Reverse Mentoring: Why Senior Leaders Are Learning From Junior Colleagues

In most mentoring, experience flows one way: from senior to junior. Reverse mentoring turns that around on purpose. A junior or early-career colleague takes the mentor role, and a senior leader becomes the mentee.

It is not a new idea, but it is often done badly. Done well, it gives leaders a view of the organisation they cannot get from their own level, and gives junior people a voice that would otherwise not reach the leadership table. Done poorly, it becomes a photo opportunity. This guide covers why organisations use it, how to match people, how to keep it safe, and how to run a pilot.

What reverse mentoring is

Reverse mentoring pairs a more junior person, as mentor, with a more senior colleague, as mentee. The junior mentor shares their perspective, skills or lived experience. The senior mentee listens, asks questions and takes something back into their decisions.

The formal version is usually traced to General Electric. In 1999, chief executive Jack Welch, who had found himself behind on the internet, asked a younger colleague to teach him and ordered more than 600 managers to do the same (ABA Journal). The practice spread to other large companies, and the focus widened beyond technology.

LawCare and the University of Leeds describe it today as a way for junior staff or people from under-represented backgrounds to mentor more senior colleagues, sharing lived experience, building understanding and challenging traditional hierarchies (LawCare).

Why organisations use it

Three reasons come up again and again.

Digital fluency. Tools, platforms and habits change faster than most senior leaders can track on their own. A junior colleague who uses them every day can shorten that gap quickly.

Generational perspective. Leaders make decisions about how work is organised, how people are developed and how the organisation shows up to customers. Hearing directly from people early in their careers makes those decisions better informed.

Inclusion. Pairs that cross lines of age, background or role give senior people a first-hand view of what it is like to work in their organisation from somewhere else. The LawCare toolkit was written for exactly this, to help legal workplaces become more inclusive, supportive and fair (LawCare).

For professional bodies and associations, reverse mentoring can also connect early-career members with senior members and board members, which helps the organisation stay relevant to the people it will rely on in ten years.

Matching well

Matching is where reverse mentoring succeeds or fails. A few principles help.

• Avoid direct reporting lines. Do not pair a senior leader with someone in their own team. It makes candour risky for the junior mentor.
• Be clear what the mentee wants to learn. “Understand how our graduates experience their first year” is a better brief than “learn about Gen Z”.
• Give the junior mentor a reason to say yes. Exposure to senior thinking, visibility and a line on their development record are all fair returns for their time.

In MentorPlace, a program team can create pairs one at a time or import them from a spreadsheet of mentor and mentee email addresses, with each row setting the connection type. That suits reverse mentoring, where pairs are usually chosen deliberately rather than self-selected. In a mentorship pair, the mentor is a member with an approved mentor profile, so junior mentors will need one. Approval can be automatic if you prefer. If you would rather treat both people as equals, connect them as peers instead, which does not depend on a mentor profile or a booked session.

Our article on mentor matching covers the wider options.

Psychological safety and ground rules

The most common failure is a senior leader who agrees to take part but treats the junior mentor as a curiosity rather than a source of insight. Clear expectations at launch prevent most of it.

Agree a few ground rules up front:

• The senior person is the mentee, and that means being open to challenge.
• What is said in a session stays in the session, unless both agree otherwise.
• Feedback is about ideas and experiences, not about individuals in the organisation.
• Either person can end the pairing without explanation, and the program team will support them.

Give junior mentors some preparation too. Giving feedback upwards is a skill most people need help with. A short briefing and a simple agenda go a long way. Our guide to structuring effective mentoring sessions has a format that works well for reverse pairs.

A few platform details help with safety. Before each session, the mentee records what they want from it, which keeps the senior person focused on learning. Both people can keep notes on the connection between them. If a pairing is not working, it can be archived, which ends the active relationship without erasing its history.

Running a pilot cohort

Start small. A pilot of a handful of pairs tells you whether the idea fits your culture before you ask more leaders to commit.

The LawCare toolkit suggests a sequence worth borrowing: develop the purpose, aims and objectives (8 to 12 weeks); engage mentors and mentees (3 to 4 weeks); launch and run the scheme (at least 10 weeks); then reflect and evaluate (3 to 4 weeks, and ongoing) (LawCare).

In MentorPlace, set the pilot up as its own program. A program has a name, summary, content and a status of draft, published or hidden, so you can build it quietly and publish it when ready. Enrol the pilot group directly, and add resources such as your ground rules and session agenda. If you only want pilot participants to see each other, group the directory by program so people only see mentors who share a program with them. You can email everyone enrolled in the program for kick-off and check-ins.

Meetings run on built-in video, or in person if your organisation allows it. Bookings update people’s Google or Microsoft calendars once they connect them, which matters when one half of the pair has a full diary.

Evaluating it honestly

Reverse mentoring outcomes are mostly qualitative, and that is fine. Ask both halves of each pair what changed, and look for decisions or practices that shifted as a result.

Useful sources of evidence:

• Session reviews. Both people can review each session afterwards.
• Activity. Sessions booked and completed are counted daily for each organisation.
• Closing conversations. A short one-to-one with each participant at the end of the pilot.
• Commitments. Ask senior mentees to name one thing they will do differently, and follow up three months later.

Avoid claiming inclusion or culture outcomes from a pilot of a few pairs. Report what you saw, what people said, and what you will change next time.

Related reading

• Peer Mentoring and Buddy Schemes: When You Do Not Need a Senior Mentor
• How to Build a Mentoring Program That Lasts Past Month Three

Set up a reverse mentoring pilot

If you are planning reverse mentoring for your leadership team or your members, we can show you how to set it up as its own program, pair people from a spreadsheet and keep the pilot private until you are ready. Book a demo.

Sources

• ABA Journal, Terry Carter, “Recipe For Growth” (April 2004): https://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/recipe_for_growth
• LawCare, “Reverse mentoring toolkit” (with the University of Leeds): https://lawcare.org.uk/reverse-mentoring-toolkit/