Benita Maben
A Careers Consultant with Heriot-Watt University, Benita also contributes to the Professional & Organisational Development coaching team, offering staff coaching, as well as facilitating staff development and training, across Heriot-Watt’s global campuses. Holding the ICF-accredited master's degree in Business Psychology with Coaching from Heriot-Watt, she has completed ICF’s ACC coach specific education and is focused on the client coaching experience process.
Actively involved with the award-winning Peer Coaching research project by the Heriot-Watt Coaching Lab, she offers training and supervision to Peer Student Coaches and participating Coachees through the entire research cycle, and collaborates with the global team for project planning and execution. Additionally, she is also involved in various university wide collaborations including research projects and industry engagement initiatives.
Benita’s professional journey, across both private and non-profit sectors, gave her the opportunity to travel and work in diverse global markets. The exposure to cultural diversity has enabled her to successfully navigate through culturally sensitive environments, contribute to widening participation programmes, and creatively incorporate these global perspectives in her coaching methodologies. Her research interests are in the areas of Coaching, L&D, Leadership Development, Executive Education, and Women Empowerment.
Insights from peer coaching
Coaching, an increasingly popular tool for supporting learning and development, helps individuals unlock and maximise their potential. Effective coaching is about achieving a high-performance culture, and focusing on the strengths of groups or individuals empowering them to realise their potential (Whitmore, 2009).
The Peer Coaching Research Project is a joint collaboration between different units in Heriot-Watt University (HWU) since 2022. The teaching team for the MSc Business Psychology with Coaching programme, the Student Wellbeing Service, and the Coaching Lab (a central hub for coaching research, teaching, and practice at HWU) collaborated globally to set up this initiative, which allowed our coaching students to apply and practice their coaching skills and enhance their learning experience with other HWU students.
The positive effects of this initiative complement existing coaching psychology literature that suggests peer coaching can enhance students learning through experiential coaching (e.g., Erikson et al., 2020; Short et al., 2020). Coaching psychology is both a theoretical and practical discipline, requiring educational provision in this area to therefore articulate with both theoretical and applied dimensions. Creating space for teaching to be enhanced through practical learning in a controlled, safe environment enables the improvement of our educational delivery for our students.
A peer coaching initiative involves team members coaching and supporting each other to achieve their personal and professional goals, often implementing new practices in teaching (Short et al., 2020). Peer coaching allows team members to share experiences, knowledge, and skills with each other in a supportive and non-judgmental environment, helping build stronger relationships and trust among team members, and has been found to be useful amongst teachers in particular (Waddell & Dunn, 2005). While this initiative has been run within a higher education setting, there is much to learn for organisations. Overall, this can be a valuable tool for organisations looking to develop their talent, improve performance, and foster a culture of collaboration and learning.
References
• Eriksen, M., Collins, S., Finocchio, B., & Oakley, J. (2020). Developing Students’ Coaching Ability Through Peer Coaching. Journal of Management Education, 44(1), 9-38. https://doi.org/10.1177/1052562919858645
• Short, E., Kinman, G., & Baker, S. (2020). Evaluating the impact of a peer coaching intervention on well‐being among psychology undergraduate students. Coaching Researched: A Coaching Psychology Reader, 285-296.
• Waddell, D. L., & Dunn, N. (2005). Peer coaching: the next step in staff development. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 36(2), 84-89.
• Whitmore, J. (2009). Coaching for performance: Growing human potential and purpose.