Reverse Mentoring

Most of us are familiar with mentoring... possibly having experienced having a mentor, some of us also on the side of being a mentor. Most people think of mentors having more years of life/work experience than their mentees. But when an older/more experienced person sets out to learn from those with less years of life experience... that's what I'm calling reverse mentoring.

I remember the first time I proposed the idea of reverse mentoring in a large corporate meeting,  My suggestion was met with vast silence.  I learned that most of the group my age did not see reverse mentoring as a need... But I remain a staunch proponent of this practice.

Here's where I remember this starting for me.  One of the people who really impressed me was Harvey Bostrom whom I met in his 70's.  Harvey told me how he and his wife had made a decision early on to stay in tune with the changing times even as they grew older. Harvey explained the difficulty of doing this just in light of our physiology and how we were created.. and how he was still involved with the college group at his church (at that age!). I don't remember Harvey mentioning reverse mentoring, but the concept was certainly there.

I have been involved with lots of college students since we first led a Discovery team in 1998 and we have had some amazing young people intern with us... Look at the picture above... any one of those young people would make a fantastic mentor, and they have been that for me.

One more example from the blog of a current Discoverer in her early 20's.
check out her blog post:  Thirty Things I've Learned... 
Well... there are thirty things... let me just excerpt a couple and then you can click over to Destination Benin to read the other 28 nuggets:

1. People are more important than things. Invest in people.How are my values reflected in the way I prioritize my energy? I have this bad habit of getting wrapped up in tasks and objectives and totally forgetting about the people around me. I need to be deliberate about where I invest my energy, because I hope the people I love will hang around a lot longer than the things I surround myself with or the tasks I complete.

30. You're allowed to have bad days.It's okay to gaff it and face plant and trip up the stairs. And you're allowed to be angry, sad, confused, and frustrated. Negative emotions are just part of this whole "life" deal, and "the only way through them is through" (I put that in quotation marks because I can't take credit for it. I read it on a post somewhere, and if I find it again I'll put the link here!). Sometimes the only for me to move past and have closure after a negative experience is to think about what I learned and try to keep from digging myself into the same hole.

This is wisdom that we can all either learn or reminded of!

here's a favorite quote of mine... and an important reason we need to learn from the natives.

"Well, anyone born before 1962 is now an immigrant because they were born into a world that no longer exists. They haven't boarded a ship for a new land, but the landscape around them has been so transformed that they are now living in a world different from the one into which they were born. The natives are the ones who grew up in the postmodern culture - they speak its language, understand the customs, and blend right in. The problem is that most of our churches are still ministering to the immigrant minority and not the native majority."

-Len Sweet

I'd love to hear your opinion and/or experience with reverse mentoring!