Reverse Mentoring

Removing Barriers and Building Belonging in the Workplace

By: Patrice Gordon

Narrated by: Phoebe McIntosh

“You can’t help but be excited about what the future will look like, if all businesses embrace Patrice’s passion for reverse mentorship; her passion for a world in which all businesses are 100 percent diverse, inclusive, and equitable shines through on every page.”
--From the Foreword by Holly Branson, Chief Purpose and Vision Officer of Virgin Group

Most organizations today strive for goals such as employee diversity, inclusive leadership, and younger and fresher ideas. But how do we get there?

In her trailblazing Reverse Mentorship program, world-renowned executive coach and personal development advocate Patrice Gordon creates a safe and engaging culture by having senior leaders learn from junior employees. While typical mentoring programs arrange for a senior manager to teach the more junior employee, Reverse Mentoring is the opposite: it’s all about a leader leaning into their vulnerability, forming a relationship with an underrepresented employee, and amplifying the voice of marginalized people within the company.

Reverse Mentoring offers various tips to make reverse mentorship work. Gordon explores the power of uncomfortable and awkward moments becoming key points of transformation when people have to pause, reflect and assess their past behaviors and current assumptions which are at odds with the topic at hand. She ultimately reveals how bringing more humanity into our organizations allows us to see one another and ourselves in a radically new light.

Critic reviews

“Patrice Gordon reveals how a positive work culture only happens when real people—with all their flaws and attributes—change from the inside out. Reverse Mentoring shows how any business can better represent the communities, customers, and employees they serve.” —Dan Schawbel,, New York Times bestselling author of Back to Human, Promote Yourself and Me 2.0

“Patrice Gordon provides a human road map to challenge policies that create un-level playing fields for non-dominant groups and subtly advantage dominant groups. Reverse Mentoring is a book full of wisdom and teachings that should be an essential part of any organization’s efforts in their strategic goals of diversity, equity and inclusion.”—Laura Liswood, author of The Loudest Duck and The Elephant and the Mouse

Storytelling

Good material clearly conveyed challenging for all who desire to be accepted in a workplace

A must read if you are targeting to create a true and genuine inclusive organizational culture!

Certainly, a must read! The book offers an honest, practical and actionable framework to follow for the intentional and genuine creation of an organizational culture focused on belonging. In that culture, she states...everyone "feels a deep sense of purpose, pride and acceptance BECAUSE, not in spite, the traits and attributes which make us who we are".

Patrice brilliantly showcases why DE&I policies, trainings and intentional recruiting efforts are good starting points, but are not enough to develop a sustainable diverse and inclusive culture. She specifically explains and demonstrate through different examples why programs like Reverse Mentoring are needed to achieve leadership behaviors and day to day actions which are more inclusive and representative of all employees. Through frequent interactions between the mentor (representative of those less represented within the organization) and mentee (leaders of the organization) a deep level of understanding on our believes, differences, commonalities, unconscious biases and barriers is achieved. With this attained true understanding we can then move forward together to address inequities which at the end will level the playing field and move us closer to a true meritocracy environment in which the most capable person (independent of demographics) will get the opportunity to thrive.

I find the content of this book relevant not only at the organizational but also at our day to day personal level.

Certainly a candidate for re-read! re-hear!