The Learning Loop – What is reciprocal mentoring?

Reciprocal mentoring is gaining in popularity, with employers across the spectrum regaling incredulous business reporters with stories of ‘breaking down barriers’ and ‘bridging the generational skills divide’. But is this just another buzzword, or could it be the answer to the perennial problem of workplace diversity programmes that rapidly lose traction?

Mentoring is a concept that should take little introduction. The idea of experienced seniors teaching a favoured youngster the secrets of their trade goes back into antiquity. The modern workplace retains many aspects of this ancient tradition, especially the outsized influence of familial connections and the emergence of self-replication bias by those hoping to train their own legacy.

But the demands and structure of the modern workplace have also reduced opportunities for mentorship and air gapped the most senior leaders from the most junior employees.

These hierarchical structures can have unexpected consequences. The ‘father of modern management’, Peter Drucker, found that many senior leaders believed the success or failure of an organisation was primarily influenced by their making of important decisions which are then implemented downwards.

However, Drucker discovered something quite different. In most cases, leaders were being asked to choose winners between a small number of similar ideas or plans. Those initiatives had often started out as very different beasts, many layers down, but were homogenised as they progressed through decision making structures, with any radical concepts gradually eroded by the successive reviews of increasingly conformist management layers.

This idea was built upon by Clayton Christensen in his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, where the author demonstrated how today’s market leaders almost always miss tomorrow’s market breakthroughs due to completely logical managerial decisions based on an innovation’s incompatibility with current operational processes and customer demands.

What is Reciprocal Mentoring?

Reciprocal Mentoring is a two-way mentoring relationship. Both parties, regardless of their position, learn from each other, fostering mutual respect, understanding, and growth.

This shouldn’t be confused with reverse mentoring, where junior employees mentor senior leaders. These will often either be shorter term, ending when the senior mentee decides they have extracted as much value from the relationship as they need or want; or will naturally develop into a reciprocal arrangement.

It’s for this reason HR leaders should be careful with reverse mentoring schemes, which by design are exploitative one-way value transfers from the weak to the strong.

In a reciprocal mentoring arrangement value should flow both ways:

The senior party shares knowledge of organisational cheat codes to circumvent bureaucracy, provides an amount of patronage, and delivers support with overcoming career and life challenges.

The junior partner shares perspectives that the senior party is simply unlikely to encounter in their social bubble, discloses information on how the organisation actually works, revealing informal cultures and behaviours, and delivers the unfiltered and unrefined ideas that truly innovative organisations require to succeed.

What are the challenges with reciprocal mentoring

Reciprocal mentoring, unlike conventional mentoring arrangements, is designed to be challenging. Where conventional mentoring deliberately matches mentors and mentees with similar interests and experiences, reciprocal mentoring works best when both parties discover their common ground through the sharing of differences.

This requires a level of vulnerability and openness that many, especially those on the more senior side of the relationship, may struggle to reach.

It can also be challenging for those on the junior side of the relationship to bring their whole selves to the relationship, in the same way that organisational cultures convince them not to bring their whole selves to work.

Building the trust required to really establish the reciprocal mentoring relationship is, therefore, the biggest challenge to any reciprocal mentoring scheme. And in truth, the reciprocal relationship is not without real and perceived risks for participants.

The junior party will be constantly wary of the power held by the senior. A comment or revelation shared could impact senior colleague’s perceptions of them for years or decades to come. The Executioners Axe is ever present should an invisible and unknown cultural line be crossed.

Likewise for the senior party, the Sword of Damocles hangs over every interaction. For people whose careers are often built on diplomacy, influence, and the control of information, being vulnerable with someone who has very little to lose by being loose lipped can destroy a life’s work.

Changing behavioural expectations are another hazard. Isolated in a social bubble, senior parties will be wary of committing a faux pas or causing offence. Fear of an omnipresent, all-powerful ‘diversity police’ will often cause those who would most benefit (and have most value to give) from reciprocal mentoring to avoid it, or simply fail to fully participate.

Establishing a Reciprocal Mentoring Scheme

Reciprocal mentoring is an excellent opportunity for participants to learn from each other and build coaching and communication skills. It also helps develop the relationships that underpin wider organisational initiatives such as allyship and employee networks.

Defining purpose is crucial before embarking on any mentoring scheme. Why does your organisation need a scheme like this and what problem will it specifically solve?

As described earlier, engaging senior leaders with the programme is the difference between success and failure. This is particularly the case at the pilot stage, where impacts and results are unproven. Starting with a limited scope will help you to select the right participants to test the concept.

With every organisational culture being different, the challenges that emerge will likewise be unique. It’s entirely probable that unrelated policies and procedures will act as barriers to the relationship forming, and this testing phase helps to identify and resolve these issues before rolling out to a wider audience.

Given the innate power imbalance between participants, establishing a confidential ‘get out’ mechanism is highly advisable. Even the best matches on paper can fail in real life, and mentoring is no different. Ensuring both participants feel confident to share honest feedback on the relationship keeps you, as the scheme coordinator, in the loop, and able to step in as and when required.

Work with Umbrella HR to ensure the success of your mentoring programmes