How Everyone Can Learn from Everyone with Reverse Mentoring
Mentorship is a pretty straight-forward concept - a more experienced person, who typically happens to be older, provides guidance to the less experienced person, who typically happens to be younger. In that scenario, seemingly only the mentee stands to gain something. Yet mentorship can be hugely rewarding for the mentor too. “It’s good to acknowledge that everyone has different skill sets and knowledge, which can benefit others regardless of age or job seniority,” says Laura Clark, associate creative director at Mr President. Reverse mentoring does exactly that, with the aim of educating and inspiring both mentor and mentee across traditional dividing lines like age, gender, and seniority.
Laura first came across the idea of reverse mentoring in her previous role on a women’s advisory board. “As we worked through ideas on how to help people of all genders join the conversation around equality for women in the workplace, it became apparent that we needed to bring men actively into the conversation. Reverse mentoring in this case allowed senior and C suite men to get a better understanding of the challenges women face in the workplace and allowed mid-senior women to get knowledge and build confidence around career progression and leadership,” she explains.
Because reverse mentoring is so adaptable, it’s suitable for all manner of companies and organisations across this industry and beyond. Laura also notes that it doesn’t have to completely replace the traditional mentor model as both are relevant to different situations. “I think there’s gratification in both traditional mentoring and reverse mentoring. The traditional way still allows the mentor to learn as well as the mentee, but reverse mentoring makes it more explicit. Both people go into it wanting to learn and knowing what they want to get out of it. Often, as a result, they get so much more than they could have expected.”
As for the benefits for mentees? “The benefits for the younger generation are two fold: they get exposure to more senior people allowing for a steeper learning curve to help their careers progress, then they can also start to shape the future of the industry, by helping to educate the people in power, opening their eyes to what is needed and how things can change for the better,” Laura adds.
One of the main draws of reverse mentoring is that it takes into account the different variables besides seniority and centres the individual’s experiences first and foremost. “There’s definitely benefits across gender and age. It’s all about seeing people’s perspectives and understanding that everyone works differently and has varied experiences of the world, age and gender play into that. When we open our eyes to other ways of doing things it allows us to be more accepting of differences and consider new ways of thinking.”
Laura has seen how this style of mentorship can play out once instituted across different companies. “When I was on the women’s advisory at my old job, there was a positive initial response to it. Now, time will only tell if this filters into the bigger culture of the business.
I also volunteer for Who’s Your Momma (a mentorship scheme for women in the advertising industry). We have senior male ‘mommas’/mentors as part of the programme who often say how much they learn as part of the mentoring process. Likewise, being a mentee isn’t just for people in junior roles, we see senior women joining the programme as mentees too,” she says. It’s clear that to make any kind of mentorship successful, the whole company needs to be on board and sold on the idea of its benefits. Culture and attitudes are passed down from the top so seeing people in senior leadership positions drive this style of mentorship is the first step to ensuring its long-term success.
For Laura, who has brought reverse mentoring to Mr P too, there’s value in all kinds of experience; what’s needed is a moment to adjust traditional thinking around who can teach who. “I think there’s something really interesting in being more open minded about learning not just from senior experience, but experience in general. At Mr President we’re actively promoting our flexible placement scheme as a learning opportunity for both parties, it’s a two way street where placements come in, they get to learn from us, but we also acknowledge that we could learn a lot from them too.”
“I also think cross roles could be another great way to evolve reverse mentorship. We could all work together much better and come up with fresh thinking if we recognised people’s strengths can be transferred elsewhere. Sharing our skill sets and opening our minds to other people’s way of doing things, but also other industries. For example; Who’s to say a used cars salesperson wouldn’t make a great suit in our industry. The skills of selling and persuasion are the same, just a different audience and way of doing it. I think there’s a real opportunity in looking at how we can take someone’s expertise in one thing and transfer it to another.”
Mentorship is often brought up as invaluable by those in the industry who have had the chance to experience it. With workplaces changing and evolving, it makes sense to also evolve the traditional mentorship model to give everyone a chance to expand on their experience, learn new skills, and break down silos across that which divides us. With reverse mentoring, learning is democratised and everyone’s individual contribution to a workplace elevated, creating a more equitable playing field.
