PEER 2 PEER MENTORING

A Processes for Business Growth

Looking for support as you develop your business but don’t feel that having a personal mentor is right for you just now? Then maybe Peer Mentoring would suit you better. You can join a local group or even set one up yourself.

So what is Peer Mentoring for Business Growth?

It is a way in which a group of two to six people come together on a regular basis – usually once month – supporting each other to grow their businesses, their learning and their skills. For new start-up businesses it is advisable to have an experienced business facilitator to help with challenging issues or business knowledge gaps.

The idea is that each individual attending a Peer Mentoring Group comes with a business issue, problem or knowledge gap they want help and support with. The group then decides how the session will be run or the individual may ask for his/her session to be run a certain way. There are several ways to run Peer Mentoring Groups:

1.      Supportive  – Peers give their positive thoughts and ideas about
         what they would do/have done in similar circumstances

2.      Questioning – Peers only ask the person questions to gain
         greater clarity on the issue and to get the person to think about
         actions to move forward

3.      Challenge – Peers  ask challenging questions to get the person
         to really address the issue at a dynamic level

4.      Devil’s Advocate – Peers state concerns, doubts, niggles about
         the issue

5.      Good News – Peers help celebrate someone’s success and ask
         questions to identify the factors that contributed to the success

6.      Stress Busters – Peers offer support, feedback and stress
         reducing ideas

7.      Dress Rehearsal – The person rehearses an actual situation
         they are going to have to face. The Peers then give feedback with
         one constructive criticism and three positive statements

If there is no business facilitator one is chosen from the group to manage the flow and timing of the session. Each session lasts about an hour and can be undertaken face to face or online using Skype or a similar platform that all members have access to. Google Hangouts are particularly good for this as you can also share and work on a document at the same time and it is FREE!

To keep the sessions short it is important that a number of rules are followed and managed by the facilitator. These include:

·         Only one person speaking at a time

·         No discussion is allowed (This takes up too much time)

·         Each person presenting their issue states what they have learnt
          or what action they will take after all the group has imputed on
          their issue

·         At the start of subsequent sessions there is a very quick ‘round
          robin’ of Actions and Outcomes since the last session. This
          creates peer pressure and enhanced learning, success and
          business growth

These groups are very dynamic and are dependent on the right mix of people in each group. It is therefore quite acceptable for individuals, in the early stages of the development of each mentoring group, to ask to join or start another group or request that the group is split in some way to form a couple of new groups. No one should take offense at this as there is a great deal of importance placed on the right ‘fit’ and mix within each group.

If you run a business in the Newport and South Wales are and want to start a group then please let me know as I would be delighted to help you.