Reverse Mentoring; Need Or Fad?

Are you a senior business leader who does not bat an eyelid while making a pitch to the government, but struggles to use tools like Slack and Discord for team communication and updates?

Are you an independent director on multiple boards but find yourself staring into vacant space as soon as the discussion turns to cybersecurity and digital transformation and worry that you are not adding enough value in the role?

Whether you are or are not, read on to know more about reverse mentoring.

Traditional mentor and mentee relationship

The American Psychological Association has defined a mentor as “an individual with expertise who can help develop the career of a mentee…The career-related function establishes the mentor as a coach who provides advice to enhance the mentee’s professional performance and development. The psychosocial function establishes the mentor as a role model and support system for the mentee.”

And that is how most of us understand the mentor and mentee roles, with a mentor being a person who provides help, advice and support to someone with less experience, and a mentee being the person who receives such help, advice and support.

Understanding reverse mentoring

Reverse mentoring is a process in which a mentor provides help, advice and support to a mentee who receives such help, advice and support.

But, is this not the same as mentoring?

Yes, and no.

In reverse mentoring, for all intents and purposes, the mentoring help, advice and support is provided by a “seemingly” less experienced person to the “seemingly” more experienced person.

The “seemingly” more experienced person IS more experienced as per common definitions of experience. He/ she is probably older, in a more senior role in the organization with greater responsibility than the “seemingly” less experienced mentor. However, the “seemingly” more experienced person becomes the mentee here because he/ she needs to improve in certain specific areas where the “seemingly” less experienced person is more competent. It could be about handling new technology, it could be about communicating with a younger generation, current social issues, or anything else.

Not surprisingly, the American Psychological Association implicitly recognized reverse mentoring by stating that “the term mentee is used here to refer to the broad range of individuals who may be in the role of 'learner' in mentoring relationships, regardless of the age or position of the mentor and mentee.”

General Electric (GE) in the nineties and Bharti Airtel in the noughties are understood to be prominent corporations that implemented reverse mentoring.

Benefits of reverse mentoring

The benefits are the same as those of mentoring. The major difference is that people in the mentor and mentee roles in reverse mentoring may not answer to the stereotypes of a mentor and mentee.

But who cares as long as there are benefits to be released, like:

Enhancing skills and competence

Just like in mentoring, the objective of reverse mentoring is to help, advise and support a person or group in areas where enhanced skill and capability is seen as beneficial to their work and/ or life. Enabling these people and groups to become skilled is perhaps the main benefit of reverse mentoring.

Bridging generational divides

This is possibly an important spin-off benefit of reverse mentoring. Often, the mentee is from a senior age group and the mentor from a relatively junior one. Working closely together enables them to better appreciate each other as well as each other’s generation, especially since the traditional relationship of the older person being in a position of greater power is reversed.

Promotes Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

A spin-off of the spin-off is that a greater appreciation of diverse perspectives sets in, leading to the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Success factors for effective reverse mentoring

The success of a reverse mentoring programme is not guaranteed. There are many factors that can lead the programme astray. It needs a fertile environment to succeed. Some of the variables that can contribute to its success are:

Senior leadership commitment

This is an obvious precondition for the success of any programme. Setting it up for doing lip service to some directive is poor use of the company’s time and resources, and is best avoided.

Openness of mentees to being mentored, probably by younger colleagues

This is often a stumbling block, as we become ingrained in traditional thinking patterns. It is important to create the right environment before launching the programme. Some counselling and training of the mentees may also be called for.

Articulation of clear and specific areas to be addressed

Whether the objective is to promote digital fluency, or gain inter-generational insights, or any other, they should be clearly stated. Leaving them vague and open is a recipe for disaster in an organizational setting.

Tracking and monitoring

Once created, it should be monitored like any other organizational programme, as a performance measure. Suitable criteria should be defined to measure progress, which should be tracked and published.

Conclusion

Reverse mentoring is being viewed by many organizations as a wonderful, non-resource-hungry way of upskilling and building bridges across diverse sets of employees.

However, for effectiveness, care and thought need to go into the programme.

The DEI practice of Ushankk is equipped to evaluate the need for a reverse mentoring  programme in your organization and help you set it up.