Learn From Millennials to Boost Your Business
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Cisco created a reverse mentoring program to encourage inclusion and diversity, covering areas such as communication, leadership, change management and work-life balance.
GE CEO Welch had more than 500 senior executives work with junior staff members to learn how to use the Internet in what was an early model of reverse mentoring.
Im proud to share that we at Deloitte embraced a reverse mentoring program that we call, rather intuitively, the Digital Mentorship Program. Weve paired social- and digital-savvy staff, who serve as digital mentors, with executives to help grow their knowledge and use of social media.
While Millennials have made up a large portion of the digital mentor network, its been great to see participation from members across the work force. This program has played a key role in our social business-related adoption initiatives. As part of the program, we cover LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging, our internal enterprise social network and other areas of interest that mentees have.
So do you have a contingent of Millennials in your work force?
About to bring on new hires or summer interns? Perhaps consider a reverse mentoring program to unleash untapped skills and knowledge sharing.
Think about areas that would be most relevant for you and your organization (e.g., technology, workplace issues, etc.), identify a core group of employees who have knowledge in this area and are willing to serve as mentors, and pilot the program with a small group of employees and leaders.
Its always exciting to watch seasoned leaders grow in new fields and start embracing different tools and networks. This helps them extend their leadership and know-how beyond the team or the immediate hierarchy of the organization. The experience reinforces the fact that we can always learn something new from one another irrespective of rank; we just need to be step outside our comfort zones sometimes.
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