Chapter 10: Peer and Reverse Mentoring

Overview

One of the primary differences between sponsorship mentoring and developmental mentoring is that the former depends on the mentor being significantly more senior in status and influence. In developmental mentoring, where what matters is the experience gap, there is a lot more room for different patterns of relationship.

Whenever any two people come together in a learning relationship, they bring a whole spectrum of different experiences, some of which may be valuable to the other person. Even in a traditional mentoring relationship, where one person is older and more senior than the other, as long as the mentor is open to learning from the more junior person, there is always substantial opportunity for exchange of knowledge, skills and insight. At the very simplest level, most of my learning about making better use of my personal computer has been gained through the patience of younger people, who have grown up in an IT environment, pointing out what is obvious to them but not to me. The exchange for them is typically induction into the wider horizons of managerial and strategic thinking.

Abandoning status and authority within a relationship not only makes for greater rapport and openness, it also influences in a very positive way the quality of learning dialogue. When one party is felt to be in some sense superior, the sense of mutual exploration and discovery is muted. To some extent this happens in all successful mentoring relationships, both developmental and sponsorship-oriented, as barriers break down. In this chapter, however, we focus on mentoring relationships that are deliberately status-free: peer mentoring and reverse mentoring.