Tteacher, tutor, spiritual father in place of a father gone on a long journey: here is the CV of Mentor, the friend to whom the son of Ulysses, Telemachus, was entrusted. He taught her beautiful letters, wealth management … But, sacrilegious, Mentor knew nothing about Marbrebook, these new stone tablets that the young people of Ithaca are frantically exchanging.
Mentoring therefore comes from Mentor: in a company, it designates the supervision of young employees by experienced senior executives, to facilitate the learning of the codes and their early career. But sometimes, for a few hours a week, the juniors go to the blackboard: to teach Jean-Claude how to switch from TV to the Mac, to show him how to use Slack, young Suzanne will take on the mentor costume. This collaborative practice has a name: the reverse mentoring (“Reverse mentoring”).
The expression comes out of the late 1990s: Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric, is dying to learn how to use the Internet, this new thing that everyone is talking about. He turns to one of his young employees: the experience is conclusive, and he invites 500 other senior executives to take seed from the “young people”. The practice was institutionalized across the Atlantic in the 2000s, then reached Orange, Danone, Total or even Axa, in France.
Understanding the use of young people
The generations digital native (“Born in the digital age”) are therefore called upon to share their daily use of new technologies. The method seeks to overcome the caricatural shock between generations and to create new intergenerational links: this dear Jean-Claude will put expressions of the genre in the closet: “What’s that ‘ticking’ thing?” With that we are raising future imbeciles ”, and become addicted to TikTok in the office. Axa has also tested the results of this learning with the strategy employee advocacy : now that they know social networks thanks to young people, executives are invited to become ambassadors for the company on the Net, with inspiring LinkedIn posts.
Please note, the program is serious: mentors are selected, to combine their skills with the needs of those called “Mentees”, and the support generally lasts six months, for a few hours per week. Be careful not to offend the ego of the boss who has a bottle and has just offered you a job: Kevin, a young developer, will therefore hide his annoyance when his boss presses his keyboard with a single finger.
You have 26.64% of this article to read. The rest is for subscribers only.