What is Reverse Mentoring?
Reverse mentoring is when a more junior individual or employee is paired with a senior person to share skills, knowledge, etc. on various topics, such as, cultural relevance, technology, or other strategic areas.
Benefits of Reverse Mentoring
1. Inclusion
To be an inclusive workplace, one needs to factor in all people equally. Employees need to see that there are opportunities for them to progress to in the organisation and that their opinion is counted. People need role models to aspire to. When minority groups cannot see people that look like them in leadership roles, they may find it hard to believe that there are opportunities for them within the organisation.
Reverse mentoring can be very effective if an organisation pairs mentors from under- represented groups with mentees in senior management or in leadership roles. Reverse mentoring offers the opportunity for both parties to learn from each other and work towards a more inclusive culture.
2. Retention
Retaining good employees is difficult, given the nature of Millennials and Gen-Z moving from company to company. Given that 40% of the workforce will be made up of Millennials by 2025 (and rising), it’s a vital issue to get right.
Reverse mentoring provides senior leaders the opportunity to understand these generations better, what their needs are and what they want from an organisation. At the same time, Millenials and Gen-Z have the opportunity to have access to senior leaders, develop their skills, progress as well as receive the recognition and transparency they seek. This all contributes to higher employee engagement and satisfaction which leads to greater retention of this younger generation.
3. Closing generational gaps
As of this year, there are five generations in the workplace: traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X (Gen X), millennials, and Generation Z (Gen Z). Bridging the gap between generations in an organisation can be a challenge, particularly with digital transformation and the speed at which businesses are changing and developing. There can be a huge disconnect between older and younger employees which can be addressed through reverse mentoring.
Reverse mentoring is an effective way of breaking down these silos between generations. By exposing those who have worked in the business for a long time to fresh ideas and new perspectives, it can inspire innovation in those who may be more stuck in their old ways.
4. Skills development
The world is changing fast and if we are not constantly learning, we will be left behind. In the coming decades, as the pace of technological change continues to increase, millions of workers may need to be not just upskilled but reskilled.
For some, learning about social media, modern digital skills and platforms as well as AI, can be overwhelming. How does reverse mentoring help with organisations keeping their “older employees” constantly up to date? Rather than putting senior employees on training programs, which generally get very low engagement, reverse mentoring is a common and effective approach to increasing digital skills in employees. Graduates now entering the workforce are from Gen Z – the first digitally native generation – meaning that they grew up with advanced digital technology. So it makes sense to tap into their skills and get them involved in reverse mentoring.
5. Leadership development
Reverse mentoring is a highly effective way of developing leadership skills in younger employees. By giving younger employees the additional responsibility of being a mentor, they have a platform to increase their communication skills, practice empathy, learn how to listen well, learn the art of asking good questions, and generally become more self-aware – all of which are vital skills of a good leader.
How to do it
Basically, the same kind of rules and processes apply to reverse mentoring as they do to normal mentoring…it’s just that the mentee is now usually the “more senior” person learning from the “younger or more junior” mentor. So, a few tips…
1. Set a Goal or Focus for your mentoring journey:
In your first meeting, establish what the main goal or focus is going to be for the mentee’s journey. What does your mentee want to achieve? What do they want to learn? What are their goals for this mentoring journey? What would a great outcome look like?
Then you say what you want to learn from your mentee. (Remember that you will be learning as well). Write these goals down as you want to measure the success of your mentoring journey against whether the goals have been achieved.
2. Roles and Expectations:
Next, establish your roles and expectations of each other. Ask your mentee, “What do you expect from me?”, “What do you see my role being in this relationship?”
Then discuss what the roles and expectations of mentors and mentees should be. (You can use my models the 7 Strengths of Highly Effective Mentors and Mentees).
3. Guidelines
Set some guidelines for your mentoring journey. How often do you want to meet? For how long? How many sessions should we commit to? Where are we going to meet?
Discuss confidentiality. This is really important as your mentee is usually on a different level of seniority to you in the organisation and it is important that you feel comfortable to discuss and share things without it leaving the room. You can share any trepidation you may have about this.
Discuss being completely open and honest with each other. This is needed to create trust.
Discuss preparing for sessions (you may want your mentee to send you an outline of what they want to discuss before a session so that you can prepare for the session as well).
Ask if your mentee is open for you to send them any articles, videos, etc that may relate to the topic you are talking about.
4. In your session
In your sessions, remember that as the mentor, you need to do most of the listening (80% of your time) and asking questions (20% of your time) of your mentee. Ask, at the beginning of the session, what the mentee would like to discuss in this session and what they would like as an outcome.
Your mentee may have lots of questions for you, but get them to do their own thinking first and swing it back to them by saying…What would you do? or How do you currently do this? What do you think? By them exploring alternatives, the mentee gets to do some of their own thinking. Then you can share your ideas with them.
5. Both learn
In reverse mentoring, you can also flip it the other way…ie in one session, you can become the mentee and the other person can be the mentor. So that you can then come with some issues that you may be facing and call on their experience on how to proceed. You may find that you automatically flip back and forth where you are both the mentor and the mentee in your sessions – so it may become more like peer mentoring. However, it is important for you to mentally think of yourself as a peer in your mentoring sessions, as you don’t want to feel intimidated by your more senior mentee.
6. Review goals
Review the goals that you set at the beginning of the journey – it’s important that you bring up these goals and ask your mentee if they feel they are on track in reaching them and what else they need to achieve to reach them.
7. Review the relationship
Do a check in on how your mentee is feeling about the relationship and the mentoring journey after about 3 sessions. Relationship droop is real and needs to be addressed if it sets in. It is good to see if your mentee is getting benefit from the sessions. And you can discuss if you are too.
Happy Mentoring!
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