Neuroscience of Coaching – Episode 19
The Art and Science of a Successful Peer Learning (Jay Fairbrother)
Jay Fairbrother: They supported me in ways that went way beyond a basement to live in for five months, a car to borrow for seven months. They supported me in ways I can’t even articulate. That support, having that group of people who have your back in the worst possible times of your life invaluable. And I can easily say, it’s the only reason that I’m here today.
Dr. Irena O’Brien: Hi, I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien, and you’re listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. I’m a cognitive neuroscientist with almost 30 years of study and practice in psychology and neuroscience. And as the founder of the Neuroscience School, I teach coaches and other wellness professionals practical, evidence based strategies to use in their own practices.
In each episode, I invite a seasoned coach to discuss a topic that clients struggle with, and together we provide you with science based tools to help your clients reach their goals by working with their brains to create results that last. Many coaches engage in some form of peer learning, usually through group coaching or teaching cohort based courses. Although there is a logistical and financial benefit to this, it also has educational benefits. So today we’re going to dive into peer learning and discuss its effectiveness and the neuroscience behind it.
The human need for social interaction sits at the foundation of peer learning. While everyone learns differently, some form of social interaction generally provides the best results for most students. Although we can learn a lot from individual reading or study, deeper learning tends to take hold through connection with others who are studying the same material with a common goal. One operating theory is that the motivation to learn is itself a socially constructed phenomenon. It reflects the dynamic interdependence between the individual and social worlds we all live in.
In research, we see this demonstrated in a number of ways. A few of these are the production of dopamine during peer learning, the development of what can be described as a social game in which the students exhibit strategy and the reward of real time cooperation observed among students during a shared task or assignment. This last point is evident when researchers have studied participants in a group exercise navigating a maze together. Likewise, I suspect this explain the boom in popularity of escape rooms before the pandemic shut them down.
These activities explicitly required cooperation in a common goal for people to succeed. As is often the case on this show’s topics, we’re looking at interaction between different brain networks. In the case of peer learning, this is mainly the mirror neuron system known as MNS, and the mentalizing system known as MENT. As the name suggests, the MNS is a neural network of mirror neurons that respond when we perform an action or see others doing so. Not surprisingly, these neurons tend to be far more active when we are in a cooperative situation such as peer learning.
The MENT system encompasses our ability to see things from another person’s perspective, which obviously comes into play when we are engaged in learning with others. Both systems function together to encourage reciprocity among people, which, in a learning environment, activates our reward system of dopamine neurotransmitters, what people often call a dopamine hit. As a neuroscientist, lifelong student, coach, and online course instructor, I can’t emphasize enough the value and importance of peer learning, and I have with me today someone who deeply incorporates this into his work, Jay Fairbrother.
Jay Fairbrother is a serial entrepreneur, business coach, and mastermind guru. Jay’s crash during the Great Recession took him from a multimillionaire living in a mansion to bankrupt, living in a friend’s basement. But he bounced back from that to become known as the mastermind guy, helping coaches, speakers, healers, and thought leaders create their own mastermind groups. His mission is to create more human connection on the planet, one mastermind at a time.
So thanks, Jay, for being on my show today. I’m really happy to have you here.
Jay: Thanks, Irena. I’m thrilled to be here, and I loved that introduction.
Dr. Irena: Thank you. So, before we explore the benefits and neuroscience of peer learning, tell us a little more about your background and how that led to the work you do today.
Jay: Yeah. So I have been a serial entrepreneur for 30 years. I’ve founded, bought, and sold businesses up to eight figures, and I’ve done a lot of different things. And I got into masterminds and peer learning 25 years ago. My first business I started, and I was fairly fortunate and built that business to a million dollars in revenue within the first couple of years. When I got stuck there in a million dollars, I kind of plateaued and couldn’t seem to break past that mark. And that’s when I joined my first mastermind.
This was a mastermind for entrepreneurs, and we joined it just to grow our businesses and become better entrepreneurs. I vividly remember walking out of that very first mastermind meeting 25 years ago and saying to myself, oh, my God, I finally found my people. Like, I knew after one meeting that they got me. They were me. They understood me in a way that most people I was interacting with just didn’t understand.
But what happened in that first mastermind truly shocked me and surprised me, because within about six months in these meetings where we’re there to talk about business issues, I’m starting to watch grown men cry as they start to open up and talk about their messed up marriages and their kid problems and the anxiety and depression from trying to run their businesses and have a life. And this wasnt what we signed up for, but I loved it. And I was all in, primarily because as a kid, my father died when I was ten years old. And so I grew up kind of disconnected from life, my family.
And that disconnection led to a lot of my misspent youth. And so for me, it was really the first time as an adult that I felt that level of human connection. And so I started joining every mastermind I could. And over the next several years, I joined six or seven masterminds in addition to the one that I started with, and my business took off.
Dr. Irena: I hear you about masterminds. I’ve been in a mastermind for five years now, and this has really helped me to grow my business. And you become friends also, and so you share things that you don’t normally share with others in a business situation. So what are the first things that come to your mind as you listen to what I said in the introduction about peer learning?
Jay: I think that the aspect of the social learning and how important that is and how it’s kind of a different type of learning than we’re usually exposed to. And by usually, I’m referring to the coach healer speaker thought leader market, where people to gain leverage beyond working one on one with people. We form courses, we form group coaching programs. And the design of those programs is still mostly a one to guru relationship. They’re not building relationships with the other people going through the program on any kind of intentional basis.
There might be some Q and A and maybe a hot seat, which usually only applies to the extroverts willing to ask questions or put themselves on that hot seat. But there’s not any kind of intentional relationship building among the members of the group. And everything that you said about peer learning, really, it boils down to those relationships. It’s that human connection again.
Dr. Irena: So I’m interested to know when we talked about what topic we would explore today, what in particular made you want to dive into peer learning.
Jay: So to me, and this is what I have experienced in masterminds, and what I try to help people create, is it’s that distinction between that learning from a mentor or coach and learning from others. So, in my instance, I have a couple of mentors. I pay them a lot of money to guide me in terms of decision making and what to do and I don’t think I’m atypical in that it usually is the third or fourth time that my mentor tells me what to do that it finally sinks in and I move forward with their recommendation.
But in a peer learning environment, when I’m not the one where the information is being directed to and I’m an active participant and learner, in an environment where someone else who has a similar problem than I have is being coached through that problem, preferably not by just the guru, but by the entire room, that’s when I can get it on the first time. When I see myself in another situation or in another person, I exponentiate the learning curve, or how willing I am to apply what I’m learning to myself and then take action.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, and that’s largely due to the dopamine. Like, dopamine is known to enhance learning and memory. And when we’re in a social situation like that. Right? Social situations are rewarding to humans, and so we get a dopamine release. And so it is very different than just sitting in a classroom and have someone talk to you.
Jay: Absolutely. And the other thing that you mentioned relative to that is that reciprocity will increase that dopamine level. And that’s really important. When people create mastermind programs, you want to have reciprocity, or what I call parity among the members of the group. You don’t want to be in a mastermind group and people are thinking, why did you let that person in? They just don’t seem to fit with the rest of us. But that reciprocity is what creates that feeling that these people are me, they get me, they have the same issues in me, and they have the same aspirations and goals.
And when everyone works together in a supportive environment where people trust each other, respect confidentiality, and show up with no agenda other than helping each other thrive and grow, that’s when the magic happens. That’s when you activate that invisible, intangible force that Napoleon Hill, coined the term mastermind, is putting a bunch of people in a room, and that sort of invisible, intangible force that’s created by the collective wisdom, collective knowledge, and collective experience of those people.
Dr. Irena: So you mentioned about when someone doesn’t fit in the group. So what do you do about that?
Jay: Well, that’s where some facilitation skills and training helps greatly, because that situation has to be dealt with. And at first, if you need to figure out if it’s just a momentary behavioral thing, which you can address to the person one-on-one and correct, or is it that you need to remove them from the group because a single wrong person in the group can be like a cancer to the group, and you don’t want that. You’re trying to create that cohesion together.
Dr. Irena: Yeah. There’s another reason why peer learning works, and it’s because social situations activate the default mode network, right, and default mode network in the brain is active when we’re thinking about ourselves and also in social situations. So I think what happens with peer learning is, unlike when you have someone telling you what to do, when it’s peer learning, you can try on what the others are saying in the group. Right? In a different way than when you have an instructor-instructee relationship. Does that make sense?
Jay: Yes. So one of the principles that I encourage people to adopt is that people are there to share experience versus share opinions. So the difference is that when I speak from experience, that number one has more credibility, and it puts me in a situation that if my experience doesn’t relate to you, you can more easily let that pass by versus experience that does relate. Whereas an opinion, I’m pushing that out to you regardless of experience. And in the relationship context of people in a group, if I give you my opinion and turn out to be wrong, that’s something that will stick with you versus simply sharing what I have learned in similar situations. And again, it boils back to that reciprocity. That’s where having that reciprocity among the members is what you strive for.
Dr. Irena: And then when you hear that from the other members in the group, you internalize it to see whether and determine, does that really fit with you? So that’s the difference, right? Because you’re not leaving it like instructor-instructee, it just kind of stays out there. Right? Whereas if it’s in a group and it’s someone else’s experience, you really do, I think, try it on yourself and see, oh, is that going to work for me?
Jay: Yeah. I have been in thousands of mastermind meetings over the last years. I stayed in one mastermind for 17 years because every month, I got value and was more than eager to stay and continue to pay for it and learn. And I don’t think in all those thousands of meetings, I haven’t been in a single meeting where at some point someone didn’t ask a question that I thought, oh, my God, I never would have even thought to ask that question in this situation. And to me, that’s where true learning comes, is when you’re surrounded by people who don’t think in your same box, who look at the world from different perspectives and challenge you just with questions to think about an issue differently. And to me, that’s the true value of the learning that takes place in these groups.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, exactly. So widening the scope from masterminds to other forms of peer learning, like group coaching, what are some of the things you think are important for listeners to know?
Jay: Most of the people that I work with who are coaches, speakers and thought leaders, they’re running a mastermind not purely as a peer group, because they are still the leader, sometimes the mentor, sometimes the coach, in these programs. There may even be a training component to these programs, like group coaching. What I encourage my clients to do is to trickle down some of the techniques and protocols and strategies that we use in a true mastermind peer learning environment into group coaching programs to elevate that social learning, that reciprocity and those relationships, that human connection piece that’s often missing from these group coaching programs.
There’s two keys to creating an effective mastermind. The one we addressed briefly a moment ago, which is the reciprocity, finding the right people to fill the program. The second is creating a container, I often refer to it as a womb, because what you want to create is an environment where people feel safe and they can grow and thrive. And that’s a lot of the nuance in creating a mastermind that lasts for three years rather than six months, in creating the container to establish that mutual respect, confidentiality, trust, and people showing up without agendas, so that you’re not being judged for anything you say in the mastermind. You’re not concerned about asking the question that you think might make you look stupid because you’ve got a group of people who are all there just to support each other.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, thanks for sharing that, Jay. So we have here at the Neuroscience School an advanced program that leads to a certificate in brain based coaching, which, unlike our intra program, is primarily a peer learning program. And the results have been so amazing that it’s even surprised us. And our goal was to help coaches so thoroughly integrate neuroscience into their coaching that it becomes seamless. And a professor in human systems intervention was so impressed with our results that he’s offered to help us write it up and publish the paper in a peer reviewed journal.
So I’m with you on the benefits of peer learning, Jay. And even though what we do is not a mastermind, there are a lot of breakout groups, and students just love the breakout groups. That’s where they get the most value, I think, out of the program.
Jay: Yes. Often, we go to these networking meetings where there’s 1500 people in the room. And often as part of those networking meetings, they send you into a breakout room for ten to 30 minutes with a smaller group of people. And what I say is, notice the energy in the meeting when everyone’s together, there’s the 50 or 100 people, take a reading on the energy level of the people in the room, and then as soon as people come out of those breakout rooms, take that energy reading again. And even for someone who’s not attuned to reading people’s energies, it is painfully obvious when people come out of those breakout rooms, they’re elevated. They feel different than when they were in the bigger group meeting. And it’s just a little example of the power of that human connection. Just those few minutes of human connection can make a huge difference in how we feel.
Dr. Irena: Yeah. And do you find in the masterminds that the people, they develop a closeness right, over time? It’s just a six week or a succession program, and I find on the first session everyone’s still a little bit awkward, but by the second or third session, there’s a cohesion in the group and a level of warmth and friendliness that just happens naturally. And that all of that would enhance learning.
Jay: Yes. When you first start a mastermind, people are cautious because they don’t necessarily have trust. They don’t know whether what they say is going to be confidential. They don’t know the other people in the program yet. So there is a process that you can take people through, which is using some facilitation skills and practice to accelerate that process for people getting comfortable, building that trust, and getting to open up and be vulnerable. So there’s some very specific things that you can do to fast track that process so that it doesn’t take six or eight months before people start to feel that comfortability and that ease in which they’re going to really talk about the real problems that they’re facing.
Dr. Irena: So what are some of those things that you can do?
Jay: So one of the things you can do is use a series of what I call conversation starter questions. And often these are questions that don’t specifically relate to whatever your topic or training or component is. These are questions which ask people to reveal things about themselves and answer questions that they don’t normally talk about. And there’s levels to these questions. So I give my clients a document, which has sort of beginning level questions which take 30 seconds to a minute to answer and don’t ask you to go that deep, and then intermediate level questions once the group starts to form, and then more advanced level questions once the group gets to a stage where they’re willing to really open up and talk about things that aren’t normally discussed. So there’s things like that.
And then the other thing is, in your meetings, especially at the beginning of meetings, you want to do something. I usually do two rounds where everyone has to answer a question. You’re not just saying, who wants to respond to this idea, who has thoughts around this topic, but you literally go around the room and call on each person to speak up. That sort of pulls them into the discussion, pulls them out of their comfort zone to be able to participate. And what you’ll find is if you do that at the beginning of meetings, then in the second half of your meetings, when you say, who has ideas around this topic, it opens up and everyone feels comfortable to participate.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, I’m so glad that we do that at the beginning of every session. So do you have a particular story of an exceptional peer learning transformation that comes to mind?
Jay: So I think in terms of transformation, my story is one of the best examples. I mentioned my first mastermind that I got in and how they helped me 10 x my business over a six or seven year period. But more importantly, that mastermind carried me through that crash that I went through personally, where I lost everything and had to deal with my loss of identity from being a successful serial entrepreneur for 15 years. That’s how I viewed myself, and everyone in my world viewed me, to sitting in that basement alone, humiliated and ashamed that I had lost everything.
And my mastermind group, that first one that I stayed in for 17 years, they supported me in ways that went way beyond a basement to live in for five months, a car to borrow for seven months. They supported me in ways I can’t even articulate. That support, having that group of people who have your back in the worst possible times of your life is invaluable, and I can easily say it’s the only reason that I’m here today.
Dr. Irena: Wow. What an amazing story. And illustrates the power of a mastermind. Thank you for sharing that, Jay. So is there any particular technique or exercise that you found to work exceptionally well for peer learning?
Jay: One of the principles that I use, and I know is used in many successful masterminds around the globe, is when somebody is on the hot seat. I use that because it’s the common terminology, but when somebody is presenting an issue that they’re asking for help on with the group, the best way to structure it is that they present the issue in whatever time limit you give them to be able to explain the background, what they’ve tried so far, and most importantly, what they’re looking for from the group. And then you go into a clarifying question period where there’s no advice, there’s no shared experience, there’s no opinion, certainly. And it’s just the question period where people ask those clarifying questions and challenging questions of the person presenting.
And I often, in groups, have to stop people from jumping in during that period with their opinions and their advice, because to me, that question and answer period is often where the real learning takes place, especially for the person presenting. And so, to me, there’s a difference in how your brain is operating and thinking during that Q and A period where you can really listen because you’re not thinking of how to respond with your viewpoint, your experience, your opinion or advice. You’re truly just thinking of what are the questions that I would ask myself in this situation? What are the questions I wonder if this person has asked themselves? So you separate that question and answer period from the next section of the hot seat segment, which is where people then share their relevant experience to the problem.
Dr. Irena: So the purpose of the clarifying question, to set really to zero in on exactly what the question is, because people can come in with a hot seat and they just kind of have a general idea, and this one. And the clarifying questions really zero in on. So what is the issue? What are we solving for?
Jay: To me, it’s twofold. It’s certainly that. It’s to get the person to really get clear on what their issue is and what they’re looking for. But it’s also, I think, to challenge the person to think about questions they may not have thought about at that point and to reframe what their issue is in ways that they may not have thought of.
Dr. Irena: So do you find that sometimes people have their solution before they even get to opinions?
Jay: Yes, I think often that happens. You create a realization just from the questions being asked, and then it’s supplemented by people sharing their experiences afterwards. So, to me, it’s a twofold process. There’s learning in the Q and A period, and there’s learning from the shared experience afterwards. And often it’s different. Right? You get different things from each section.
Dr. Irena: Yeah. So how do you structure a mastermind meeting? How long do your meetings last, and how do you structure it?
Jay: So I first want to say that there’s no one way to create a mastermind. In the coach, speaker, healer, thought leader world, I would say 80% of what is labeled a mastermind is really just group coaching. And they put a mastermind label on it because it’s sexier and maybe they can get more money. So to me, helping someone create a mastermind was like putting pieces of a puzzle together. You shouldn’t create my mastermind, or Napoleon Hill’s mastermind, or anyone else’s. You need to figure out what are the components that take advantage of your superpowers.
I’ll give you an example. I had a client once who was an MBA professor for 30 years, and she heard me talking about masterminds and peer learning and the magic, that invisible intangible force. And she was like, that’s what I want to do. I want to create a mastermind and I just want to facilitate. And I said, is that realistic for you? You are hardwired to be a teacher, so rather than try to be something that you’re not, let’s look at your program and build in a teaching component, because that’s your superpower. You can be a good facilitator and you still have that as part of the meeting, but build that in so that you’re taking advantage of your superpower.
So when we put together a mastermind with someone, it’s a matter of, you know, how much content and training is the foundational piece of what people need to go through. How much mentoring and coaching do you want to be doing? How much of it is about support and accountability and how much of it is just pure facilitation, where you’re activating the group brain trust, you’re getting into that collaboration and co creation. That’s the one piece, and then the other piece is the who.
What do the people you’re inviting into that mastermind program, what do they need? What are they going to best respond to? What’s going to help them the most get value from the participation in the program?
Dr. Irena: I like what you said to that professor, that you’re a teacher, and so that is your strong suit and that’s what you should build some of that in. And that’s exactly why in our program, I have a collaborator. She’s the facilitator, I’m the teacher, right, because facilitation is not my strong suit of that’s perfect.
Jay: And for me, my superpower is facilitation. I love writing mastermind meetings, I love the unpredictability, I love the challenge of activating that group think. For me, the thought of creating content for like a twelve month program that would keep me up at night, but I could run three masterminds a day and not get tired because I’m in my superpower.
Dr. Irena: The unpredictability keeps me up at night or would keep me up at night. So I like things to be predictable. Yeah. So it’s a great partnership that I have with my collaborator.
Jay: So that brings up a great point. A lot of people think they could create a peer group or a mastermind by just getting a bunch of people together who have similarities, having some cocktails, and everyone goes around and commiserates and presents one problem they have. And that mastermind can work and be valuable. But I’m going to venture to say it’s not going to last for three years, certainly not 17 years.
One of the things that you need is structure, and it relates exactly to your comment just now, is that there’s actually freedom in structure, so that what you don’t want to do is have people showing up with no idea of the kind of agenda that’s going to happen that day or what’s going to be happening that day. You want to have an agenda that can be flexible, but you want to have set expectations because there’s safety in people recognizing they’re not walking into a situation that they have no idea how it’s going to go or what’s going to happen.
But there’s expectations in terms of what the structure of the meeting is. And then beyond that, there’s expectations about protocols and roles and commitment and confidentiality and all of those kinds of things that go into building your program.
Dr. Irena: So when you’re talking about structure, do you ask people to submit questions ahead of time?
Jay: Yes, you can ask for questions ahead of time. You can build what I call a parking lot of issues, which are, if you had the hot seat today, if it was your turn to present, what are the top three issues that you’re struggling with? Let’s write them down. Let’s rank them by importance and urgency. And then we build a list of people, a sort of presentation order that, again, where the flexibility comes in, if you have one of your members who suddenly has an urgent, important issue, you might have an order you’re going in, but you want to preempt that order to meet the needs of the person who has an urgent issue.
So that’s all about building the culture for people to understand that’s how it’s going to work, so that they’re not surprised and thinking, well, I was supposed to present, I don’t understand why I got bumped, but to be supportive of that kind of flexibility.
Dr. Irena: Okay, thank you. So finally, do you have any parting words of wisdom for our listeners regarding peer learning?
Jay: So to me, coaches, speakers, healers and thought leaders, in order to scale their business, get paid what we deserve to deliver the amazing transformations we can provide, we need to have a high ticket program. Otherwise, you’re stuck in the hamster wheel of constantly needing more leads, more clients, more sales. In my opinion, the best high ticket program to offer is a mastermind because of everything we’ve discussed so far. And in some ways, it can be the easiest program to create, not only because you need fewer people, but because you put yourself in a situation where you’re not constantly chasing clients.
Instead, you become an exclusive gatekeeper. And the ideal position that you can put yourself in is to say to someone, tell me why I should let you into my mastermind program. What value are you going to bring? Because I’m very protective about who I allow into my group and to make sure that you’re a right fit. And it just shifts the perspective that most of us are in as we try to build our businesses from that constant chase. Got to get more. I need more leads. I need more clients.
Dr. Irena: Yeah, so that’s a perfect way to close out the topic today. So thank you for that. And so what’s the best way for listeners to learn more about you and what you do?
Jay: You can find me easily at sixfiguremasterminds.com. That’s my website, but I’m also very easy to find on the Internet. Jay Fairbrother, there’s not many of us and my email address is Jay J-A-Y @fairbrother.com. I’d love to hear from you and hear your thoughts about masterminds and peer learning.
Dr. Irena: So, Jay, I’ve had such a great time talking with you about this today. Thank you again for being here.
Jay: Thanks, Irena. I really had fun today. Thanks.
Dr. Irena: So thank you everybody for listening. While masterminds, group coaching, and cohort based courses have tremendous value for many reasons, the neuroscience behind peer learning shows it to be more valuable than it might seem. The natural human desire for cooperative social strategies, anticipation of interactions, and sharing a common goal all feed into a successful environment for transformation.
Dopamine creates and sustains positive emotional states during social interaction and in the case of learning, contributes to the intrinsic motivation of learners. I hope you’ll take with you some key pieces from my conversation with Jay today and use them to enhance and improve the peer learning experiences you create.
I’m Dr. Irena O’Brien and you’ve been listening to Neuroscience of Coaching. You can find out more about me neuroscienceschool.com. Neuroscience of Coaching is a part of the Mirasee FM podcast network, which also includes such shows as Just Between Coaches and To Lead is Human. This episode was produced by Andrew Chapman. Danny Iny is our executive producer, and Marvin del Rosario is our audio editor.
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