I have seen a number of references to ‘reverse mentoring’ on social media this month and was curious to what it involves. In December 2018 a ‘Transforming Perceptions of Nursing’ campaign led by the NHS Horizons team launched a 30-day challenge to ‘mentor a junior colleague or student or reverse mentor a senior nurse or midwife’. A number of nurses across a range of sectors engaged through an ambassador programme, and from this work, devised ten top tips for mentoring and reverse mentoring.
In the workplace, mentorship typically describes a relationship whereby a more experienced colleague uses their knowledge and understanding to support a more junior or inexperienced member of staff. However, there may be a junior member of staff who has more knowledge or experience in certain aspects of work or and there is an opportunity for them to act as the mentor to the senior colleague; this is reverse mentorship.
Roose, writing for the New York Times in 2017, reported on a number of industries that have adopted reverse mentorship, citing the rise of the millennial as the driving force. He also cited major changes in technology, and gave a number of examples whereby this relationship has changed views and strategies of more senior members of staff. Roose suggested that reverse mentoring arrangements can be initially awkward for executives who are accustomed to dispensing advice, not receiving it. Some may initially be sceptical that useful advice could come from someone nearly a decade their junior, for example. But, as Mr Watson, the Deutsche
Bank Managing Director reflected:
‘To sit down with someone who's on the org chart six levels below me is educational … You learn about yourself, and how you differ from them.’
Carol Boston-Fleischhauer, Chief Nursing Officer and Managing Director of Advisory Board (www.advisory.com) believes that many senior leaders in health care could benefit from a millennial mentor. She feels that the potential for the in-depth exposure to the experience and viewpoint of a younger staff member will help leaders harness their strengths and make a positive impact on their organisation. Nursing leaders have told her, for example, that:
‘Survey data isn't going to be enough to help us understand what [millennial] staff want and need. We need to deepen our relationships to become more inclusive in our thinking. That may mean reconsidering who are the mentors in our lives.’
Although most of what is written about in relation to reverse mentorship reflects how this strategy enables engagement with younger staff, Stephenson (2016) described a trust that introduced a reverse mentoring programme, where each member of the trust's board is paired with a junior black/Asian/minority ethnic (BAME) staff member. The idea was to give senior managers genuine insight into what it was like for frontline BAME staff. Mr Makala, one of the trust's senior nurses said:
‘The reverse mentoring will bridge that gap and bring the exec closer to the patient experience. Your new band 5s are quite sure about what has led them to be a nurse and we want to keep that fire, so this is also about matching an exec with someone who has that desire to make a difference Managers also can share their experience of how they got to where they are.’
As I researched the concept of reverse mentorship, I became more convinced that this was a great opportunity and one that I would like to discuss in my Trust, against the backdrop of the NHS Horizon team's top tips, and a review of mentorship models, there is a strong framework to consider our approach.