The power of peer-to-peer approaches to kickstart lasting culture change

If you’ve ever been on a Q Visit, you’ll know that they are immersive experiences, even when held online. They are deep dives into the culture and craft of organisations inside and beyond the health and care sector. A Visit lasts two to three hours so there is time to learn, ask questions, try out new tools and practices and connect with fellow attendees.

If you’ve never been on Q Visit, or didn’t even know they exist, I hope this blog will give you a flavour of what they’re like and what you might gain from attending one in the near future.

In April Q visited the ​‘virtual office’ of Huddlecraft. Huddlecraft is a studio, platform and community of support for peer-led learning and action. Huddlecraft describes its approach as ​‘the ​​practice of combining people to unearth and multiply potential’. It exists to tackle steep learning curves, together. Q is no stranger to peer-to-peer approaches. 

Our very first Q Lab explored what it might take for peer support to be more widely available. Q’s online groups are another space where members question and learn together, supporting each other as peers in their improvement journeys. Despite Q members’ familiarity with peer-to-peer approaches, there was a lot to learn from the Huddlecraft team. 

They have more than six years’ experience in developing, perfecting and spreading the craft of peer learning, delivering training in organisations like Nesta, Sport England, the Royal College of Art and the NHS. 

This Visit was an experience of my worlds colliding. I’ve been a part of the Huddlecraft community for the last few years. In 2021, I took the Huddlecraft 101 online course and this year I’m hosting my own Huddle, a six month peer-to-peer learning journey titled Living The Good Life. 

On my second day working for Q, it felt nice to see a few familiar faces on the screen: Zahra Davidson (co-founder and Chief Executive of Huddlecraft) and Kate Weiler (representing both Huddlecraft as one of their Learning Designers and the Visits Collective who organise Q Visits), our hosts for the day.

I find that the insights that stick often do so because they are accompanied by either something visual, like a powerful photograph or an on-the-point metaphor, or an authentic sharing of relevant lived experience. In this Visit we had both. Zahra shared a nature-inspired metaphor to describe the nurturing dynamic of a Q huddle. 

When a peer group comes together with a shared purpose or learning question, she observed, they essentially form a ​‘microclimate’. In a microclimate, things can safely grow and flourish in a way that is not possible in the wider environment. In an organisation or network this could look like multiple peer groups experimenting together and prototyping different approaches that are not feasible to implement or experiment with at a larger scale. 

Holly Paris, a GP from Weston-super-Mare, shared her lived experience of forming a learning ​‘microclimate’ with her colleagues. She had joined a training course that Huddlecraft offered in partnership with NHS South West Leadership Academy at the same time as she had decided to start a new care home service. 

She struggled to find experienced people to work with. But there was an interest from folks to try something new. ​‘There was nobody to teach us,’ Holly explained, ​‘so we had to teach ourselves.’ 

Sharing of these kinds of ​‘on the ground’ examples and experiences are an important element of Q Visits. They help attendees gain a clearer understanding of how they can start to use the concepts and practices in their own work settings. In this way, stories like Holly’s inspire action and innovation to spread. 

The cohesion they experienced created a cascade of learning within the team. The trust between them grew and they felt connected. They developed a sense of agency and a belief that they could apply themselves to a problem and together find solutions – and so they started to see possibilities for improvement everywhere! They became emerging experts in the field of care. 

Holly’s story landed the value of peer approaches in the virtual room.

One direct outcome of the Visits are tools and practices to take and apply straight away. As attendees, we got to play with Huddlecraft’s peer group role cards – a tool to build awareness around the role(s) we as individuals tend to take up in groups, which might not always be an entirely intentional or conscious choice on our behalf. 

In addition to identifying our default role, we declared which one we’d like to challenge ourselves to take up more. This provided some interesting insights into group dynamics and how to talk about them in an open and playful manner.

Many declared that they’d take these back to their teams to have a play with. We were given one prompt to take away as well: how might you use these cards to distribute power and responsibility within your organisation? 

In my opinion, the best part of the Visit is when we reflected on learnings with fellow attendees. This is the time when everyone can ask questions of the hosts and of each another. 

People have conversations to get to know each other and hear about the challenges and questions others are considering. 

One attendee reflected:

‘This is about expanding our understanding, and you can apply this in micro ways to find the thing that starts to bring or spark energy. The people make it happen.’

I’d love to hear from others who took part and how or if they’d like to apply peer-to-peer approaches to their work and learnings. If you missed this Q Visit, don’t despair, you can watch the recording and access the resources. I’m pleased Q has introduced the new role of Community Convener. 

Working in this role, I support Special Interest Group (SIG) conveners in their work and ideas. SIGs are one of the main ways members meet and build relationships within Q, and these new Community Convener roles will help catalyse member-led activity, collaboration and networking.