to-peer learning. I in three respondents said their organizations don't even have any systems in place to share learning among employees.

In the enquiry for our book The Expertise Economy , we found that managers are often reluctant to found formal peer-to-peer learning primarily because of a perception that experts exterior the company are more valuable as teachers than those inside it, and because peer-to-peer programs are spaced out over numerous sessions. In this context, sending employees to a unmarried mean solar day of intense training from an outside expert is assumed to be more fruitful.

It isn't. First, peer-to-peer learning taps into the expertise that already exists in your organization. Recollect of all the smart people that you hire and environs yourself with every solar day, and how much could be gained if peers shared their expertise with each other to acquire and build new skills.

Peer-to-peer learning is also uniquely well suited to the style we learn. People gain new skills all-time in any situation that includes all four stages of what nosotros telephone call the "Learning Loop": gain knowledge; practice past applying that knowledge; become feedback; and reflect on what has been learned. Peer-to-peer learning encompasses all of these.

For example, when Kelly was in charge of learning at LinkedIn, her team created a peer-to-peer learning program designed around the company'south key corporate values. Ane section of the program focused on difficult conversations; each participant was asked to identify a real-life difficult conversation they needed to take at work (especially one they might be avoiding). They were first taught about difficult conversations (stage one); side by side they expert with each other before belongings the conversations in existent life (phase 2). One of the participants, John, confronted his employee Mark most his missed deadlines, a pattern which had been negatively affecting the team. The chat did not go well — John felt bad-mannered, and Mark got defensive. When John shared this experience with his peers in the learning group, they openly shared their views and ideas, and their ain experiences of similar situations (phase three). Equally everyone in the grouping — not just John — reflected on what they had learned, they ended that they had all become more confident and armed with ideas about how to improve handle a similar situation in the future (stage four). Subsequently grouping members indicated that their real-earth difficult conversations indeed had get more than productive.

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A learner's development is dependent on a willingness to make mistakes, challenge ideas, and speak up well-nigh concerns — as John and his colleagues did in their group. Unlike some learning methods — similar tests or exams, or high-pressure demonstrations of skills — peer-to-peer learning creates a space where the learner tin experience condom taking these risks without a sense that their boss is evaluating their functioning while they are learning. You're more than probable to take aboveboard conversations about areas you need to develop with a peer than with someone who has ability over your career and income. In peer-to-peer learning, the dynamics of bureaucracy disappear. And unlike other methods — like classroom lectures or online compliance training — peer-to-peer learning provides a structured opportunity to have these discussions to brainstorm with.

A secondary benefit of peer-to-peer learning is that the format itself helps employees develop management and leadership skills. Group reflection conversations help employees chief the difficult skills of giving and accepting honest, constructive feedback. Because feedback flows in both directions, participants in peer-to-peer learning tend to put more time and energy into making sure the feedback they provide is meaningful. They recall from the perspective of their peer, consider where each is coming from, and try to get specific about what will be most helpful and constructive. This doesn't happen as ofttimes when a boss delivers ane-way feedback to employees. Similarly, peer learning gives employees experience in leadership, handling different points of view, and developing skills such every bit empathy.

Setting Up a Peer Learning Program

Formal peer-to-peer learning programs can take many forms. Equally a manager, y'all tin concord your program online or in person. Your program could pair participants in i-to-ane sessions, create cohorts working together on existent work problems over a few months, or involve weekly sessions in which individuals share the latest knowledge they've gained with their peers with enough of fourth dimension for discussion and reflection.

To make any peer-to-peer learning program successful for your team, we recommend a few best practices:

Appoint a facilitator. Although the structure of peer learning is horizontal rather than hierarchical, it's of import to accept a neutral political party who is not the team's director facilitate the program to keep in on rails. This person — ideally a skilled facilitator — should organize sessions, keep everyone on topic, keep conversations moving forward, and maintain a positive temper for participants to learn, experiment, and ask questions.

Build a safety environs. Peer learning only works when participants feel safe enough to share their thoughts, experiences, and questions. They need to be open and vulnerable plenty to accept constructive input, and likewise take the courage to give honest feedback rather than telling people what they want to hear.

To build a safe environs, gear up basis rules. Some suggestions: confidentiality must be honored; feedback should be perceived as a generous gesture that should e'er be met with gratitude; participants should practice empathy, putting themselves in others' shoes; and participants should never be mocked or embarrassed for expressing themselves in front of their peers.

Focus on real-world situations. Whenever possible, these sessions should focus on genuine bug to solve. People are more likely to participate, larn, and retrieve new skills if they are learned in the form of addressing a real-life challenge.

Encourage networking. It helps to prepare online social networks around learning, organize networking events for people to hash out their expanse of expertise, and plant learning groups that encounter regularly to discuss ideas. Some organizations build company-wide campaigns in an effort to get anybody involved.

With a well-built peer-to-peer learning plan in place as a complement to more traditional learning programs, your team will build lasting skills and relationships that will permit them to bring the skills they acquire in those programs into their daily piece of work.