The Reverse Mentor
The era you grow up in shapes how you survive, what you normalise and what you pass on
This week I had a conversation with a good friend around my age. We came up in the same era and she was frustrated with some of the younger Gen Z workers in her workplace.
People who should have known what they were doing were creating more work for her, not less. Work was being dropped. Initiative was inconsistent. Theory was being overvalued without enough judgement behind it. The pride and follow-through were not always there.
She was not wrong to feel frustrated and I do not want to soften that. Standards matter. Quality matters. Deadlines matter. Ownership matters. Sometimes dropped balls are about capability. Sometimes they are about mindset. Sometimes they are about laziness. Sometimes people do need to be called higher.
But as we kept talking, something else started to emerge.
We both found ourselves reflecting on our early careers and just how much we had to learn that was never written down. How to read a room. How to sharpen a message. How to recover when you dropped the ball. How to influence without authority. How to take ownership before you feel ready. Most of that did not come from formal training.
It came from people.
Managers. Mentors. Sponsors. Role models. Leaders who took the time to coach us in real time and help us make sense of the world we were in.
That was the missing piece for me.
Many younger professionals are being judged against capabilities that often come from experience, but fewer people are taking the time to teach them how. They grew up in a world of screens, remote work and time-poor managers who do not always have the space to truly coach and guide.
Many of us also had something we did not fully appreciate at the time: in-person training, workshops and development programs where we learned with people from other teams and other companies who were figuring out the same things we were.
Then I had another conversation, this time with a friend from the generation ahead of me, someone I deeply respect.
We ended up talking about her early career and the style she sometimes had to adopt to progress. She was honest. She is not proud of all of it. But it was the time, the environment, the rules of the game that existed then.
If she had not adapted to that world, she probably would not have reached the level she did. And once she got there, she used that influence to soften some of the edges, challenge behaviours that had simply been accepted and make it different for women like me.
That really landed.
The era you grow up in shapes how you show up, what you tolerate, what gets rewarded, what gets punished and what you have to become to survive. Some people have to break through the door, some widen the opening and some redesign the room entirely. None of us inherit the same environment.
That is why I think this moment matters so much.
We are holding the next generation to some things many of us are only now learning were not that good for us either: making your job your identity, wearing burnout like a badge, confusing exhaustion with ambition, thinking success only counts if it costs you everything.
A lot of us learned those patterns the hard way. Some of us got rewarded for them. Some of us are only now realising what they took from us: time, joy, health, relationships, presence, perspective.
This week at an IWD breakfast run by Sales Redefined, I was on a panel and Dr Kristy Goodwin was the keynote speaker. We clicked deeply and are already arranging a walk next week. What struck me was this: she brings science to things many of us had to discover for ourselves. She has language for patterns we have lived in our bodies and careers for years, including what she calls the “success tax”.
And now a younger generation is pushing back on some of this. Not always well. Not always with the maturity, work ethic or judgement we would hope for.
But not without reason either.
They are rejecting parts of a model many of us are only now admitting may never have been healthy in the first place.
That does not mean standards do not matter, it means this is a moment to evolve.
To keep what still matters: pride, ownership, accountability, quality and let go of what never should have been the price of success.
Some of the most important leadership lessons I learned came from managers I would never model. Not because they taught me nothing. They did. They taught me how not to lead. How not to confuse criticism with coaching. How not to use pressure as a substitute for trust. How not to make someone dread coming to work.
Those lessons were valuable too, but I came to them the long way around, sometimes painfully.
And maybe that is part of this moment as well. How do we stop every generation learning the most important leadership lessons through damage? How do we pass on the useful lessons without passing on the harm? How do we keep standards high, but lead in a way that actually helps people rise to them?
That is where the idea of the reverse mentor keeps landing for me.
Over the years, I have had leaders who coached me, challenged me, sharpened me and changed the way I lead. But only later did I realise they were learning from me too.
The same has been true in the other direction. I have learned and grown from my teams and from people I have mentored throughout my career. It is one of the reasons I keep having these conversations. I usually come to them wanting to support, coach or help someone think more clearly. But almost always, I leave better for it too.
One of the clearest examples came recently. I sent a former CEO and mentor the nugget I wrote last week about him coaching me in real time during a high-stakes meeting. I thanked him and asked if he remembered it.
He wrote back and said, “you actually coached me on some stuff too as I recall so it goes both ways my friend”.
That stayed with me, because it is not the exception. It is the pattern.
The person you think is teaching you is often learning from you too.
I saw it years earlier with one of my first real mentors. I had always thought he gave me a chance because he believed in me. Years later, when I thanked him, he told me the truth: he was drowning, needed help and I taught him that attitude beats pedigree.
That changed him. It changed me too.
And that, to me, is the reverse mentor. Not a trendy concept. A reminder that evolution happens through people, through trust, through honest conversations, through one generation teaching another while also being changed in return.
We do what we need to do in the environment we are in. We pass on the lessons that helped us. But if we stay open, honest and relevant, the people coming after us change us too.
That feels especially important right now. Experienced leaders still have a responsibility to teach judgement, ownership, resilience and standards. Younger generations are also questioning parts of the system that may need to evolve.
A moment where both things can be true at once.
We do not need to romanticise the next generation and we do not need to dismiss the frustrations of experienced leaders. But we do need to stop repeating old models just because they once got results.
We need to meet in the middle, keep what still matters, teach what has to be learned, and be honest enough to let go of what no longer serves.
That is the opportunity. To coach rather than just criticise. To guide rather than assume people should already know. To recognise that the world they are growing up in is now the world we live in too.
What I learned is simple: leadership evolution has always been relational. The best mentors shape us. The best mentees shape them back. The best leaders stay humble enough to know that staying relevant is not just about what you pass on. It is also about what you are still willing to learn.
Nugget in Action:
Before you write someone off, ask what they were never taught.
Before you judge a generation, examine the system that shaped them.
Before you pass on pressure, ask whether it ever brought out the best in you.
Think about the leaders who brought out the best in you and why. Then tell them. In my experience, what comes back is often unexpected and valuable.
And for the managers who taught you how not to lead, take the lesson without repeating the damage. Do not model punitive leadership if it never brought out the best in you.
That is where leadership evolution starts: not just in what we demand, but in what we choose to pass on.
What I’d love to know: what is something your generation had to learn to survive and what is something the next generation might help us evolve?
Another valuable nugget, thank you for sharing.
This one really resonates with me and has given me something important to reflect on as I develop in my own leadership journey.