Hot Seats

In Short

Intensive peer coaching where one person receives focused group attention
Best for: Hot seat facilitation exercises
Hot Seats is a structured tool for coaching and facilitation. Intensive peer coaching where one person receives focused group attention. It provides a repeatable framework that can be adapted to individual, team, and leadership development contexts.
Type of tool: Hot seat facilitation exercises
Expected outcomes:
- Improved ability to intensive peer coaching where one person receives focused group attention
- Improved capacity to individually: what will you keep, what will you change?

A concrete action or development plan to take forward from the Hot Seats process

In Detail

Hot Seats is an experiential exercise designed to help coaches, leaders, and facilitators intensive peer coaching where one person receives focused group attention. It sits within the category of Hot seat facilitation exercises, making it particularly useful for practitioners working on capability development, team performance, and individual growth in organisational settings.

In practice, Hot Seats is delivered as a 4-step process. The structured approach ensures that participants move through a consistent experience while leaving room for the facilitator to adapt pacing and depth to the group's needs.

Hot Seats is most effective when used to break existing patterns of thinking or interaction. The experiential format creates a low-stakes environment where participants can experiment, make mistakes, and draw direct parallels to real workplace dynamics through the debrief process.

How to Use

From Hot Seat Process and Prep PDF. Preparation: each participant prepares written feedback for every other participant covering Inspire (areas where this person positively impacts me and others) and Improve (specific areas where I see room for development). Prepare the same for yourself. Only include feedback you have directly observed. Process: one person takes the hot seat. Each other person gives feedback one at a time -- First round covers Improve (one to three specific examples per person); Second round covers Inspire (one to three specific examples). Rules for giving: speak for yourself, do not build on others' comments, give specific observed-behaviour examples. Rules for receiving: the only response is 'Thank you for the feedback.' Take notes, no discussion or defence. Rotate until everyone has had the hot seat. Debrief individually: what will you keep, what will you change?

Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Creates immediate, memorable experiences that accelerate learning compared to instruction alone Low-stakes environment allows participants to experiment with new behaviours safely Generates rich debrief material directly relevant to real workplace dynamics	Effectiveness depends heavily on the quality of the debrief — poor facilitation wastes the investment Some participants resist "games" as lacking seriousness, requiring careful framing Time investment in setup and debrief limits how many tools can be used in a single session

Created by Various (peer coaching tradition)

When to Use

This tool is suited to the following coaching and facilitation contexts:

Context	Relevant
Individual Coaching	✓
Team Coaching	✓
Leadership Development
Facilitation / Workshop	✓
Online / Virtual

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