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Picture two colleagues who rarely cross paths - like a tech-savvy new employee and a senior manager who knows the organisation inside out. When you put them together something changes. Each sees what the other can't, and each fills the other's blind spots. Instead of hierarchy, you get a partnership that helps both people grow faster, make better decisions, and see the bigger picture.
Mutual mentoring isn't a passing trend. It reflects how learning actually happens, through open conversation, shared perspectives, and a willingness to think beyond your own experience. When organisations make space for this, they unlock insights no single person, however senior, is likely to reach alone.
Moving towards new styles of mentoring
While there is widespread consensus that mentoring is critical to an organisation's long-term success, defining mentoring is now becoming more challenging as it moves away from its traditional form.
Mentoring is often seen as a relationship where a senior leader or manager takes a more junior person under their wing and imparts the knowledge and experience they believe has led to their success. Thus, mentoring programs often focus on a junior person pairing up with a more senior person as their mentor.
However, the sharing of business knowledge and skills is now shifting away from the traditional "master-disciple" approach towards a more mutual form of mentoring that transcends position, gender and age.
It is a trend that we are increasingly seeing at PLD with many of our clients now interested in introducing peer to peer mentoring in the workplace , or reverse mentoring either alongside or instead of traditional mentoring programs.
What is Mutual Mentoring?
Mutual mentoring is a two-way learning relationship in which both people act as both mentor and mentee. Instead of assuming expertise lies only with the senior person, each partner contributes their own experience, perspective, and strengths. This creates a more equal development partnership and works especially well when individuals come from different levels, generations, departments, or professional backgrounds.
Mutual mentoring involves cultivating a shared understanding that each individual can be an effective mentor in their own area(s) of specialism or strengths. This encourages long-term mentoring relationships that emerge and evolve organically and enables an organisation to make the most of all the knowledge and experience that exists within.
How Mutual Mentoring Works
Pairing people with different experiences
Partners are often matched across levels, functions, generations, or professional backgrounds to maximise contrasting perspectives.Shared mentoring roles
Rather than one person always being the ‘expert’, both individuals take turns offering guidance, insight, and support.Structured conversations
Sessions often blend reverse mentoring elements (digital skills, lived experiences, inclusion topics) with traditional career or leadership themes.Mutual learning goals
The focus is on both partners gaining new insights, building confidence, and strengthening connections across the organisation.
Most business leaders and professionals aspire to grow and better themselves. You only need to look at the number of books, videos, and training courses dedicated to personal development to see that more and more people are committing to career and personal growth. However, the most effective learning occurs when individuals share knowledge and experience with each other; and that's exactly what mutual mentoring enables. It allows individuals to support and invest in each other, even if they are from different generations or industries.
Mutual mentoring can take many forms:
Cross-Generation
The growing population of millennials within the workplace presents unique challenges and opportunities. This is a generation that is tech-savvy, flexible and adaptable in their thoughts and actions. They provide the skill sets that organisations must tap into if they wish to keep pace with the rapid changes that occur in organisations today.
Whilst these younger generations provide the vital digital skills to keep an organisation future-ready, they do lack the experience and knowledge of the older workforce generations.
Mutual cross-generation mentoring allows the young generation to equip older workers with current and future-ready skills whilst providing young professionals who are starting out with the much-valued leadership exposure.
It is a sad reality that many industries and businesses lose their most senior people to retirement, which means a vast wealth of wisdom walks out of the door with that senior person.
Setting up a mentoring program to harness this knowledge and experience to help guide and nurture the next generation could make a huge difference.
Mutual mentoring is thus not only about meeting business needs, it is also a great employee engagement tool.
Collaboration
Cross function mentoring allows professionals from different fields to offer different perspectives on situations. For example, experienced employees can give historical insight and context while new employees can offer a fresh perspective on an organisation. Employees at the same level facing similar challenges will bring different perspectives and insights. By collaborating and sharing knowledge and experience through mutual mentoring better solutions can be reached.
Why Mutual Mentoring Is Effective
Mutual mentoring supports inclusion, shared learning, and stronger cross-organisational relationships. It helps to:
Promote diversity of thought by creating space for honest, equal conversations.
Develop leadership capability at all levels, with senior colleagues gaining new perspectives and junior colleagues gaining confidence and context.
Break down silos by encouraging understanding between departments and professional groups.
Encourage innovation, as contrasting backgrounds and experiences help generate new ideas and ways of working.
Mutual mentoring creates a more equal, two-way exchange of experience, insight, and learning.
Mutual Mentoring Compared with Other Approaches
| Approach | What it involves | Purpose |
| Traditional mentoring | Senior person guides junior | Skill development, confidence |
| Reverse mentoring | Junior person mentors senior | Digital skills, lived experience, inclusion insights |
| Mutual mentoring | Both mentor each other | Shared growth, broader perspectives, equal partnership |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is mutual mentoring?
A two-way learning partnership where each person acts as mentor and mentee, sharing insight and
experience equally.
How is mutual mentoring different from reverse mentoring?
Reverse mentoring flows upward - junior to senior. Mutual mentoring is balanced and reciprocal.
Where is mutual mentoring used?
Across UK organisations, including cross-sector leadership programmes, diversity and inclusion
schemes, and internal talent development initiatives.
Putting mutual mentoring into action
If you're considering a mutual mentoring program, you might be wondering whether mentoring software would make a meaningful difference in your organisation.
That's easy to find out...
There's a free, 3 minute quiz that will help you decide whether following the trend of using mentor matching software to automate your mentoring programme is the right fit for your organisation.
And, once you've taken the quiz, you can simply book a demo or get in touch if you want to see the mentoring platform in action, first hand, without any obligation on your part.
