What Is the Meaning Of Reverse Mentoring & Its Importance

Duration: 5-6 minutes

Reverse Mentoring Meaning: What Is Reverse Mentoring

Reverse mentoring refers to when a person or an employee from a junior position mentors their seniors. Hence, it is rightly called reverse mentoring.

It is mainly done to remove the skills gap; it shows that people can learn from both sides, and the opportunities are always there.

Advantages of Reverse Mentoring

Benefits of reverse mentoring can be many. Let us discuss the major ones:

• It may help you in detecting and creating future leaders for your company. This is because when the seniors would have attended the training, despite whatever skill it is, the seniors still get to observe the mentoring traits of these juniors. That way, they can help identify which one of these juniors will be best for the organization in the future.
• It can also reduce the total cost of the training. You now know how expensive the training might be; doing it in the company will save you some money if you are able to find an employee who possibly is a junior in the role but has experience in some certain field and can teach other people about it. It does not always need to be a hard skill; it can also be a soft skill like talking to prospects in a certain way.
• Another advantage of reverse mentoring is that it helps you know your workplace''s culture better, and to improve where it needs improvement. For example, it might help your senior leaders get in touch with the culture they stopped caring for after climbing the corporate ladder.
• Another benefit of reverse mentoring can be that it improves diversity in your company and the inclusion of every employee. It''s pretty common for senior leaders to stop getting updates on the latest trends and technology after a certain time, so reverse mentoring can help you get your seniors to brush up their tech skills and stay updated about the latest trends of the industry.

Disadvantages of Reverse Mentoring

The disadvantages of reverse mentoring can also be major. Let''s consider the main ones:

• Often, the junior members of the team don''t feel that comfortable teaching the seniors something. The lack of confidence can make many of them not participate in the mentoring program in the very first place.
• Another disadvantage can be if the senior members that need the training are rude or always boss around on others. The junior employees wouldn''t feel like taking time out of their busy schedule to mentor someone they don''t even like or respect.
• Many employees'' role in the company would be non-tech, so in that case, if they aren''t really going to use the skills they develop here, such training won''t be that important to them—something that''s nice to have only.

Reverse Mentoring Examples

Following are a few examples of reverse mentoring:

• The Vice President of finance may need mentorship to stay updated about the latest trends related to fin-tech.
• The senior sales employees need to learn new social media trends.
• This could be when a senior in marketing needs to learn about TikTok.
• Gen Z employees would teach the seniors about the tech quite well.

What Are the Three Types of Mentoring Techniques?

There exist three mentoring techniques:

• Traditional mentoring: This type of mentoring involves one-on-one meetings between the mentor and the mentee. In this program, the mentor…
• Distance mentoring: It is where the mentor and the mentee are situated in different locations and they are connected via some online applications. This type of mentoring sometimes also can be called virtual mentoring since it''s done online or virtually.
• Group mentoring: This is when there is just one mentor training an entire group at once. This type of mentoring often requires a proper area.

What Are the Risks of Reverse Mentoring?

There are times when this type of mentoring might result in some form of friction if seniors don''t feel comfortable with the idea of being trained by juniors.

What Are the 4 Cs of Mentoring?

The four Cs of mentoring are conversation, connection, community, and culture.

If you are ready to adopt the reverse mentoring structure in your organization, then you will have to foster these four characteristics so that it may help you grow your social capital.

These qualities should be taken care of even if you have all the employees working on-site, remotely, or in the hybrid culture.