Analysis: Reverse mentoring is a way for young workers to share their ideas and expertise with managers and bosses in their organisation
By Tanya Watson and Ciara Heavin, UCC
Have you ever wanted to be the boss for the day? Reverse mentoring gives you the chance to swap places with your boss and let them know what it's like to walk in your shoes. If you are struggling to take your career to the next level, you have a unique idea you want to share or you are new to the organisation and have expertise you know would improve the bottom line, reverse mentoring may be for you.
In reverse mentoring, you are the mentor with specific expertise that your boss wants to know about and you both work together to come up with novel ideas to make your organisation a better place to work. As the mentor, you can share your expertise with someone who is eager to listen, talk through new ideas, and build a valuable working relationship with you.
Where does reverse mentoring come from?
Reverse mentoring is not new. Concerned with the rapid pace of technological change driven, in 1999 General Electric CEO Jack Welch paired approximately 500 senior and junior employees. He believed that "everyone in the organisation brings something to the table". Welch’s ambition was for junior staff to share their expertise with senior staff, importantly going beyond the use of the technology (which was likely to continue to change) prompting senior leaders to reimagine the role of technology as an opportunity to be competitive in a rapidly changing business environment.
From The Coach, General Electric CEO Jack Welch on how he discovered the concept of reverse mentoring
Other well-known organisations such as Unilever, Deloitte, Procter & Gamble, Target, Cisco, UnitedHealthcare, General Motors and Fidelity have all initiated reverse mentoring programmes. These have activated shared learning between employees of diverse backgrounds, expertise and roles to make their organisations a more desirable place to work.
With baby boomers, Gen X, millennials and Gen Z working side-by-side, there can be gaps in communication styles, work expectations, and use of technology. Often reverse mentoring programmes are established on values of diversity and inclusion to create a workplace where the exchange of views occurs in a safe environment. This can help to bridge these gaps, underscoring the need for senior leaders to rethink organisational culture and continually reimagine the future of work.
From Financial Times, what is it like to be reverse mentored by a millennial?
Why does it matter?
Reverse mentoring has been largely used in the private sector to date. While it has been used in companies, it also presents a transformative opportunity for higher education and public sector organisations to rethink traditional notions of mentorship to foster more inclusive and diverse workplaces.
Irish disability inclusion activist Caroline Casey lead the way in flipping the way we think about mentoring by launching a new initiative called Generation Valuable at the World Economic Forum in 2022. The scheme recruits 500 people with disabilities to teach CEOs and business leaders in their organisations how to make their companies more inclusive, while creating leaders of tomorrow who declare their disability instead of hiding it.
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From RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland in May 2022, Caroline Casey on her Generation Valuable workplace inclusion initiativ
This approach recognises that expertise and contributions to knowledge are not always aligned to an employee's age or years of experience. Seasoned and emerging leaders are experiencing generational value systems differences. With hybrid workplaces becoming the norm, it is time to consider the opportunities these gaps present and how our organisations can foster a stronger sense of intergenerational learning among employees.
While reverse mentoring provides the opportunity for employers to tap into new perspectives and learn about the lived experience of their employees, the connections between mentor and mentee can extend beyond the workplace and employer/employee relationships. Recently, the Metropolitan Police in London engaged three teens from The Girls' Network to mentor women officers to help them develop a better relationship with the population they serve and gain fresh perspectives on the criminal and social issues within these communities.
From BBC London, why teenagers are mentoring London police officers
Benefits and challenges
Reverse mentoring promotes knowledge-sharing between more inexperienced staff and senior leaders, and challenges hierarchies, making room for innovation and a more dynamic organisational culture. The key to challenging hierarchies through reverse mentoring is by championing a growth mindset based on openness and a curiosity for learning.
A growth mindset is the belief that an individual can learn from mistakes, be reflective in their practice, and be open to new challenges and ideas. A closed mindset that is resistant to change, adopts traditional mentoring roles, and has misaligned expectations during the reverse mentoring process can impact the quality of the interactions between the mentor and mentee.
The success of a reverse mentoring relationship depends on building relationships founded on mutual respect and trust paving the way for inspiration, innovation and creativity. A risk for mentors is imposter syndrome – lacking the confidence to share their ideas, lead the discussion and give feedback to their more senior colleagues.
From TED, executive coach Patrice Gordon on hw reverse mentorship can help create better leaders
Although the impact of a reverse mentoring initiative takes time, both the mentors and their mentees benefit from mutual learning, knowledge sharing, collaboration and improved communication, even if these benefits are sometimes difficult to measure.
What we're doing about reverse mentoring
UCC's ENGAGE pilot programme is working with 12 women mentors and 12 mentees (senior leaders) from across four organisations who have committed to reverse mentoring. Prior to starting the programme, mentors revealed concerns about having the confidence to lead conversations with their mentees. They highlighted this initiative as an important opportunity to bridge the gap between senior and early career employees. All the mentees view the programme as an opportunity to develop new knowledge that will inform how they work with early career staff in the future.
As we work to create fairer organisations, it's important to rethink how we mentor others. We need to explore new ways to improve learning and better support women and under-represented groups in their career growth, helping build diverse, innovative teams ready to handle the challenges ahead.
Reverse mentoring programmes in your organisation can highlight skill and knowledge gaps and inequalities, and this unique opportunity gives you and your mentee the space to talk about ideas and solutions that will benefit you and the people you work with. Why not take your seat at the table and be the boss your workplace wants to hear from?
The authors wish to acknowledge the support of the HEA Gender Equality Enhancement Fund, the UCC ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring project team, Munster Technological University, University of Limerick and University of Galway.
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Dr Tanya Watson is a Researcher on the ENGAGE Reverse Mentoring Programme in UCC. Prof Ciara Heavin is a Professor of Business Information Systems in the Cork University Business School at UCC. She is a former Research Ireland awardee.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
