Updated on December 21, 2023
Photo by Dave Caleb, uploaded to Flickr by Keri-Lee Beasly at flic.kr/p/bWjW2T
What is reverse mentoring, and what are its benefits?
What comes to mind when you think of the term mentoring? Your first thoughts probably align with the most traditional form of mentorship: someone senior helping someone junior to master a new skill. This is the classic model, akin to apprenticeship. So, what is reverse mentoring?
Exactly what it sounds like! The relationship described above, backwards. A junior person is called on to advise a senior person on some new skill or knowledge—usually the junior person is a millennial, and the skill is often something tech-related. Reverse mentoring’s origins are most commonly credited to Jack Welch, a former CEO of General Electric who challenged his top leadership to get help learning about the Internet from younger colleagues in the late 1990s (Marcinkus Murphy, 2012; Steimle, 2015).
Reverse mentoring has risen in popularity among many companies over the last decade (Marcinkus Murphy, 2012; Steimle, 2015). One of the most obvious benefits is that it helps to expand senior employees’ technical skillsets, which can in turn have a positive impact on operations. Today’s influencers need to keep up with the rate of innovation and technology adoption, else their companies will be left behind. Steimle (2015) provided examples of some pretty painful corporate tech snafus: from failing to account for viewers’ ability to skip their online ads after 5 seconds, to being unaware of hashtag campaigns involving the company’s name.
Strong reverse mentorship initiatives with a commitment to mutual support and learning can help companies build their leadership pipeline, promote diversity initiatives, drive innovation, and strengthen relationships between generations (Marcinkus Murphy, 2012). Reverse mentoring isn’t just good for the mentees and the business, though. It benefits the mentors by giving them opportunities to interact with and showcase their skills to senior colleagues who might have some clout in their targeted area of career growth. In essence… it gives them access to potential sponsors.
The image below summarizes the key factors at play in typical reverse mentoring relationships, from participant characteristics to organizational outcomes.
Figure 1. Key Variables in the Prototypical Reverse Mentoring Relationship (Marcinkus Murphy, 2012, p. 558)
What are its challenges?
Marcinkus Murphy (2012) called out the following as key antecedents that both mentors/mentees and organizations should be mindful of when promoting reverse mentorship (pp. 560-562):
- Individual differences – Gender, ethnic, and general personality differences need to be acknowledged as factors that could influence the trust that either party could place in these relationships. Issues associated with any of these differences (such as lack of diversity, stereotypes, power dynamics, etc.) could be amplified by the mentors’ sense of inexperience in a leadership position. Mentees need to be aware of diversity and inclusivity issues and open to perspectives different from their own—and organizations must select participants accordingly.
- Cross-generational differences – Each generation has its own values and philosophy, and these can differ tremendously between millennials and the typical mentees: baby boomers. Beyond the benefits mentioned, both parties must understand the opportunity they have to learn how the others’ generation prefers to teach, learn, and interact.
- Difficulty with role reversals – Mentors are often inexperienced in managing this type of professional relationship, and mentees can feel awkward stepping back and taking on a subordinate role. Both parties must acknowledge their mutual inexperience and help each other move forward. One tactic for helping the senior participants in particular is to use terms like advisor and learner instead of mentor and mentee (Emelo, 2015).
- Interaction frequency – These types of relationships take a significant amount of time and effort to nurture. Mentors may be overwhelmed by unfamiliar professional demands, and mentees’ schedules are usually already quite full. Marcinkus Murphy (2012) summarized several studies that show a correlation between successful reverse mentorships and frequent interactions.
- Trust and interpersonal comfort – Think about it—how likely are you to ask what you think is a silly question to someone you’re not comfortable with? If participants are uncomfortable with each other and share absolutely no common ground, then they may not stand to benefit from the relationship as much as a mentor/mentee pair that has some sort of shared experience.
How can businesses enable it among their employees?
Lee (2015) recommended a few things for businesses to ensure successful reverse mentoring relationships:
- Focus on millennials’ learning preferences and motivations, because most institutional learning is already structure around the older generations’ preferences and experience. Be able to spell out how the experience challenges them and helps them grow professionally.
- Promote transparency by addressing generational differences and expectations around mentoring up-front.
- Provide a good structure for mentoring with a clear organizational outcome, but remain flexible to the participants’s individual needs.
References
- Emelo, R. (2015). Modern mentoring: Build a modern mentoring culture in your organization. ATD Press. Alexandria, VA.
- Lee, G. (2015). How to get the most out of reverse mentoring. HRMAsia.
- Marcinkus Murphy, W. (2012). Reverse mentoring at work: Fostering cross‐generational learning and developing millennial leaders. Human Resource Management, 51(4), 549-573.
- Steimle, J. (2015, May 5). Reverse mentoring – investing in tomorrow’s business strategy.
