The Power of Cohorts: Why They Matter & Work

Cohorts and group-learning experiences are exploring across contexts and disciplines especially in leadership development spheres. Why? Because they are effective. Whether it is group therapy, coaching cohorts, or learning communities, the cohort model is continues to emerge as an effective modality for healing and growth.

A significant portion of the work we do at Church Well Co orients around communal experiences. We call them Pastoral Care Groups and SLOW Communities. Other organizations call them cohorts, learning communities, or small groups. The concepts are fundamentally the same:

• gather a small group of people together to engage around some sort of shared goal or idea
• bring not only the information, but ourselves
• engage under the supervision of a guide, facilitator, consultant, or coach
• experience growth and transformation

So what is it that makes cohorts and group models so effective? There are many reasons that cohort experience are impactful. Let me highlight three specific reasons the cohort model is impactful for leaders:

Cohorts make learning experiential.

We learn best when information is placed in an experiential context. By placing learning in a relational context it transcends cognitive learning and becomes experiential, increasing integration of knowledge and application. Learning in a cohort context moves beyond information and into the experiential wrestling with both content and self. This wrestling done in the presence of – and with – others not only shapes our thinking on leadership but creates the opportunity to be shaped as a leader in real time.

Additionally, diversity of perspective and lived experience, within intentionally crafted relational contexts, creates the opportunity to experience and work through cognitive dissonance into new ways of seeing, imagining, and engaging

Cohorts can shape our sense of self.

Our leadership identity is shaped in relationship. Leadership identity is shaped in part by how we experience others seeing us. Attachment Theory research highlights that our sense of self is shaped, re-shaped, or solidified by how we see others seeing us. Independent learning can provide information, but only communal experiences hold the power to shape our sense of identity. Cohorts provide the mirrors of other leaders who see us as we are that serves to both shape and strengthen our self of self as a leader.

Cohorts create an environment of experimentation.

Experimentation increases implementation. In cohort-based learning experiences, the first step of application actually takes place within the cohort itself through the engagement with others. This increases access to post-cohort implementation. Cohorts create a low-risk experimentation zone where actual strategies can be attempted, assessed, and re-evaluated prior to implementation in the real-world environment.

Strategies and conclusions developed through individual learning experiences run the risk of carrying a false sense of clarity due to their un-tested nature. The cohort model tests that internal clarity by externalizing strategies and ideas in a community of leaders. This roots skills, strategies, and practices in reality and clarifies their functionality and accessibility for implementation. ?