“Peer learning is most effective when learners receive feedback from multiple voices. They are much more likely to implement the recommended changes.”
What is Peer-learning?
Peer-to-peer learning is a type of mutual learning and training methodology. It involves the interaction of yourself with other members of the same level taking part in collaborative interaction.
You can realize that peer learning is significant at work. It builds an occupied workforce that is consistently fostering everybody’s skills.
In this process of peer learning, the focus is laid on learning as well as emotional support which every participant gives to each other
In this way, participants share relevant experiences with each other to boost learning.
Peer-learning in the Operating Environment
Peer learning is extended to colleagues at work. If your colleagues learn mutually through peer to peer then the organization is highly benefited. Eventually, you can observe that employees teach one another.
Such interaction among employees enables one to enhance their learning of new skills which further benefits the managers also. Peer training empowers managers to identify knowledge gaps within companies.
Thus, any meaningful collaboration of peers at work can be considered peer learning.
Necessities of Peer to Peer Learning
According to Paul Solarz, “Collaboration helps us to know more than we are capable of knowing than by ourselves.”
You all will have to agree with the thought that the experiences and knowledge of the employees’ are one of the biggest assets to an organization. And this should be leveraged.
Think about the benefit of the interaction of all employees among themselves daily. A company can be enriched heavily as it hires all capable employees. Now think about how much expertise your peers could gain if this knowledge is shared.
Peer-to-peer learning is also distinctively well suited to the way we learn. People grow new skills best in any situation that includes all four phases of what we call the “Learning Loop”:
- Gain knowledge
- Practice by applying that knowledge
- Get feedback
- Reflect on what has been learned
Peer-to-peer learning covers all of these above pointers and improves efficiency and imparts effective training. After the interaction, you will observe that your peers have learned a lot and have become more confident and fortified with ideas to handle any situation in a better way in the future. Thus, the conversation has become more productive.
This peer-to-peer learning session has given a sound platform to Professionals to develop some good attributes:
It Boost-up Networking and Collaboration:
Networking is a process in which you as professionals of the same domain meet together, conduct seminars, or at times exchange business cards. Nowadays, webinars, Zoom, etc. are also a medium for interaction during this pandemic phase. Thus, these are great sources of new perspectives and ideas. Being peers you all interact intensely with each other so you learn to work as a single unit. This results in making a congenial workplace to share your ideas. Then the way when you as professionals meet with each other you develop trust and connections amongst yourselves.
In this way, peer-to-peer learning in the workplace is used to inculcate more autonomy. This further leads to enhanced collaboration. It leads to good communication amongst your team members and this would lead to innovative solutions.
Networking is considered to be an indispensable skill for all professionals, regardless of industry. In a recent survey by LinkedIn, it is found that 85 percent of jobs are filled via networking.
A robust professional network can not only boost up your career development faster but also broader knowledge, greater authority, and an improved capacity to innovate.
As you pursue your goals you will find trusted friends and colleagues who will share their knowledge and direct you towards learning and development opportunities.
Through making collaborative efforts you can grow your professional network and form meaningful connections. Due to this, you may be exposed to career paths and interests you had never even considered. Further, some new aspects are perpetuated in professionals.
a. It Enhances Confidence and Security:
This interaction fosters self-confidence in you who is working as a professional in a company. This further gives a feeling of belonging and connection. After sharing different opinions on various matters related to your domain you develop a wide perspective. This perception builds your self-confidence within you. It also gives you a sense of security.
b. It can Improve Retention and Productivity:
When as a Professional you get a chance to learn more efficiently via your peers then you can absorb more knowledge as more time is provided to you. Even when you get the time you try to do research in a particular domain to excel. It is all due to increased self-confidence. Moreover, the sessions give optimistic results as when you get an opportunity to be connected with many experts via webinar, Zoom, etc. which enhances your experience. This, in turn, enables you to complete the work and increase productivity.
c. It Promotes Comfort Zone:
When as a professional you are connected with other experienced professionals then it helps you to feel more integrated. You try to be recognized as one of them. Slowly, you may develop a sense of responsibility and mature by being in their company. This integration gives you a feeling of pride, boosts your morale to start working like those professional experts, and makes you feel to see yourself to that level after some time. Thus, there is a probability to become an industry expert.
Gain Knowledge:
When you get an opportunity to be a part of networking then simultaneously you also understand the importance of collaboration. These two aspects are big enough to accelerate your journey to gain knowledge. During such interaction, you come across many experienced professionals who indirectly become your mentor as they disclose some formulas of success, give clues about solutions to problems, and so on. These guiding professionals trace out all possible networks for you so that you can think about your career.
During the intensive interaction phase of peer learning, you as a professional can exchange ideas, which in turn widens your vision and perspectives. You may understand a concept that never clicked in your mind. Further, these activities develop skills in organizing and planning learning activities, working collaboratively with others, enabling you to master the difficult skills of giving and receiving honest, constructive feedback, and evaluating their learning.
As when you gain knowledge then it helps professionals in the following two ways:
- It Reinforces Employees’ Existing Knowledge:
It is evident through studies that Professionals who spend time in such peer learning develop a better sense of understanding. The imagination, power of visualization, and vision all widen to an unlimited extent. It boosts not only career growth but also self-confidence.
- It Offers Space to Ask Questions:
In this peer-to-peer learning system, you as a Professional have the freedom to challenge ideas with your peers. This attitude broadens your vision. While moving ahead as a professional you gradually develop a sense of leadership. This is a spontaneous change.
Upskilling:
When you are acquiring knowledge through interaction, meetings, seminars, workshops, etc. then gradually you as a Professional get a chance to improve your skills. The major fields you are upgrading yourself are
a. Communication Skills:
Communication Skills are an inevitable part and parcel of every individual’s life. If you have a good command of communication then you have the power to do wonders. You can motivate and inspire your colleagues, subordinates and can bring in incremental change by empowering them to work toward common goals. You can play as an instrumental tool to stimulate the mind with your effective communication.
With clarity of opinion, you will not only articulate your views but even your gestures reveal the expression. Thus, in this communication, you are able to receive and give feedback most positively. So, it is a general recommendation to all to develop effective communication skills. And good communication is a sign of career growth.
b. Leadership Skills:
Leadership skills are the strengths and capacities via which you can supervise processes, guide initiatives, and steer your employees toward the accomplishment of goals.
Leadership skills are a fundamental part of positioning you as leaders to settle on insightful choices about your association’s central goal and objectives, and appropriately allocate resources to accomplish those orders. Leadership skills incorporate the capacity to appoint, motivate and convey viably. Other administration attributes incorporate genuineness, certainty, responsibility, and creativity.
Good leadership skills enable to build some important qualities which are listed below:
1. Relationship Building (Base of High Performing Team)
If you want to thrive in a good position in any firm then you are supposed to acquire solid leadership skills. But this leadership skill can be well developed with peer learning. This peer learning gives rise to networking where you learn about empathy, coordination, and so you develop a sense of understanding. If you have sound networking then automatically you will inculcate a strong bond of relationship. And if this relationship is implemented in the workplace then you will enjoy increased productivity due to high employee engagement. Further, this leads to making your team members happy and will surely get love and respect from them. So, without putting much effort you are able to build up a relationship that is the foundation of a high-performing team.
2. Agility & Adaptability
As a professional, in peer learning, when you develop your relationship bond and can comprehend the situations, circumstances, ideas of your subordinates, background to which they belong then gradually you will implant adaptability in your gesture. By this time you are able to understand the importance of adaptability to be done with agility. If it is applied then an effective leadership skill enables you to adapt according to changes. In it, you may work out of your comfort zone. Later, if this skill is inculcated then you can raise your business to a competitive edge. It will facilitate you to explore innovation and creativity as a part of the skill-set of the best leaders.
3. Innovation & Creativity
In this journey of peer learning, when you have developed a sound relationship base and can do work with agility then slowly and steadily you move in the zone of innovation and creativity.
It has been found that enthusiasm is needed to build up your business. For this, your approach will be innovative and creative. This attitude will always infuse an element of liveliness. Therefore, the hike in the Apple Industry is observed. Globally, it is found that if you unlock creative potential then it is a key to economic and social growth. The increasing demand for creativity and innovation will continue to be a driving force for professionals. And so you, being one of them, must harness your leadership skills in these areas to be effective and competitive.
4. Decision-Making
In this array of peer learning when you have fortified yourself with skills of relationship development, adaptability and innovation then steadily you become confident. This self-confidence boosts you to make decisions.
So, this decision-making is another important aspect of leadership skills. If you want to be an effective leader then your decision-making skills should be top-notch. Your critical decisions should be sound, rational, and solid which affects your organization on a large scale.
Your success and that of your organization are acknowledged via your decision-making skills. When you make decisions and stand with confidence then a real leadership persona emerges to convince others.
Great initiative abilities are the first to spot on the list of skills that spotters need to zero in on when recruiting individuals or when directors advance pioneers from inside the association.
The most noteworthy positioning organizations chase after individuals with very much sharpened initiative abilities to fill their generally pursued chief positions.
5. Time Management
Time is precious and waits for none. Another skill that you acknowledge in peer learning is Time management. When you have become sound with the above-mentioned skills then you learn some key features to manage time. If you manage time then you can manage your business, competitors, materials demand and supply, and so on. Due to this, you can maintain transparency at your workplace. A hassle-free working environment takes place in a congenial atmosphere.
Time management increases productivity, giving satisfaction to customers and also making both employees and their boss feel proud. Thus, a strong bond of faith develops between client and owner. Finally, you can achieve the goals of your business.
c. Self-evaluation and Personal Development:
When as a professional you are able to inculcate sound communication skills and leadership skills then you can build up a quality to self-evaluate yourself. This in turn helps you to develop your personal development. You are now able to make yourself self-aware of all the circumstances and can understand your tendencies as well as that of your fellow employees. Thus all these help you to unlock potential in yourself and your team. Then, it would be easy to set goals and hold yourself accountable by creating a leadership development plan to guide and track your progress. Thus, if you make use of some of these attributes then you can become an effective leader and unleash the potential in yourself and others.
This up-gradation in communication and leadership skills enables you to
a) Understand Your Business
To lead your organization to progress, you want an unmistakable comprehension of its internal activities, just like the setting in which it works. This incorporates external forces, for example, industry patterns and changes in buyer conduct and inclinations.
It’s likewise vital to search internally to comprehend your association’s design and elements. Assuming that misalignment exists between the internal and external forces molding the business, it tends to be hindering its prosperity.
Utilizing your investigation of those inward and outside forces, you want to foster a dream for your division, unit, or organization and motivate people around you to execute on it. This requires correspondence with each level of your association and driving through different supervisors. This is especially difficult in settings with scattered groups and multi-site tasks—particularly during a time characterized by remote work
b) Change Management and Innovation
Probably, each association will, sooner or later, go through progress or change to stay feasible and scale. Regardless of whether onboarding new employees, growing a division, or converging with another organization, these progressions can altogether affect the direction of your business.
To be a successful organizational leader, you need to manage change effectively.
One of your fundamental objectives ought to be to execute your vision and methodology and lead your association to progress. To do as such, changes all through your organization probably should be made.
Communication assumes a significant part in changing the executives. There are, nonetheless, numerous different parts that become an integral factor. For instance, association and a sharp eye for detail are crucial for keeping your technique on target. Moreover, you want to distinguish openings for positive change, characterize a system to execute that change, and accumulate partners’ help.
Career Growth:
To build social ventures you need confidence, resilience, and the capacity to manage self-doubts. It is all acquired via strong networking. You come in contact with many professionals of your domain who all sort your problems only through discussions. They inspire you to develop self-confidence and generate enthusiasm to begin your work with full conviction. This is a cause to boost up your career.
Since in peer-to-peer learning or seminars or in your journey of entrepreneurship you happen to take-in other’s views, skills, experience, knowledge, ideas, and these all change the spectrum of your ideology. It instigates you to be more radical in thought process, attain flexibility to give space to your colleagues or subordinates, enable you to understand problems of your employees and thus you gradually inculcate a leadership quality which helps to transform your position. Even at times, your fellow associates will recommend you for a job. This all adds to your career growth. At the time of the award ceremony, nearly 90% of award recipients asserted they benefited both personally and professionally via delivering their projects.
However, to get a hike in your career you can join networks like Good for Nothing or Make Sense or participate in an event like Living it Festival where young people from all over the country come to talk about social entrepreneurship.
Inspiration:
When such conversations take place between you and your peers then it encourages you to develop your collaboration skills, introduce you to different perspectives, and gain insight into different ways to solve challenges in the workplace. No one can ever try to let you down as you have been fully charged with enthusiasm and have attained an ideal position. It means your thought, perspective, experience, etc. are all refined due to peer learning.
Conclusion:
Finally, we can sum up by saying that peer learning plays a vital role in transforming a simple personality of an individual into unique after attending workshops, interacting with superior executives of the same domain, and so on. And in due course of time, receive immense knowledge and guidance.
Likewise, in today’s scenario, you can access your peer learning process by adopting Mavenow app in your life. If you are an expert then you can acknowledge identity by interacting with Professionals who further help you to gain career growth and prosperity. Moreover, such experts are also welcome to join Mavenow app so that they can extend their helping hand to hundreds of seekers and professionals to move on fast forward to achieve their targets. In this way, the Mavenow app stands as a problem-solving app able to transform your life and position at your workplace. Thus, the Mavenow app can be explained in the words of Steve Jobs that “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Thus, Mavenow app has the capacity to create something that will make the world (organization) awesome.