Purpose The purpose of this research is to create a definition of peer coaching using literature from various and disparate organizational and educational contexts. This research is intended to clarify what constitutes peer coaching overall, and guide the ever-growing practice of peer coaching. Design/methodology/approach This research uses a combination of inductive and deductive qualitative approaches through the implementation of qualitative content analysis (QDA). The research used a data reduction process with 87 existing scholarly articles in the area of peer coaching, in which the researchers focused on selected aspects of the data and followed the practice of staying close to manifest artifacts within the data. Findings The results of the qualitative data analysis indicated that five themes emerged within the literature. Themes were as follows: program structure, purpose and goals of peer coaching, peer coaching processes and mechanisms in which peer coaching is conducted, outcomes of peer coaching and relational contexts and functions of peer coaching relationships. Originality/value While there is an increase in peer coaching, research on this type of coaching is scarce with few empirical studies on the topic: what has been conducted has not been particularity reliable (Hagen and Peterson, 2014); and most of the published research is limited to education, nursing, other medical contexts and non-profit organizations. This research helps to clarify the nature of peer coaching and create a cogent definition that defines formal peer coaching within all peer coaching contexts.

Leadership development is a top priority for many organizations and a critical driver of success. This qualitative case study research examined ways participation in a cohort‐based LDP contributed to HiPo employee's leadership development for the purpose of talent management, including an examination of which programmatic components help promote participant growth. This study illustrates the importance of, and methods to support, better leadership development outcomes for HiPos to improve talent management efforts. This research utilized a method for qualitative analysis and was conducted using a constant comparative method, requiring new findings and interpretations be compared with those previously found during analysis. Data included end‐of‐program graduate evaluations, semi‐structured interviews, and manager evaluation surveys. Findings support the importance of 360‐feedback and peer coaching as part of HiPo employee development. Each of these simultaneously improves self‐awareness, human capital, networking, and participant well‐being; the resulting model provides an illustration of the relationships found.