Reverse Mentoring

What reverse mentoring is

Reverse mentoring (الإرشاد العكسي), also called reverse mentorship, is an arrangement in which an employee who is junior in experience or in age mentors an employee who sits above them in the organisational structure, in an area where the junior employee holds more recent knowledge.

Two people take part in reverse mentoring. The mentor is the junior employee, junior in experience, in age, or in both. Being junior in one of the two respects is enough for the definition. The person being mentored is the employee who sits above the mentor in the structure. What the junior employee brings to the arrangement is knowledge in one area, and the arrangement is defined by that area: the junior employee mentors in it because the knowledge they hold there is more recent than the knowledge of the person they mentor.

The word “reverse” describes the direction in which knowledge moves. In reverse mentoring it moves from the employee who is lower in the structure to the employee who is higher in it.

The areas reverse mentoring covers

Reverse mentoring covers areas in which the knowledge of the junior employee is more recent than the knowledge of the senior employee. They are the following.

• Digital tools and new ways of working. It concerns the tools with which work is done and the newer ways of doing it. In this area the junior employee can show the senior employee tools and ways of working that are more recent than what the senior employee knows.
• Market behaviour among younger age groups. It concerns how people in the younger age groups behave in the market. This knowledge matters to whoever takes decisions on a product or on marketing. In reverse mentoring, the person taking those decisions can hear about that behaviour from a junior employee whose knowledge of it is more recent.
• The reality of daily work. It is the work as it is seen by the people who carry it out. That view reaches the top of the structure only after it has been filtered through layers. Through reverse mentoring, the senior employee can hear it from someone who carries out the work.

The condition under which reverse mentoring breaks down

Reverse mentoring breaks down if the junior mentor remains subject to appraisal by the person they are mentoring. A mentor who knows that an observation of theirs may be taken as overstepping will not offer it, and the session then turns into a display of courtesy. In such a session the senior employee hears what the mentor expects to be welcome, not what the mentor knows.

The value of reverse mentoring lies in the observations that the junior employee offers, whether about a tool, about a market, or about the reality of daily work. Where the person who hears those observations is also the person who appraises the mentor, an observation can be taken as going beyond what the mentor’s position allows. A mentor who expects that reading of an observation keeps it back. Once observations are kept back, the session keeps its form and loses its content: the two people still meet, but what passes between them is courtesy, not the knowledge for which the arrangement was set up.

For that reason reverse mentoring can be arranged across different lines in the organisational structure, not between a manager and that manager’s direct subordinate. The two people are then not in a direct reporting line to each other. When the arrangement runs across lines, the senior employee being mentored is not the person who appraises the junior mentor, so the condition under which reverse mentoring breaks down is not present between them.

What makes reverse mentoring work

Reverse mentoring works when the arrangement carries the following conditions.

• A defined scope, in writing. It records that the arrangement concerns one particular subject, and that it is not open ended general mentoring. The written scope names the subject in which the junior employee mentors the senior employee, so that both of them know what the sessions are about. It keeps the arrangement within the area in which the junior employee’s knowledge is more recent.
• A set duration and a known number of meetings. It fixes how long the arrangement lasts and how many times the two people meet. The arrangement therefore has an end that is known in advance, and a number of meetings that is known in advance, to the mentor and to the person being mentored alike.
• Requested by the senior employee, not imposed on the junior one. It turns on who takes the initiative. When the initiative comes from the senior employee, it is a sign that the purpose of the arrangement really is learning. The junior employee then takes part in an arrangement that the senior employee asked for, and is not given it as a duty from above.
• Kept out of appraisal. It means that the arrangement is not counted in the appraisal of either party. The junior mentor is not appraised on what is said in the sessions, and neither is the senior employee being mentored. What either of them says in a session plays no part in an appraisal of them.

How reverse mentoring differs from traditional mentoring

In traditional mentoring, knowledge flows from the more experienced employee to the less experienced one, and its subject is the career path and professional judgement. In reverse mentoring the direction is turned around, so that the knowledge goes from the junior employee to the senior one, and the subject is specific knowledge that the junior employee holds by virtue of their position or their generation.

Traditional mentoring and reverse mentoring do not compete with each other. Both can take place for the same people, on different subjects. A senior employee can guide a junior colleague on the colleague’s career path, while the same junior colleague mentors the senior employee in an area where the junior colleague’s knowledge is more recent. Each arrangement then keeps to its own subject, and neither replaces the other.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.