Reverse Mentoring
I’m a mentor, but I used to hate saying it. It felt arrogant. Then, recently, I heard Gretchen O'Hara, VP of AI at Microsoft, use the term reverse mentoring to describe asking younger employees to teach her the art of using Tik Tok. Reverse mentoring was the idea I was missing--it recasts mentorship as a mutual exchange.
Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch popularized reverse mentoring in 1999. He paired 500 senior and junior employees. The goal was for junior employees to teach new technologies to their more senior partners. Welch designed the program to dissolve the power dynamic of traditional mentoring.
Correlation One’s Data Science For All (DS4A) program brings mentorship to the data science community. Their mission is to create a network of 10,000 data science professionals from Black, Hispanic, LGBTQ+, and other communities, such as veterans and military spouses, in the next three years. Built by professors from Harvard, I’m one of over 100 mentors.
I joined the program as a guide to my cohort. I’m helping critique their project. I’m sharing my real-world experience and perspective as a decision-maker.
But I’m a mentee too. I learn how my team views the promise and danger of AI. I reflect on their questions and squint to see through their eyes.
Reverse mentoring is a two-way street. Learning flows like the ocean tide, from mentor-to-mentee-to-mentor and back the next day. The first step was thinking in reverse.
