Key takeaways
- Choose a specific learning question before matching colleagues.
- Match on relevant knowledge and willingness, rather than age alone.
- Agree confidentiality, responsibilities and time for the conversations.
- Review what participants learned without promising unsupported programme outcomes.
Reverse mentoring is a learning relationship in which a more junior colleague shares relevant knowledge or experience with a more senior colleague.[1]
The subject might be a digital tool, a working practice or an employee experience the senior colleague wants to understand.
Choose mentors for their knowledge and willingness to participate. Age alone tells you little about what someone can teach.
Start with a learning question
Name the subject the learner wants to understand. A senior manager might want to discuss how colleagues use a particular communication channel or how a workplace practice affects their experience.
Give the mentor room to explain what they can contribute. Avoid asking one person to speak for an entire generation or community.
Agree the match together
Invite both people to discuss the purpose before confirming the pairing. Their different roles or departments may provide useful perspectives, but the participants should be comfortable with the arrangement.
Talk about the effect of seniority. A junior mentor needs to know they can ask questions and disagree without the conversation becoming a performance review.
Set boundaries for the conversation
Agree what information can be shared afterwards and what stays between the participants. Discuss sensitive subjects in advance, including when an issue should go through an existing workplace process.
Write down the topic, meeting rhythm and responsibilities. The learner should prepare questions and make time for the exchange rather than treating the mentor as an on-demand help desk.
Plan a first reverse mentoring session
Consider a fictional financial aggregator where a junior implementation colleague has recently worked through the employee learning materials. A senior manager asks them to explain which instructions were hard to find and which team terms needed clarification. The junior colleague brings an approved example without customer or colleague personal information.
The manager listens, asks about the specific experience and records one question for the learning-content owner. Both people agree what can be shared outside the session. The example shows a learning exchange, not an investigation, performance review or promise that mentoring will reduce turnover.
The financial aggregator people challenges page gives the hiring, onboarding and learning context for this example.
- 01
Learning question
What does the senior colleague want to understand, and which relevant experience can the mentor explain?
- 02
Preparation and boundaries
Choose an approved example. Agree what remains private, what may be shared and who can help if the pairing becomes uncomfortable.
- 03
Follow-up
Record what was learned and one agreed next action. Name its owner and choose a date to review it.
Give the mentor support and time
Explain the role and offer practice in listening, questioning and explaining an unfamiliar subject. Both participants have work to do before and between sessions.
Protect the agreed meetings. Repeated cancellations leave the mentor preparing for conversations that never happen. If the arrangement no longer fits, discuss a change rather than letting it drift.
Review what each person learned
Ask participants which questions they answered and what they want to explore next. Review a specific change in understanding or working practice instead of promising that the programme will improve retention.
Use the learning culture guide to connect mentoring with other opportunities to practise and share knowledge. Keep employee feedback separate from unsupported claims about programme results.
Sources
- CIPD. (2019). Diversity management that works: an evidence-based view. Reverse mentoring definition, printed page 37. https://www.cipd.org/globalassets/media/knowledge/knowledge-hub/reports/7926-diversity-and-inclusion-report-revised_tcm18-65334.pdf
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