CHICAGO — One of the main topics at this year’s Women’s Leadership Forum during the Society of Independent Show Organizers (SISO) Leadership Conference was reverse mentoring. By definition, reverse mentoring is when junior employees share their knowledge and skills with more senior-level staff to help bridge gaps in understanding and positively impact workplace culture.
Reverse mentoring programs help organizations to encourage knowledge and skills sharing between senior-level and junior-level staff, leading to benefits to the individuals. Whereas these programs give senior leaders the opportunity to be vulnerable and humble, thus increasing their sense of trustworthiness, junior leaders are empowered to showcase their skills and insights, increasing their job satisfaction.
“In any organization, we should be learning in all directions,” Angela Scalpello, Owner and Principal of The Scalpello Group, LLC, said during her keynote at the SISO event. “If any of us are still holding on to the notion that the most experienced, the oldest, the most senior people have all the answers, we are sadly mistaken.”
Positive Impacts of Reverse Mentoring
According to research published in Harvard Business Review, reverse mentoring programs have four main benefits to companies:
- These programs help increase the retention of Millennial workers.
- There is an increase in the sharing of digital skills.
- The programs drive culture changes at an organization.
- Reverse mentoring helps to promote diversity.
During her keynote, Scalpello shared that these programs also help to build a culture of curiosity and mutual respect, encourage growth mindsets of all team members and root out bias and stereotypes.
“The difference between a growth mindset and a fixed mindset is the determination in an organization whether you’re going to succeed to fail. A fixed mindset says things cannot be learned. You’re either talented or you’re not talented. Challenges are threats, and we don’t take risks,” Scalpello said. “A growth mindset says we are all capable of learning and growing. Challenges are seen as ways to improve and opportunities for learning and growth.”
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Along with tangible benefits to an organization, there are also benefits to the individuals participating in reverse mentoring programs.
Benefits to Senior Leaders
- Bridges generational gaps
- Provides a break from the daily routine
- Opportunity to learn emerging trends and technology
- Helps to be more adaptive and in touch with the company’s workforce
Benefits to Junior Employees
- Increase visibility within an organization
- Provides access to key decision makers
- Helps to build leadership skills
- Creates career development and opportunities
- Increases the feeling of being valued and heard by leaders
“[For junior employees] This is an opportunity to not only be heard and listened to, but for your experience, your lived experience, to be valued. … It also helps with their communication skills. It takes a lot to say to a senior executive, maybe four levels up on the hierarchical scale, ‘You know what, that’s probably not the way to approach it.’ And the beenfits to the organizations are phenomenal, and these are proven. They have quantitive data about this, and they have qualitative data about this,” Scalpello said.
How to Start
When thinking about proposing and building out a reverse mentoring program within your own organization, Scalpello provided the following steps to take:
- Define the goal
- Secure leadership buy-in
- Provide a framework
- Select and prepare participants
- Pair participants thoughtfully
- Track and evaluate results
- Celebrate and share success
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