Futureproofing a Resilient Leadership Pipeline Through Reverse Mentoring

Introduction

Organizations face an aging workforce that will be retiring and leaving large voids at all levels, but most notably at the leadership helm (Barton, 2019). Leaders need to find a way to limit the business impact of the looming disparity emerging due to the mass exodus to remain resilient within this new multicultural and multigenerational organizational construct. The 2020 Great Resignation illuminated the impact and unpreparedness of organizations to fill leadership vacancies. The proliferation in the reduction and damage to internal knowledge flow, relational networks, and the ability to maintain and attract the best talents exacerbated the need for organizational leaders to learn how to effectively leverage human capital (Serenko, 2023). The importance of leadership resilience is in its ability to guide, inspire, and navigate teams through complex challenges while fostering a culture of adaptability that can lead to increased organizational commitment among its members (Salam et al., 2023).

Navigating the challenges of the Great Resignation, and more specifically, a multigenerational workforce, requires several approaches that focus on intergenerational knowledge sharing and collaboration as part of a succession planning strategy (Serenko, 2023). Reverse mentoring provides leaders with a tool for helping to build authentic relationships and bridge knowledge and cultural gaps while preparing the next generation of leaders. The author shares the unique benefits of reverse mentoring as examined through a conceptual framework (Figure 1) and concludes with a recommended framework for designing and deploying reverse mentoring best practice programs (Table 2). The following sections explain anecdotal and practical practicum that can help leaders immerse and engage with the concepts, explanations, and ideas regarding reverse mentoring. Upon completion of this chapter, the reader should have a new or greater understanding and familiarity with reverse mentoring, its benefits and application as a leader, and how to leverage this phenomenon as a modality for engaging, retaining and preparing organizational members for leadership.

By 2030, Millennials, one of the largest workforce entrants in history are projected to make up 75% of the world workforce (Wagoner, 2020). Further confounding this organizational dilemma, for the first time in US history there will be five distinct generational cohorts working side-by-side (John et al., 2021). This new composition precipitates the need for leaders to explore, understand, and implement programs and practices that capitalize, captivate, retain, and prepare these newly inducted organizational members for leadership (Sarraf, 2019). But how do organizations make a concerted effort to transfer the knowledge and experience of seasoned leaders to these junior cohorts? Knowledge-based resources are typically unique and hard to duplicate and are considered the ultimate source of organizational competitive advantage (Santoro et al., 2021). Although explicit knowledge can be transferred among members of an organization, tacit knowledge comprised of know-how, skills, and contextual acumen is extremely difficult and costly to transfer (Serenko, 2023).

Mentoring, more specifically reverse mentoring as introduced by Jack Welch, former CEO of GE in 1999, offers an opportunity in which the differences between tiered knowledge and experience and generational cohorts can be realigned (Baxter & Jack, 2008). Reverse mentoring provides the necessary utility for establishing intergenerational programs that challenge age-related stereotypes and barriers that can help advance workplace diversity and inclusion, work-life balance, engagement, resilience, and most importantly leadership development (Chaudhuri et al., 2022). To date organizations such as Citibank, Sodexo, and Microsoft have adopted the practice of reverse mentoring to support learning and development efforts. Chaudhuri et al. (2022) contend that the success of a reverse mentoring culture is contingent upon the expertise and competency of the mentor (junior organizational member) and the self-awareness, growth mindset, and humility of the mentee (the more senior organizational member).