Creating A New Mindset: Reverse Mentoring

In today’s knowledge-based economy, information sharing has become need of the hour. The main objective for any organization has to be utilization of the available knowledge base to the best of its advantage. Mentoring has proven again and again to be an effective workforce development tool. While traditional perception about mentoring involves a senior executive sharing knowledge and experience with a junior executive but reverse mentoring focuses on the junior personnel teaching the experienced personnel about some new tricks. Reverse mentoring is an innovative way to encourage learning and facilitate crossgenerational relationships. It involves the pairing of a younger, junior employee acting as mentor to share expertise with an older, senior colleague as mentee. The only purpose is knowledge sharing, with the mentee focused on learning from the mentor’s updated subject or technological expertise and generational perspective. The current study focuses on how the concept of reverse mentoring has brought a paradigm shift in the area of mentoring in the organizations and how it can be used as a technique for performance enhancement of a multigenerational workforce. It also discusses the key pillars of modern mentoring in the organization. Further the study shows that reverse mentoring is beneficial for the organization but the reversal role of the juniors and seniors should be clear to both the parties