What image comes to mind when you hear the word “mentor”? You might picture an older person, someone whose face shows wisdom and experience. A business leader who guides junior employees to help develop the innovators of the future. That’s what I would think, too, but in today’s tech-driven world, the image of the mentor is changing to include the mentee. Each day, business is being conducted through digital channels like smartphones and tablets, and your employees are managing those sales, learning how to best serve multi-device clients, and shaping your presence on social media. This is fostering a generation that is better at navigating new technologies and social platforms, making them more equipped to keep up with advancements.
This is where reverse mentoring, or multi-generational mentoring, comes in. A Virtuali survey shows that millennials, the largest generation today, strongly believe in mentoring for development. However, they don’t necessarily prefer the traditional mentor role (older guiding younger); they appreciate a more open style of mentoring. This gives you a chance to be creative in sharpening your own skills while also helping to shape future leaders. The core idea remains the same: the focus is on learning how to tackle what’s needed, and there are steps to take if you choose to engage in reverse mentorship.
First you and your mentee will need a willingness to learn from each other. There will be things your young advisor will be able to teach you, but there will still be some practices you can impart on them, as well. Another thing you’ll need is trust. You’ll both be inspiring each other and encouraging one another to go beyond what you already know in search of a new way of thinking and being. All of this is about keeping an open mind, so you and your mentor need to feel comfortable enough to express what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling so that you can overcome differences in communication styles because—let’s face it—we just don’t talk the same way.
You should know there are some great benefits to multi-generational mentoring that will help pave the way to future success for your business. For example, there are a recorded 2.8 billion people in the world using the internet each day. This means they are browsing, searching and connecting with each other online, and your website should be receiving some of this traffic. In order to keep up with their preferences, you’ll want to understand the importance of things like bounce rate and SEO. So who better to learn from than the new generation of employees who are more likely to be active online with these new technologies to teach you how to keep up with today’s customers?
Another benefit of a reverse mentorship is the unity it will bring to your workforce. See, it doesn’t need to be just you and a junior employee engaging in this mentorship. It can be anyone on your team who is willing to grow and refine their skills. Reverse mentoring can build a bridge between knowledge gaps and bring different employee generations together in a productive and efficient manner. Think of it as a way to refine the skills of your experienced employees while empowering the leaders of the future. This type of learning is a two-way street, and there is so much we can gain by creating a better working relationship between the entire team.