Reverse Mentoring

As the name suggests, reverse mentoring is an act where senior employees are mentored by junior employees. It refers to the initiative in which older executives or seniors are paired with the junior ones so that they can exchange skills and experiences on the updated current trends. For example, a younger employee must be more skilled on the social media tools like Instagram, Pinterest, Whatsapp, etc. Hence, reverse mentoring helps in creating balance especially in the current era where technology has become the daily need. 

The credit of inventing the idea of Reverse Mentoring goes to Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric. In the late 1990’s he realized that the company’s management including him lack a lot about the latest technology and the Internet. He noticed that the younger candidates joining the organization are more knowledgeable about new tech trends than their senior managers. Hence, he asked his top executives to seek out mentors from among new joiners and fill the gaps.