Peers have a lot they can offer one another through mentorship. They can accelerate each other's growth by sharing best practices, providing support and advice, and being alongside them while navigating through challenging circumstances. 

Why match with a peer? Peer mentorship is a great complement or alternative to traditional mentorship - whether your peer is more or less senior than you. The key difference is that peer-to-peer relationships are non-hierarchical (e.g. you are both responsible for driving the relationship) and can be as formal or as informal as you and your peer would prefer. It's an opportunity to connect with colleagues across your organization in order to exchange knowledge, with and who may be pursuing similar goals or facing similar challenges. Some common themes we see in peer-to-peer relationships are: 

• Discussing shared experiences
• Strategizing solutions around challenges in the workplace or in the peers' specific functions
• Supporting and keeping one another accountable through career milestones or goals
• Sharing knowledge and learning more about different business functions
• Functional or soft skill-sharing

If your organization has chosen to run an Evergreen program and the Peer Mentorship feature is enabled, you will see the option to participate as a Peer within your program.

To register as a peer, you must also register as a Mentor and/or Mentee in the program:

Matching with another Peer is simple! After registering as a Peer, you will receive an email from the program to kick off the matching process. Once matching has begun, you may begin searching for other peers to request. 

To do so, click on the Browse Peers button from your home page for your program:

Here you will be taken to the Directory for your program. You will be able to see who has registered as a Peer under their profile. Alternatively, you can filter by Role to only include those who are registered as Peers for example.

Once you have found a Peer you would like to match with, click the blue Request button beside their profile:

Note: Peer requests always require approval by the peer you're requesting, even if your program is a Mentee's Choose program.

You will be taken to a page that will ask you to confirm what type of connection you would like to request. For Peer matches, select the Request as my Peer box then click Next.

After you've selected the type of request you'd like to make, you must now select the type of commitment you would like as well. Currently, you may choose between these three options:

• An introduction session/one-off networking session
• Help with a specific topic that may occur over a few sessions
• Long term mentorship

Select the most relevant option for your matching and click Continue, in my case, I will select the second option: Help with a specific topic across a few sessions, and I will start off by requesting 3 sessions with Jai.

You may now add a note to introduce yourself to your peer. We recommend leaving a warm introduction and letting your peer know what topics you're interested in discussing. Once you've finished writing your note, click Continue.

Once you have submitted your note, you will see a summary of your request to your peer. If you're satisfied with your request, you can click the Submit Request button:

After you've submitted your request, you can click the Finish button to return to your home page. 

Your peer will have three options after receiving your request:

1. Approve all the requested sessions (i.e. in my case, 3)
2. Approve an introductory session only to start
3. Decline (with the option to provide a response)

Note: Unlike mentor requests, peer requests do not expire.

Once the request is approved, you each will be notified and your matching will begin. From here you will be able to begin by scheduling your first session! Check out our guide here on how to schedule a session to get started.

Have more questions? Submit a request here and let us know how we can help!