đź’¬

Coaching Guide to Peer Insights

đź“Ł
Peer Insights is a feedback collection tool that automates the process of collecting growth oriented feedback from your members’ coworkers. The Peer Insights tool then generates a report highlighting key takeaways (or insights) for the member in a clear and digestible format. This report is delivered to you as a Mento coach so you can debrief the data and identify clear actionable next steps for your member’s growth.

FAQs to help you understand the benefit and usage of Insights.

Here's a 6-minute walkthrough of what members, their peers, and you as their coach will see:

FAQs

What is included in Peer Insights?

  • Email template: We’ve drafted templates that members can copy/edit and send it to their coworkers to invite them to complete the survey
  • The Peer Insights survey: The survey features 4 questions and should take less than 2 minutes to complete.
  • The report: The results of the survey are aggregated and anonymized so that members can focus on the feedback and turning them into actions for growth.

What do I as a coach get out of it?

Getting clear feedback on the member from their coworkers means your job as a coach gets easier. With this information, you can help your member dive deeper into their opportunities, move the needle on growth, take concrete actions to improve and measure your impact as a coach over time. A whole world of possibilities now opens up:

  • Having access to rich data on your clients’ performance and development. You can see your members’ strengths and weaknesses with supporting evidence from their coworkers. You can use this data to inform your coaching approach and tailor your sessions to address your members’ most pressing needs and challenges.
  • Providing more effective and evidence-based feedback and advice. You can leverage the feedback from multiple sources to validate or challenge your own observations in the coaching relationship. You can also use the feedback to provide specific examples and suggestions to help your members improve.
  • Building trust and rapport with your members by showing interest in their feedback. You can demonstrate that you care about your members’ growth and success by asking them about their feedback, listening to their concerns, and celebrating their achievements. You can also encourage them to seek feedback regularly and make it part of their learning process.
  • Increasing your member retention by delivering more value and impact. You can help your members achieve faster and better results by using feedback as a catalyst for change. You can also increase your member satisfaction and loyalty by showing them the value of your coaching services.

Why should my members send a survey to their work colleagues?

Peer Insights is an easy way to get meaningful feedback on your members’ growth. If coaching is about improving our mindset, then getting peer feedback is a direct way to expand on the perspectives about ourselves.

Insights is a light-touch, 4-question survey that helps us get feedback about our performance quickly and effectively, without the pressure of a traditional performance review.

My member has already gone through a performance review/360 review at work. How is Peer Insights different from that?

Feedback is a critical piece to any growth plan. However, the feedback included in a traditional performance review has a really different context than that of the Peer Insights process, specifically: people mostly pick reviewers who will give them the best feedback; it’s hard to give people honest feedback when it’s tied to compensation or other high-stakes incentives; and it’s infrequent. Peer Insights should be viewed as complimentary and can help members build on performance feedback if they’ve received it. If your member is currently going through a performance review cycle, wait until the end of it, so that they can build on whatever feedback they obtained, and/or get additional feedback from folks they weren’t willing to include in their Performance Reviews.

At Mento, we believe in the power of regular, anonymous feedback as a driver of your members' growth. Compared to a traditional performance review, Peer Insights allows your members to:

  • Get feedback that improves their idea of their long term career growth
  • Choose the right people to ask feedback from (including folks outside the company!)
  • Get feedback from more people (a lightweight survey = easy for many people to complete!)
  • Establish a habit of getting regular feedback
  • Focus on what is being said vs who is saying what
  • Work with you as a coach to digest the data
image

Is this survey scientific?

While the specific topics of strengths and opportunities are tried and true areas that are addressed in the coaching relationship, the survey is not strictly scientific - it’s meant to provoke meaningful conversations about the member’s self-perception, alignment with others, and explore opportunities.

Why do we anonymize the data?

Human beings are fundamentally social animals (reference), and receiving feedback can be an emotionally activating experience. In many cases, our brains will start to rationalize feedback by going into a rabbit hole of guessing who said what, so to create a narrative around that (another reference).

However, in the spirit of growth, the guessing game is not necessarily helpful. We anonymize the data in Insights so that we can help members and coaches to stay focused on treating the feedback as a piece of data in the big picture. The truth is, not all feedback is accurate.

When debriefing the feedback, we encourage an attitude of open-mindedness and discernment. We encourage coaches to ask questions like, “What resonates? What doesn’t? What are you excited to work on knowing what you know now?” Holding space for growth that begins with an alignment with the member is an important skill to practice here.

How do I introduce Insights to my members?

Before you start introducing Insights to your members, it’s good to validate the member’s needs based on your knowledge about the member.

Ask yourself - is peer feedback going to help this person to reach their goals? Is this the right time to bring it up?

If the answers are yes, you should bring this up at a 1:1:

  • Introduce Insights as it relates to your member’s need
  • Share what Insights mean. Something like:
    • Insights is a feedback program that includes email templates and a pulse survey designed to help Mento members like you to collect anonymous and honest feedback from your co-workers.
    • There are just 4 questions to the survey, two multiple choices on your strengths and blockers at work, and two optional questions for people to give examples to their choices
    • Mento will aggregate the results anonymously so that we can talk about turning the feedback into actions in a debriefing conversation
  • If the member is in, you can show your member where they can kick off the Peer Insights tool via the member platform:

When should my members send the Insights survey?

Whether your member is just starting out or months into a coaching relationship with you, pulse-checking for feedback is almost never a bad idea, with the exception for:

  • The review season (if applicable at the company)
  • The holiday season
  • Any other time? Please slack @Angel Hu

There are times that are especially supportive to send out Peer Insights. For example:

  • Member wants a promotion in the next 3-9 months
  • It’s been over 6 months since the member has gotten constructive feedback at work
  • Member just finished a milestone project at work and wants to learn more from the experience
  • Member works in a one-person team, so it’s hard to get feedback
  • Any other time? Please slack @Angel Hu

Insights is also built of repeated use. We recommend sending the Insights survey every quarter to track progress on your member’s growth

What do the coaches see from the report?

The coach will get a first pass of the report to familiarize with the feedback and screen for any potential flags in the comments. In very rare cases, comments may contain strong language. If this is the case, please connect with @Tara or @Angel Hu before the debriefing session with the member.

After the coach reviews the report, they will share with their member via the Mento Platform.

What do the member see from the report?

The member will see a report with a summary of responses and anonymized comments. The report closes with debriefing questions to help the coach and the member to reflect and take actions on the feedback

Who will have assess to my member’s report?

You as the coach of your member, your member once you share the report with them, and the Mento platform admin team will have assess to your member’s report.

I have a B2B member. Will this report be sent to their manager?

No. This report is designed specifically to facilitate Mento members’ individual long term career growth. Before the report is shared only the coach and the Mento platform admin team have access to the responses. After it is shared, the coach, the member, and the Mento Platform admin team will have access.

Will feedback from be added in real time as they come in?

Yes! As responses come in, those will be added to the summary.

Will respondents be reminded if they haven’t submitted a response yet?

No, not at this time. The member who sent out the Peer Insights survey should take a few minutes 5 or 7 days after sending out the survey to nudge people to complete it!

When should I share the report to my member?

This depends on how many people your member asked to offer feedback. At the minimum, we require the report to have at least 4 responses before sharing to protect anonymity.

We also strongly recommend you to share the report live at the beginning of a 1:1 session so that you are here to support your member as they process the feedback. Avoid sharing the report with the member before the session because this can lead to rumination and stress.

We recommend checking the response status at around the 12-day mark, then sharing with the member when 70+% of the respondents have answered.

For example, if the member asked from 5 coworkers and there are 3 responses after 12 days, do not share the report. Once there are 4 responded in, share it with your member. If the member asked from 10 coworkers and there are 7 responses after 12 days, communicate with your member that the next 1:1 will be a debriefing conversation, and then share the report live at the beginning of your 1:1.

How do I get the survey results and prepare them to be shared? (step-by-step guide)

How do I walk the member through the results during the debriefing conversation?

📌If you’d prefer to learn from watching a demo conversation, head over to the bottom of the page!

As a coach, you should have a debriefing conversation to walk the member through the results.

In the debriefing conversation, start with a note of reminder:

  • this survey is meant to collect more perspectives on the member’s strengths and weakness
  • this survey is not meant to give the member a scientific assessment of who they are

In the conversation, go over the top strengths and opportunities, and ask these questions:

  • Why are we talking about this?
  • What is surprising to you? Why?
  • What resonates with you? Why?
  • What does [specific result] mean to you?
  • Does this [specific result] remind you of a situation at work or in life?
  • What are you excited to work on as a next step?

Don’t worry about fitting everything in your 1:1. This conversation may take more than one session, and that’s ok! Remember to close out the debriefing conversation with specific goals your member can work on. You should then help the member stay on track by keeping them accountable for their progress.

Who will benefit from using Insights?

Member: First and foremost, this is servicing the member’s growth. Getting honest feedback is often awkward, this survey helps lower the barrier of entry. Plus, it’s probably good branding to share with coworkers that they’re motivated to grow by proactively asking for feedback.

Coach: Coaches have experienced challenges with identifying the right goals with their members because of a lack of awareness. Having data from co-workers can be really helpful in terms of addressing some of the blindspots the member might have.

The Company: The company is now aware that their employee is eager to learn more about themselves.

Mento: We can spread the gospel of growth in a mutually beneficial way.

Mock Session: Peer Insights summary

We made a short mock session where Angel walks a member through an example Peer Insights summary. The content of this summary is fabricated and is meant to help us demonstrate how a session might go. We hope this helps! This is our first go at a mock session, so please leave comments, questions, and suggestions inline:

Part I - How to introduce the summary during a coaching session

Part II - Walking through Strengths and Opportunities

Part III - Turning feedback into action