Letting younger employees take the lead

Reverse Mentoring
Reverse Mentoring

Reverse mentoring harnesses the innovation potential of a multi-generational workforce.

BE honest. If you were in charge of governing innovation in a bank, who would you entrust the leadership of innovation to: “the old guard” who seek and strive for stability, security and predictability or the younger “fintech trailblazers” who can help to combat the big bang disruptors that enjoy a huge advantage over corporations that have yet to install customer-centric, digital service channels? A smart answer may sound like this: “Well, it depends – ideally both groups should work together for the benefit of the organisation.”

Unfortunately, common sense is not always commonly practised in business despite the trend of a rapidly ageing population with a shrinking workforce. As a result of shifting age demographics, many companies employ members of four to five different “generations”. This rather imprecise term refers to groups of people categorised as belonging to a particular age cohort and who have lived during significant socio-historical events: Millennials/ Generation Y are born roughly between 1981 and 1994; Generation X are generally born between 1965 and 1980; Baby Boomers born from 1946 to 1964. Then we have Traditionalists, born between 1930 and 1945; and the Silent Generation, those born between 1900 and 1929. The last two groups may include those who have been re-employed by their employers. Add the Facebook generation born after 1994 (the so-called Linksters), and the list is complete.

Innovation potential

How can the innovation potential of a multi-generational workforce be harnessed? One strategy is reverse mentoring, ie the practice of pairing older executives as mentees with younger employees as their mentors, eg in areas such as social media. This has proven to be an effective approach to bring older, experienced employees up to speed for the benefit of the organisation.

The word mentoring has been linked to the story of Mentor in the ancient Greek epic poem The Odyssey (attributed to Homer) who took care of Odysseus’ son Telemachus while he was in fighting in the Trojan War (1260-1180 BC). A mentor, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and often younger person”. Famous examples of mentoring relationships include Socrates and Plato, and former Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and his younger ministers.

A “reverse mentorship” relationship implies that “younger people” can rise to become the trusted mentors of “older people”, supporting their growth and capabilities (eg helping with their Facebook or Instagram pages) – just like some of my students have done. While I was born in the era of typewriters, most of my students grew up attending technology-savvy schools where they were given a digital learning device so that they could “learn anywhere and anytime”. In his 2001 article Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants, education consultant Marc Prensky called these kids “digital natives” (note: the terms are not mutually exclusive as one may argue that the “real natives” are the technology inventors who made the digital revolution possible). In my case, however, I confess that I sometimes do feel like a “digital immigrant” when I compare my social media capabilities with those of my digital technology mentors who are several decades younger than me. Recently, one of them “refreshed” my knowledge about the cloud-based Google Drive (a file storage and synchronisation service) which assists users with file storing and sharing as well as editing documents, spread sheets and collaborative presentations. When I remarked that this was indeed a case of reverse mentoring, my younger mentor urged me to stay focused on what he was “teaching” me.

Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric (GE), has been credited with propagating the practice of reverse mentoring in business. He discovered the concept during a business trip to London in 1999 and subsequently introduced it to the senior management at GE in order to learn more about the Internet through younger and tech-savvy employees. Mr Welch said that it was “one of the best ideas (he) had heard in years”. Reverse mentoring is not always an easy journey, especially in hierarchical workplace cultures where seniority practices prevail. However, success stories of digital reverse mentoring programmes at Bosch, AXA or Kimberly- Clark, Asia-Pacific, show that this type of mentoring has significant benefits such as higher staff engagement, provided the top leadership team understands its value and walks the talk as mentees of younger coaches themselves. One local small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) which has benefited from having a mix of young, old and middle-aged employees (56 per cent of the staff are above the age of 40) in the form of greater staff loyalty and experience sharing is Han’s (F&B) Pte Ltd.

For a reverse mentoring relationship to be beneficial for both mentee and mentor, several ingredients are critical. First of all, both parties must be transparent with regard to their fears and concerns. These should be openly discussed prior to the start of the mentoring process so that both mentee and mentor are at ease. Older and younger employees have different values and communication preferences that have to be clarified to avoid miscommunication.

Secondly, mutual trust is key, without which reverse mentoring will not be effective, because the acceptance of “vulnerability” is part and parcel of a reverse mentoring process. Finally, the willingness to learn from each other is crucial too, because both sides have substantial resources which can benefit the other. Movies such as The Intern have illustrated the benefits of reverse (reciprocal) mentoring programmes in terms of mutual learning, experience sharing, empowerment of younger leaders and generational proximity.

No complex formal processes

Reverse or reciprocal mentoring can be implemented within an organisation without complex formal processes. Besides the need to pay close attention to the (needs-based) matching process, it is important to nurture a community of trusted mentors and mentees as foundation for a robust, adaptive and resilient organisational culture. To build a strong culture, a transformational innovation leadership style is required so that employees of all generations are encouraged and inspired to co-create in order to come up with the next big idea.


  • Thomas Menkhoff is professor of organisational behaviour and human resources at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business, Singapore Management University (SMU), and academic director of SMU’s Master of Science in Innovation programme.
Published by Business Times on 21 May 2016.
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