Reverse Mentoring

In today’s workplace wiser does not necessarily mean older.

That sage in the office could just as well be just a couple years removed from college graduation.

A generation ago a senior manager couldn’t possibly imagine sitting for a lecture about any topic by a junior employee. But with reverse mentoring, that is happening with increasing frequency. Junior employees are schooling their supervisors about cultural traits, new market segments and the trendiest web pages.

At first glance the concept seems impractical for employees who work with a stubborn, know-it-all executive. On the flipside, reverse mentoring should not be interpreted as an opportunity to tutor a boss believed to be out of touch. Junior employees should be aware that many changes in the workplace occurred after the baby boomers entered it, notably the wider use of technology.

Besides the transfer of knowledge, the practice recognizes the expertise that younger employees bring to the workplace, a crucial compliment not often paid to newer employees.

Procter & Gamble was one of the pioneers of reverse mentoring. Facing increasing turnover among its female employees and a resulting lack of female candidates for leadership positions, the company’s male executives were paired with younger female employees to capture information about the next generation of women as consumers and leaders.

When Jack Welch was CEO of General Electric, he instructed top managers to meet with younger employees to learn more about the Internet.

An obvious topic to explore is diversity, as an executive whether white, male or otherwise cannot possibly know how to integrate minorities into the management or executive team. The diversity program at Reuters required senior managers to meet once a month for an hour to discuss any topic that at least touched upon diversity.

At minimum reverse mentoring sessions should identify a particular subject to address. It will take a very humble manager to be able to sit for criticism about her communication and management style.

A lot of executives readily admit that they mastered text messaging and other hand-held digital tasks but do not know about the potential for social networking tools such as blogs, Facebook and YouTube. Younger employees use some or all of these tools daily and recognize their value for marketing, research, outreach or communication.

Whether executives will apply what they learned in reverse mentoring sessions is the subject of another class.

Comments

[Prem Rao]

Interesting. I see scope too for reverse mentoring in dealing with multi-cultural issues. For example, for executives seconded from one country to another where the culture may be vastly different. They would do well to understand the nuances of the to them "new culture". Reverse mentoring could be very useful in such a case.