How to build a reverse mentoring program: senior leaders learning from younger employees

In reverse mentoring, the direction of learning flips: a younger or less senior employee mentors a senior leader. The goal is to give the leader access to perspectives and skills they can’t see from their own level. This guide explains how to build the program while taking account of the hierarchical business culture in Türkiye.

What reverse mentoring delivers

The practice isn’t new. According to Jennifer Jordan and Michael Sorell’s article in Harvard Business Review, Jack Welch used this method at GE in the late 1990s to help his executives learn about the internet. The same article highlights four benefits drawn from later examples:

• Retention: Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, reported a 96 percent retention rate among its first group of young mentors.
• Digital skills: Executives got to know social media and new tools.
• Culture change: At Estée Lauder, the program helped give rise to an internal knowledge-sharing platform.
• Inclusion: Linklaters and PwC used the program to broaden how leaders see different groups.

A case article published in ATD’s TD Magazine describes the example of The Hartford. At the insurer, 97 percent of the 12 executive mentees in the first wave found the program effective for their personal development. Of the 12 young mentors in that wave, 11 were promoted within a year. These numbers come from a single company’s first cohort, so be careful about generalizing.

What topics to work on

Choose topics based on a real need of the senior leader. Common ones include:

• Digital tools, using AI and working with data
• The expectations of younger customers and younger employees
• Flexible work, feedback habits and career expectations
• Inclusion: the experience of employees from different backgrounds inside the organization
• Problems in the field or in operations that never reach the leader

The exploratory study reported by Ian Browne and Judie Gannon in Coaching at Work carries an important warning here. Relationships that focused only on closing a knowledge gap ended within a few months, once the knowledge had been passed on. Deeper gains appeared in relationships where both sides built an unhurried, private space for thinking. So don’t position the program as “teaching an old dog new tricks”; position it as mutual learning.

How to match

1. Choose the leaders first. Start with leaders who volunteer and are genuinely open to learning. Six to ten pairs are enough for a pilot.
2. Select younger mentors on a voluntary basis. Browne and Gannon found that mentors assigned by the organization against their will perpetuated the power imbalance and experienced more anxiety.
3. Keep direct reporting lines apart. The mentor shouldn’t come from the leader’s own unit or reporting chain.
4. Use difference deliberately. Jordan and Sorell recommend building pairs with an eye to differences in region, department and personality.
5. Ask the younger mentor’s view. According to the same article, executives tend to be selective; talk with the mentor too before finalizing a pair.

Power distance and psychological safety

According to a Penn State resource based on Hofstede’s data, Türkiye scores 66 on the power distance dimension, placing it in the high group. This points to a workplace where subordinates find it hard to challenge superiors and decisions are concentrated at the center. In reverse mentoring, this becomes a direct risk: the young mentor goes quiet, the leader says “lesson learned,” and the relationship stays a formality.

In Browne and Gannon’s study, too, mentors often slipped into a subordinate role and feared the consequences of criticizing the leader. On the other hand, in a small-scale feasibility study by Raju and colleagues published in BMJ Open, concerns about hierarchy were raised, yet no participant reported that their relationship had been harmed. And the young mentors’ confidence in giving feedback to superiors increased.

Build psychological safety through structure:

• Put the confidentiality rule in writing. Nothing discussed in a session carries over into a performance review.
• Let the leader go first. Jordan and Sorell note that openly discussing leaders’ fear of exposing gaps in their knowledge builds trust.
• Prepare the mentor. Give young mentors short training on giving feedback, asking questions and handling difficult moments. Jordan and Sorell cite research showing that training markedly improves program success.
• Balance the setting. Hold the first sessions in a neutral space rather than the leader’s office.
• Talk about forms of address and titles. Agreeing at the outset on how you’ll address each other in sessions eases the initial tension.

Program structure

A practical framework:

• Length: 6–9 months
• Frequency: Once or twice a month, 45–60 minutes
• Kickoff: Each side is briefed separately, followed by a joint launch
• Midpoint check: A short survey of both sides in month 3
• Close: Each pair shares what they learned and one example of applying it

The flow of a session

Giving every session the same simple flow puts both sides at ease:

1. Opening (5 minutes): What the leader has tried since the last session, and how it went.
2. Topic (30–40 minutes): The young mentor brings an example, data or an observation. The leader asks questions; the mentor shares their own experience.
3. Reverse question (5–10 minutes): The leader shares their own experience on a topic the mentor is curious about. This part makes the relationship mutual.
4. Close (5 minutes): One single step the leader will try before the next session.

The young mentor prepares the agenda, but the leader’s need sets the topic. A good way to start the first session is to ask the leader: “Looking from your level, what do you think you can’t see?”

The program manager doesn’t monitor what’s discussed in sessions, only whether they take place. This separation is what makes the promise of confidentiality credible.

Jordan and Sorell observed that running reverse mentoring and a shadow board with the same group led one to overshadow the other. If you need both, run them with different participants.

Common mistakes

• The leader postponing sessions. According to Jordan and Sorell, this is the main reason programs fail.
• Reducing the young mentor to a “tech support” role.
• Turning the program into a PR exercise.
• Failing to recognize what the young mentor has gained.
• Staying silent when confidentiality is breached.

How to measure results

Set up measurement separately for each side:

• Leader side: Behavior change on the topic chosen at the start, a concrete idea put into practice, their own assessment.
• Mentor side: Confidence in giving feedback to superiors, what they learned about the organization, retention and internal mobility.
• Organization side: Policy or process changes that came out of the program.

Use the same short survey at the start and at the close. Alongside the numbers, collect one concrete story from each pair; these stories speak loudest to senior leadership.

For a ready-made framework, see the reverse mentoring program page and the free reverse mentoring tool.

Sources

• Why Reverse Mentoring Works and How to Do It Right (Jordan and Sorell, HBR, 2019) — The GE example; the Pershing, Estée Lauder and PwC cases; matching and reasons for failure.
• Reverse Mentoring: Letting Millennials Lead the Way (Ryann K. Ellis, ATD TD Magazine, 2013) — The Hartford case and first-wave results.
• Research matters: Going back to my youth (Browne and Gannon, Coaching at Work, 2021) — Power dynamics, voluntary participation and short-lived relationships.
• Does reverse mentoring work in the NHS? (Raju et al., BMJ Open, 2022) — Concerns about hierarchy and young mentors’ confidence in giving feedback.
• Test Your Knowledge of Turkish Culture (Penn State World Campus) — Türkiye’s Hofstede power distance score.
• Ready to mentor a senior colleague? A roadmap for reverse mentoring (WashU Olin) — Risks and challenges from the young mentor’s perspective.