<p>The use of active and collaborative learning pedagogies in undergraduate STEM education has demonstrated impacts on students’ academic success, retention, and 21st century skills development. However, previous studies have shown that the success of these pedagogies hinges on students’ productive engagement with both the STEM content and with their peers. Peer-Led team learning (PLTL) is an established pedagogy in STEM and a useful paradigm to study how the role of peer leaders as facilitators of teamwork can be leveraged to promote learning in a social context, through effective peer leader preparation. This study describes the development and impact of an interactive theatre-based professional development experience for peer leaders, designed to illustrate, examine, and troubleshoot barriers to student engagement in teamwork. Quantitative and qualitative analysis of peer leader feedback surveys showed that leaders mostly valued the relevance and applicability of the issues discussed, the opportunity to challenge assumptions on student engagement by examining a broad range of student perspectives, and the opportunity to troubleshoot student engagement issues collaboratively. Analysis of pre-post-surveys showed that peer leaders gained knowledge of barriers to student engagement in teamwork, and confidence as inclusive facilitators. Some peer leaders reported an increase in their self-awareness as leaders and specific behavioural changes aimed at better supporting student engagement. Overall, this study shows that perspective-taking followed by collaborative problem-solving is a promising approach to prepare undergraduate peer leaders as inclusive team facilitators. This has the potential to foster students’ sense of belonging in STEM, which can lead to student retention in STEM in the longer term.</p>