Reverse Mentorship – guest blog

January 22, 2011

Many of you may have heard of the idea of reverse mentorship.
In this process, a senior level executive finds a young person in the organization to serve as a mentor to him or her. The relationship focuses on certain skills and ideas that the young employee can share with the more senior person. For instance, the young person may have much more knowledge and expertise with regard to new technologies or social media. The senior executive can use this reverse mentorship opportunity to learn from the young person, to insure that he or she keeps abreast of key trends and developments important to the organization.

I don’t know where the concept began, though I recall hearing Jack Welch describe how he discovered this concept in his own organization back in the mid-1990s.

Continue reading ...