In 1972, the Premacks, a married couple of psychologists, published a study on the intelligence of chimpanzees that showed they were capable of answering questions. However, the researchers acknowledged that they had never been able to get the primates in the experiment to ask them. What if, rather than providing answers, what makes us human is asking questions? There comes a time in every career when you tend to ask fewer questions. Not because someone knows everything, but because they think they should. Because the position, the experience, the years… impose some sort of uncomfortable silence in the face of doubt.
And yet, sometimes all it takes is a brief repositioning to change it. Listen to the newcomer. Let yourself be guided by someone with less formal experience, but with another way of understanding the world. Another language. Another point of view.
Reverse mentoring is not just about learning to use new tools. It has to do with deactivating the automatic mechanism that makes us think that years of experience are always a guarantee. And that younger people are in organisations only to learn. And what if they also come to return questions that we had stopped asking ourselves?
What will I read about in this article?
- What is reverse mentoring?
- Benefits for the employees involved
- Benefits for the company
- Learning to unlearn
- How to apply it in an organisation
What exactly is reverse mentoring?
The idea is simple, although its execution is not always so: young people or people with less formal experience accompany senior profiles, usually managers, to share with them knowledge and perspectives that are often off the radar of traditional leadership. It’s often associated with digital issues – social media, online culture, new consumer trends – but its real implications go far beyond that.
Because when someone without “hierarchical weight” takes the floor and the expert listens, not only is information transmitted: tensions are activated, inertia is challenged, influence is symbolically reordered.
What are the benefits of reverse mentoring for the employees involved?
For those who take on the role of mentor, it is often a rare opportunity to be heard without the straitjacket of subordination. It’s unusual for a newcomer to tell a senior manager what she could do better, what she doesn’t understand or what’s becoming obsolete. But when this conversation is institutionalised, it becomes an experience that validates emerging knowledge and legitimises different perspectives.
And how is this achieved? Mainly by challenging the idea of authority as something unidirectional. It also dispels the fear of appearing inexperienced, of ceding control, of making mistakes. Reverse mentoring not only transmits new knowledge, but also invites a practice that, in the professional environment, is not always cultivated naturally: shared vulnerability.
What are the benefits for the company? The generational as a mirror
We often talk about “generational clash” as if it was inevitable. Boomers, millennials, Zs, etc. Labels that accumulate like layers of sediment between those who have been in a company for decades and those who have only been there for months. But what if this friction wasn’t a conflict, but an opportunity? Reverse mentoring, if well thought out, doesn‘t seek to replace leadership or impose a youthful vision as superior. Its ambition is different: to broaden the view, to denaturalise some certainties and to offer new angles from which to contemplate old problems.
An organisation that learns from its young people not only updates its tools, but also its sensitivity. It anticipates cultural tensions, changes in ways of relating, of consuming, of living. But beyond the operational aspect, there’s a profound benefit that’s difficult to measure: that of opening up spaces where generations do not compete or tolerate each other, but listen to each other based on their differences.
There’s something brave in allowing someone with less experience to tell you things you don’t want to hear. And also something deeply ethical: to recognise that knowledge isn‘t always in the place where it’s supposed to be.
Learning to unlearn (or what was never said in the MBA)
“Leadership is about teaching. “You have to inspire with vision. “The expert is the one who has lived this before”. These ideas, so ingrained in corporate culture, are shaken when a senior person sits in front of someone who is just starting out, and says: “You tell me about it”.
But perhaps that’s what leadership is all about: knowing when to shut up, when to ask, and when to be challenged by someone who has not yet been conditioned by the system or habit.
Reverse mentoring challenges the inertia of thinking that the new must always be validated by the old. And it opens up the possibility that the new has value in its own right, even if it doesn’t have a name yet. Even if it’s not backed by decades of experience or a position.
What does it take for senior profiles to really open up to this kind of relationship?
Probably something that isn’t always mentioned in the manuals: humility, curiosity, and a certain tolerance for confusion. Because in these dialogues, the aim is not to confirm what’s already known, but to mess it up a bit. And that disorder can be fertile, but also uncomfortable.
How can it be implemented within an organisation?
As researchers Jennifer Jordan and Michael Sorell explain in Harvard Business Review, its implementation must be deliberate, careful and well-structured. Based on their experience, they propose several essential steps:
* Define clear objectives from the outset: a reverse mentoring programme needs a concrete intention: do we want to accelerate digital transformation? Explore new generational sensitivities? Open up spaces for diversity? The clearer the purpose, the easier it will be to guide the conversations.
* Select participants carefully: both profiles should be chosen for their willingness to listen, to question and to step out of their comfort zone. It’s not just about matching by areas of expertise, but by openness and attitude.
* Set expectations and relationship standards: it’s important to create a safe environment where people can speak honestly.
* Provide training and coaching on how to approach these conversations, how to give constructive feedback and how to sustain the dialogue even when tensions arise.
* Follow-up (without turning it into control): the team responsible for the programme should accompany the process in order to detect obstacles, adjust dynamics and gather lessons learned. But this follow-up should be done with respect, without invading the autonomy of the pairs.
Listening to the newcomer shouldn’t be an exception, but a daily gesture. A way of not being left behind. Also, a way of not forgetting that one day, we were all newcomers.
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