What if I told you there is a tool that Leadership Learning Community has been using that takes in complex, high stakes challenges, and solves it with precision, emotional intelligence, and concise actionable next steps? This tool is so effective it has led to change and transformation in how leaders we work with tackle wicked problems, and ultimately win. Bonus: this tool does not come with the ethical or technical considerations Claude, ChatGBT, or Gemini does.
Transformation is a very big promise, so I don’t use it lightly. While transformation can indeed happen in a single moment, those generally offer very little control over how or what actually transpires. For example, unexpected chance encounters or traumatic experiences. On the flip side, there’s something more predictable, but usually a lot slower, like building habits, practices, and durable opportunities that can lead to transformation. It may take years of intentionality to gain the pacing, mindset, and leadership that can hold our values and strategies against the environment we practice in. Then there are peer learning spaces including peer coaching and consultancy. Recently, our peer learning communities have emerged as portals for change and transformation, and we think we know why.
What is peer learning?
Here’s our theory. 2025 was a year that forced the nonprofit sector into contracting while facing a hostile operating environment. One factor was that the US Federal government, the largest funder of nonprofits and NGOs in the world, shifted priorities quite suddenly and a barrage of executive orders stifled long standing partners like legal entities and philanthropy, among others. Along with H.R. 1 passing, the consequences were remarkable, and signaled a long-term shift in the social good sector’s landscape. There are many other layers as to why 2025 was disruptive and destructive, including philanthropy’s role, but my point is the effects are still ongoing; and in 2026, organizations are grappling with funding cuts, layoffs, a smaller capacity to meet a greater need, tangible safety and security concerns for staff and base, lawsuits, audits, subpoenas, threats of losing IRS charitable organization status, burnout, etc. Chaos is another way to describe it.
Imagine a community garden or farm where the crops fail. Something was not supportive of life, so in this idyllic place, the gardeners, soil experts, water quality people, weather forecasters, and other stakeholders start speculating together. They try to learn from each other to understand what happened, what is thriving elsewhere, and what might they do to fortify this soil, and what might grow well in these current conditions. The leadership qualities that help move us from chaos, destruction, and compost into renewal of soil and replanting of seeds so we can regrow looks like this idyllic scenario. Peer learning spaces require leaders to slow down out of respect for one another, and to listen, gather information, and learn as a goal before reacting. This orientation is rare in the years of quick AI answers and fast responses to many fires at once. This practice of being together pulls us out of the silo of problem solving alone, checks our egos, builds a muscle around curiosity and openness to other ways of knowing, and opens us up to trust in each other and interdependence. We have witnessed that participating in peer learning changes leaders, and the lesson is that we can be each other’s catalyst for transformation.
Why should we keep practicing peer learning?
Peer learning spaces are working right now because we need one another to care for and build power in our communities as resources and investments are waning. This is the time to weave networks, to connect across fields, strengthen relationships, and to slow down for clarity and purpose. We should keep practicing peer learning because it will allow us to also transform the social good sector and grow its culture towards a more resilient, sustainable, and even liberatory iteration of itself.
Ready to start? Leadership Learning Community and many other organizations hold peer learning spaces that are open to the public as well as open to select organizations. Please reach out if you’re interested in learning about our offerings. Please let us know if you have peer spaces we can amplify.
If you want to create your own space, here’s a template:
- Find 3+ people/organizations to commit to meeting up for 3 – 300 times.
- Answer a check-in question to open up the space. Here’s a list of questions we’ve used over the years.
- Use this peer coaching guide to tackle challenges. Alternate coaching partners each time.
- Close with a lesson, blessing, or gratitude.
