The following is an excerpt from our feature article Who’s The Mentor Now: A Word of Caution about Reverse Business Mentoring by Judith Ashton, Esq., and Rene Petrin. To download your free copy of the complete article.
A trend these days is for businesses to seek opportunities for senior-level employees to pair with juniors to learn new technology, innovative business concepts, or simply about generation Xs or Ys view of the world. In addition to designing traditional mentoring programs, mentoring consultants and inhouse professionals are asked to create these new programs, usually known as reverse mentoring programs. HR professionals must review carefully with business management just what reverse mentoring entails and what it can and cannot accomplish. While the concept has much strength, those considering implementing a reverse mentoring program for an organization should understand thoroughly that reverse mentoring is generally more akin to coaching than mentoring and may not be as beneficial to either the organization or the individual mentor as the more powerful transformational tool of traditional mentoring.
In this article, we discuss:
- defining the mentoring relationship
- mentoring versus coaching
- the concept of reverse mentoring and how companies like General Electric, IBM, and Proctor and Gamble have used it to their advantage
- and more….