It was ten years ago when I decided to setup up my own company with my colleagues, after having worked for a corporate organization for 30+ years. It was a major change in my life, stepping out of a very big family, full of good memories and gratitude for the long-lasting relationships. Now it was time to leave my comfort zone, to look for new challenges, new aspirations, new explorations…

Only a year later my daughter joined our company and this has been one of the great opportunities in enriching my personal and professional development as we moved along.

The first years were really hard for us; a Baby Boomer working with a Gen Y, on top of being Mum and Daughter, making the relationship even tougher.  We had conflicts, miscommunication, and wasted energy at times. When I reflect back, I realize that I was more attached to traditional workplace practices and the patriarchal culture that might have been at the heart of the problem. I usually acted as the mentor and provided most of the input, which created tension in the relationship, even on some simple matters where we had varying perspectives.

As years went by, we both adopted different tools and techniques, attended various programs which surely helped us improve our approaches. Yet one very powerful tool was just creating my own form of reverse mentoring; It was simply asking my daughter for feedback on my performance, product, ideas, interpersonal relationships and any other significant impact I made in-house or in the client environment.

She came with very honest feedback which was sometimes disappointing for me and there were truths which I didn’t want to acknowledge. This helped us both, as my daughter also felt that she was being listened to and that I did care for her ideas. She felt valued and in return I kept on getting more valuable feedback each time. Some insights were rewarding, some shocking, each of which led me to deep breakthroughs and taught me to brush up my professional and leadership skills. She has been an eye-opener for me.

Through this journey, I now more deeply feel the power of reverse mentoring in bridging generations and it was only then that I became a very strong believer and supporter of it.

The objective of reverse mentoring is primarily to enable leaders and senior managers to stay in touch with their organisations and the outside world, which also allows the senior person to have deeper insight about his/her own self. Meanwhile, the advantages flow both ways. As for the other party, this gives the opportunity to be heard by more senior and experienced people.

Currently, we have five generations in the workplace including Radio Babies (1930-1945), Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1976), Generation Y (1977-1991), and even some Millennials (1991-forward). The individuals and organizations that learn to leverage the similarities and differences of the generations will be the ones to succeed. The key to making these encounters successful is learning to understand the point of view of each generation and respecting their differences.

Younger generations have grown up with a lot of technology. They come with fresh eyes, open minds, instant links to the technology of our future and see things differently than we do. Moreover, the fast progress in technology and trends has created great room for senior people to learn from younger generations, which is an opportunity to give and take and learn from each other’s experience and knowledge. As well as providing a safe environment for senior management to learn, these relationships also give junior people a sense of purpose and belonging.

In some corporations reverse mentoring was encouraged back in 90’s. With the increasingly fast penetration of technology in business and digital transformation which has been entering the companies, the need for reverse mentoring has gotten even stronger and more popular in the last ten years.

It enables dialogue between generations and helps resolve conflict between older and younger employees. For the senior people, it also has the benefit of gaining understanding from a young employee’s perspective, redesigning their work environment, their role and being ready for tomorrow. For the younger employee who is the potential future leader, the program strengthens self-leadership, sense of ownership and active participation in the tranformation of the company to which they belong.

In order to make the program succesful here are some points for consideration;

• Establish clarity the purpose of the mentoring program and how it fits into the broad organizational goals. This will help participants to take the process seriously.
• Prepare both parties for their role. Junior participants need training in how to confront and challenge more senior participants, while senior participants must learn how to be open to these challenges.
• Define expectations, agreeing on rules of engagement and committing the necessary time.
• Build trust. Reverse mentoring requires the trust of each party. The goal is to push one another outside of each person’s comfort zone and try new ways of thinking, working and being.
• Be transparent. Removing communication barriers, being open and honest, showing respect and embracing differences.
• Avoid the barriers of status, position and power. With regular reviews, ensuring that participants do not fall back to the traditional pattern of behaviour.
• Start with small pilot teams and then using pilot participants to roll out the program on a wider scale.

Reverse Mentoring is a great tool in bridging the gap between generations, provided that both the younger and the senior members genuinely want to learn from and share with the other.

So this is my journey.  I encourage to you stretch and have the same worthwhile discomfort that I did!