10 Best Results of Reverse Mentoring. A reverse mentoring program deliberately deviates from the typical mentoring model. However, at least one study has corroborated what many people have observed through internal data collection.
Reverse mentorship reduces attrition, particularly among younger workers in the Millennial generation. However, because a typical reverse mentoring program is set up with a more senior employee serving as the mentee and a more junior employee serving as the mentor, there may be some inherent discomfort for all parties involved. 10 Best Results of Reverse Mentoring.
A senior executive may find it difficult to accept advice from someone lower on the organizational ladder. On the other hand, a junior and younger employee may be hesitant to provide feedback or challenge the ideas of someone who could threaten his career. 10 Best Results of Reverse Mentoring.
So, what should a mentoring program manager do? If you want your reverse mentoring program to be a success, here are 10 recommendations to ensure that your mentees and mentors understand the importance and delight of mentoring.
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Reverse mentoring is, in theory, a low-risk, high-reward endeavor. That is generally true only if the reverse mentoring relationships are established and maintained in an organized manner. The following pointers should assist you in getting started.
1. Set Guidelines
First and foremost, define the parameters for all mentoring connections that will arise as a result of your reverse mentoring programme. Maybe you want each pair to focus on teaching the executive how to use social media, or maybe you want them to focus on recognising and exploiting a Millennial perspective on work-related issues. Help your mentees and mentors understand what they’re being asked to do, no matter what the program’s goal is, so that they can start their connection with a shared understanding of why they’re meeting. Know 10 Best Results of Reverse Mentoring.
In a reverse mentoring relationship, formalising the goal-setting process is a smart idea. Put everything down on paper and keep track of your progress toward your objectives. Regardless of whether you’re utilising a qualitative or quantitative measuring strategy, this will keep the reverse mentoring connection well-targeted and measurable (or both).
2. Accept Feedback
In a McKinsey Quarterly essay, Harvard Business School professor Robert S. Kaplan noted that the more senior an executive becomes, the more difficult it is to receive feedback. As a result, understanding how to accept feedback effectively as an executive is critical for both personal and organisational success.
Many executives are accustomed to giving orders but not to receiving feedback. It’s even more difficult if the feedback comes from a lower-level employee. As the administrator of a mentoring programme, it’s critical that you assist your executive mentees in preparing for and accepting comments from their more junior mentors. The mentorship relationship could be doomed from the start if you don’t have this mindset.
As a result, you may need to assist your executive mentees in learning how to ask for and receive feedback in this type of mentoring environment. For leaders who need to ask for and receive feedback, the Harvard Business Review has several helpful strategies.
3. Give Reverse Mentoring Relationship Feedback
In a similar vein, it may be difficult, if not impossible, for the younger mentor to provide feedback to their mentee (e.g., their CEO, VP, or boss’s boss). Those concerns aren’t entirely unjustified. Workplace retaliation is the most common form of complaint filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. No one wants to say the wrong thing or create a negative impression on someone in authority who has the capacity to make their work life a living hell or force them out of a job. Know 10 Best Results of Reverse Mentoring.
However, the goal of reverse mentoring is for the junior mentor to assist the older mentee in learning something new. Giving feedback is an important part of the learning process. As the mentoring programme administrator, you should ensure that your mentees are aware of their mentoring role and the responsibilities that will be expected of them. These new mentors may benefit from a quick training session on how to provide effective feedback, as well as confirmation that they are permitted and expected to provide feedback to their executive-level mentees.
4. Hold a Superior Accountable
Holding a superior accountable is related to providing superior feedback. This may be unsettling for a younger mentor, but it is at the heart of all successful mentoring partnerships.
Traditional mentoring forms have long struggled to establish and manage accountability, which is a key part of mentoring programs. Mentors must hold mentees accountable for their behaviors, pledges, and commitments, among other things. It is useless to have a mentee who does not complete their assignments or fulfill their responsibilities. The mentor must ensure that the mentee completes all required tasks.
You may help ensure this by educating both the mentee and mentor on what is expected of them and how the power structure of the relationship should flow in your capacity as mentoring programme administrator. It might also be beneficial for the mentoring pair to discuss expectations and how to support and prod one another as necessary early on.
Mentoring software, on the other hand, maybe the ideal answer for making accountability both actionable and trackable. Mentoring software allows your mentoring pairs to report progress toward set goals and even provides automated reminders for mentors and mentees to provide required feedback or maintain track of targets on time.
5. Respect One Another
Yes, some of the initial few points may be unsettling or even awkward, but one component will ensure that they develop in the positive direction intended: respect. A mentoring relationship, regardless of who the mentee or mentor is, is defined by mutual respect.
Respect for one another will manifest itself in a variety of ways:
- How the pair speak to one another
- How the pair listens to one another
- How the pair treats one another
- How the pair treats the entire relationship
If mentoring partners are not treated with respect, they may not give or receive feedback in the spirit intended. Perhaps they won’t trust each other’s best intentions if one of them fails to keep a commitment. As the mentorship programme administrator, it’s critical that you stress the value of mutual respect and connection in everything the pair does in their mentoring relationship. Mentoring offers the benefit of supporting both mentors and mentees in the development of important soft skills such as empathy, which is a necessary skill for exhibiting respect in relationships.
6. Create a Trusting Relationship
With respect comes trust.
Mentees and mentors gain trust in each other when they believe the best in them and know they are open to accepting or offering feedback, learning from or teaching their partner, and behaving with the best of intentions. This kind of trust is difficult to come by, but it is necessary for a mentoring relationship to work.
Without some sense of vulnerability on both sides, trust in a mentoring relationship is difficult to achieve. In order for trust to be formed, both mentors and mentees must be prepared to let down some of their barriers and apprehensions about the relationship.
Vulnerability is a sort of closeness in many ways (quite obviously platonic intimacy in this sense). According to research on how to build healthy relationships, there are two major purposes for developing vulnerability:
- Disclosing information that includes (and doesn’t exclude) the partner
- Disclosing information that is specific (instead of general)
A reverse mentorship relationship, for example, might be used to assist executives in better understanding cultural norms while dealing with younger generations. To show vulnerability in this relationship, the executive can reveal some embarrassing communication mistakes made with the mentor’s generation, while the mentor might openly share his or her apprehensions or anxieties about offering criticism to an executive. By being specific and partner-inclusive, both parties tear down boundaries.
7. Be Authentic
Authenticity and trust go hand in hand. When a person trusts their mentoring partner, they are able to be more open and honest with them. And by being more honest and real, they strengthen that trust by revealing their true selves to their spouse. It’s a cyclical cycle that fosters strong relationships between people, and mentorship administrators should encourage it.
Encourage your mentees and mentors to be themselves, including discussing setbacks or failures as they work toward the mentoring relationship’s objectives. They develop a deeper tie and basis for their mentoring relationship when they reveal themselves honestly, and they also create a richer mentoring experience for themselves and their partners.
8. Listen With an Open Mind
While this is related to accepting feedback, the concept of listening with an open mind applies to both participants in a mentoring relationship. Mentors and mentees who trust and respect one another will find it simpler to listen without judging their partners. They’ll be able to hear each other without tuning each other out.
This idea will also assist them in remaining fully engaged in the conversation rather than merely half-listening while formulating their response to what their partner has to say.
Of course, it’s difficult to listen with an open mind if you aren’t paying attention. Mentors and mentees who wish to have a successful reverse mentoring relationship should brush up on their active listening skills before starting.
As the administrator of a mentoring programme, you may help mentees and mentors develop this skill by providing them with resources and approaches that they can use in their relationships to support and encourage open and active listening. You might also want to consider providing active listening training.
9. Set Goals
The majority of mentoring relationships are centered on the mentee’s goals, which they desire to set and work toward achieving. Mentors must agree that the objectives are appropriate for the partnership, which can be difficult for junior mentors in reverse mentoring. They may not feel qualified or powerful enough to speak up about the executive mentee’s objectives.
Some mentoring program administrators define overall program goals for the couples, such as having the executive learn about a new technology or how to utilize social media to communicate more effectively with the workforce. With a program goal as the foundation for the relationship, your mentees and mentors will have a clear focus on which to set additional or connected goals.
It may also be beneficial for you to teach the pairs that both participants should have a say in determining the goals as the administrator. This clear consent might assist the mentor in overcoming whatever fears he or she may have.
This raises the issue of how goals are set. We propose having a standard goal-setting framework that you use in all reverse mentoring partnerships. It’s a lot easier to track success with that structure. You could, for example, utilise the
REAL goals format.
Those are goals that are:
- Relevant
- Experimental
- Aspirational
- Learning-based
In the end, any goal-setting format will suffice as long as it is simple to follow and adheres to a goal-setting process that results in quantifiable goals that are linked with your organisation’s targeted programming outcomes.
10. Hold Confidence
A mentoring relationship’s basis must be established on trust, which requires defining boundaries with one another and keeping privileged information secret. Without it, mentees and mentors won’t be able to be open, honest, vulnerable, and so on, which is essential for getting the most out of mentoring.
When it comes to what information is disclosed and expected to be kept confidential, executive mentees must be careful not to cross any lines with their mentors. They must be careful not to put their mentors in an unpleasant situation. Junior mentors must also ensure that confidentiality is respected and that information is not shared with individuals outside of the mentoring relationship.
By aggressively bringing secrecy into the open and discussing it with all participants at the start of the programme, you can assist the mentoring pairs understand and agree to confidentiality. Assist mentees and mentors in communicating with one another to set confidentiality boundaries and expectations.
Junior mentors, in particular, will very certainly require mentoring training. Because of the nature of reverse mentoring, you’ll be depending on junior team members with less job experience and managerial expertise, which frequently translates to stronger mentoring skills overall.
A Reverse Mentoring Program Goes a Long Way
The free environment for knowledge sharing is one of the most significant advantages of reverse mentoring. Many senior executives may benefit from some mentorship, and there are plenty of more junior staff who are prepared to share what they know. Your reverse mentorship program may be a positive experience for all involved if you help your participants understand what is expected of them, what the program’s purpose is, what the relationship’s focus will be, and some skills to use to manage their interactions.
