Reverse Mentoring-Importance and Meaning

Here, we will discover:

• Reverse Mentoring Meaning: What Is Reverse Mentoring  
• Benefits of Reverse Mentoring
• Disadvantages of Reverse Mentoring
• Reverse Mentoring Examples
• What Are the Three 3 Types of Mentoring Techniques?   
• What Are the Risks of Reverse Mentoring?
• What Are the 4 Cs of Mentoring?

Reverse Mentoring Meaning: What Is Reverse Mentoring  

Reverse mentoring means when a person or employee of a junior position mentors their seniors. That’s why it’s called reverse mentoring.  

It’s mainly done to remove the skills gap, and 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’s discuss the major ones: 

1. It can help you detect and create future leaders for your company. Because when the senior members would be attending the training, despite what skill it is, the seniors still get to observe the mentoring traits of these juniors. That way, they can help identify which of these juniors will be the best ones for the organization in the future. 

2. This type of mentoring can also reduce the overall cost of the training. Now, you understand how expensive the training can be, doing it within the company can save you money if you can find an employee who may be a junior in the role, but has experience in a certain field and can teach other people about it. It doesn’t always have to be a hard skill; it can also be a soft skill like talking to prospects in a certain way. 

3. Reverse mentoring’s other benefit is that it helps you know your workplace’s culture better and improve where it needs improving. For instance, it can help your senior leaders get in touch with the culture they stopped caring about after climbing the corporate ladder. 

4. Another benefit of reverse mentoring can be that it can improve diversity in your company and inclusion of every employee. 

5. It’s not uncommon for senior leaders to stop being updated with the latest trends and technology after a certain time, 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 drawbacks of reverse mentoring can also be significant. Let’s discuss the major ones: 

1. Often the junior members of the team don’t feel that comfortable teaching the seniors something. The lack of confidence may cause many of them to not participate in the mentoring program in the first place.  

2. 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. 

3. Many employees’ roles in the company are non-tech, so in that case, if they aren’t really going to need the skills they develop here, such training won’t be that important to them—something that’s just nice to have. 

Reverse Mentoring Examples 

Here are several examples of reverse mentoring: 

1. The Vice President of finance may need mentorship to stay updated about the latest trends related to fintech. 

2. Seniors in the sales department may need someone to teach them the latest social media trends. 

3. It can be when a senior in marketing needs to know about TikTok 

4. Gen Z employees would be good at teaching senior employees about tech. 

What Are the Three 3 Types of Mentoring Techniques? 

The three types of mentoring are: 

1. Traditional mentoring, where the mentor and mentees have one on one meeting. In this program the mentor.    

2. Distance mentoring is where both the mentor and the mentee are in different locations, and they’re connected via online applications. This type of mentoring sometimes can also be called virtual mentoring as it’s done online or virtually. 

3. Group mentoring is the third type of mentoring, where there’s one mentor training a whole group at once. You often need a proper space for this type of mentoring. 

What Are the Risks of Reverse Mentoring?  

Sometimes this type of mentoring may result in some sort of resistance if seniors don’t feel comfortable with the idea of being trained by their juniors. 

What Are the 4 Cs of Mentoring? 

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

If you’re willing to adopt the reverse mentoring structure in your organization, you’ll need to nurture these four characteristics so that it can help you grow your social capital. 

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