As we close National Mentoring Month, we must remember mentoring is a year-round commitment by mentors and mentees. But we must also think about the concept of reverse mentoring.

Reverse mentoring is a concept that was first introduced by former General Electric Chairman Jack Welsh more than a decade ago. With the advent of rapidly increasing social technologies, the practice of reverse mentoring is becoming more popular at organizations. Just as new professionals in the industry have a lot to learn and should align themselves with a mentor, more seasoned practitioners can learn a lot from the socially savvy new professional.

According to a recent Wall Street Journal article companies like HP and Cisco as well as PR agencies like Ogilvy have launched formal reverse mentoring programs. The beauty of a reverse mentoring relationship is that it shares nearly the same principles of a traditional mentoring relationship, such as building mutual trust, formalizing the relationship and being open to new ideas. However, the difference lies within the benefits of a reverse mentoring relationship or program and the sustained growth, retention and innovation it can have on the company and the industry.

Here are some tips for selecting a mentor or reverse mentor to help you on your professional path.

• Finding the right match: Forging an effective mentoring relationship falls into the hands of the mentee. When looking for a mentor, take into consideration your goals and where you see your career path going before you make the ask of a seasoned professional.
• Shorten the learning curve: For reverse mentoring, if you want to sharpen your social media skills or get basic education on a particular social channel (let’s not boil the ocean), ask someone who has a particular skill set around the social channel so they can share lessons learned. Or if you want to apply a social media plan to crisis communications, consider those in your organization or network who are very comfortable with leveraging multiple social networks.
• One is never enough: Think you need just one mentor? Think again. Young professionals should consider two to three mentors who are at different stages of their career, including mid-level to a seasoned veteran in another field who can give you an outside perspective without bias.
• Build morale and increase productivity: For reverse mentoring, people enjoy being asked for their opinion, especially new professionals. When new professionals are asked for their knowledge and input by a valued senior practitioner or management professional, they are motivated and inspired to do better work. Practitioners can help use their knowledge to drive the return on influence from social networks.
• Driver’s seat: As a mentee, you are in charge. Mentors are kind enough to dedicate time and effort to helping you succeed. Take advantage of this and be mindful of their time, meaning scheduling convenient locations and times to talk, thanking them for their efforts and making the conversation as efficient as possible. Come prepared with questions, concerns and ideas to get the most out of your relationship.
• Increasing retention: Reverse mentoring allows the seasoned practitioner to set their comfort level for the relationship, while also allowing the new professional to learn the long-term goals of the company, fostering collaboration between multi-generational employees in the workplace. This relationship also reveals to future leaders within the company to the seasoned professional.
• Mentoring goes both ways: We all learn from each other. Just because someone might have more work experience does not mean they can’t listen to great perspective and advice from a young professional. If the sharing of knowledge goes both ways, the mentoring relationship will thrive.

Stay tuned for big news on the PRSA New Pros Mentoring Initiative! Feel free to share your ideas about mentoring below. Have you had a great mentor in your life? Have you ever participated in reverse mentoring? We would love to hear about it!

 

Brandi Boatner and Kate Enos are the PRSA New Professionals Section mentorship chairs.

We’re excited to introduce your 2013 PRSA New Professionals Section Executive Committee! This team has committed to a year of helping you develop as a public relations professional. We’ll do this by connecting you to valuable industry resources, providing thought leadership across disciplines and offering opportunities for you to network with peers across the country.

To kick the year off and get to know them a little better, we’ve asked our Committee members to share the best career advice they’ve received. Check out their responses!

Always work and dress like you’re auditioning for your ideal position. You never know who’s watching, or what connections they have. – Elizabeth Greenaway, Section chair

I was told to distinguish your personal brand with a specialty. Choose something that provides ongoing value and it will help elevate your career. I specialize in social media strategy, measurement and reporting. I developed a social media reporting dashboard in a previous role. This led to a promotion and later helped me land my current position. I would advise everyone to find a specialty to enjoy, develop and continue to learn about. – Brendan Hughes, programming co-chair

The best career advice I’ve been given is “under promise, over deliver”. – Whitney Winn, programming co-chair

The best career advice I’ve ever received is to find a job with a company or organization that is mutually beneficial for everyone involved – not just for you, personally and professionally, but also for the organization. I think a lot of young professionals can get hung up on being the perfect candidate for a certain position and overlook how they fit into the larger company/organization from a cultural standpoint. – Janelle Huelsman, newsletter co-editor

I think I’ll share something that my boss told me back when I was only her intern (about four years ago): Don’t be afraid of learning new things or trying something different. Even if you think you know for sure what you want to do, you may find that you enjoy something else even more and the only way to do that is to know about it firsthand. – Michael Canty, newsletter co-editor

My top three: 1. Your best work will utilize your individual skills and experience. If what you are doing could be done by someone without your skills and experience you are working below your potential. 2. Always keep learning. If you’re the smartest person in the room you’re in the wrong place. 3. Don’t dream about success. Work for it. – Amy Bishop, social media chair

The best advice I ever got was to “be proactive, flag work and clients you are interested in. Many opportunities exist; you just need to ask for them.” – Jessica Noonan, membership co-chair

Saying “thank you” can go a long way. I’m a huge advocate of handwritten thank-you cards, but even the simplest appreciation for someone’s help is memorable. – Nicole Bersani, membership co-chair

Don’t be afraid to take a risk and try something new. It shows initiative, leadership, and a willingness to embrace constant learning. – Kate Enos, mentorship co-chair

The best piece of career advice I’ve been given has two parts- listen twice as much as you speak and never stop learning. In this industry, with our roles constantly changing with the advent of technology, a PR professional can never stop learning. There is so much information, data and knowledge to be attained for our clients, the communities we serve and for ourselves as professionals. – Brandi Boatner, mentorship co-chair

The best advice I’ve ever received is to build a network before you need it. It’s much easier to build solid connections and relationships with other professionals when you’re not looking for an immediate gain from that person. When you look for a new job or need new clients, your network will be much stronger and will be able to help you. – Nick Lucido, PRSSA liaison

My favorite—and most frustrating—intern supervisor once explained to me the difference between “classroom work” and working in the real world. In college, you finish an assignment, turn it in to your professor and get a grade—A, B or whatever. In the real world, you turn in an assignment, and it gets marked up by a proofreader/client and handed back to you. You correct any errors and turn it in again. This process continues until it’s considered “A+” work. It can be incredibly frustrating, but at least I have a clear conscience knowing that I’m producing only the best work for my clients. – Scott Thornburg, PRSSA liaison

The best career advice I’ve ever received was actually something I read in an article. Simple, but amazing advice: “Work like you own the company.” – Keri Cook, blog co-chair

The best advice I’ve ever received from a high school journalism teacher was to write what you know. To this day, whether I’m writing a personal blog, a newsletter article or a press release for a client, I always find my best writing comes from my own experiences and knowledge. When working with a new company or client, I voraciously research and seek to understand the topic so I can communicate effectively with experts in the industry. If I’m writing for my own enjoyment, I find that sharing personal experiences and being transparent makes for a much more engaging and relatable piece. – Heather Sliwinski, blog co-chair and Section chair-elect

 

We’d love to hear from you: What has been the best career advice you’ve received?

This week, Instagram started a digital fury with a blog post that described a soon-to-be implemented privacy change. The addition to the current terms of use policy was, “You agree that a business may pay Instagram to display your photos in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions without any compensation to you.” The outcry came from users thinking that Instagram intended to sell their photos without permission or paying them for their use.

This change became the center of a heightened digital panic and “jump ship” mentality of a lot of their users. This immediate blowback seems to be directly tied to Instagram potentially presuming its users fully understood the pre-existing policy.

According to a blog post by Nilay Patel, “First, like every other company on the web that stores user data, Instagram has always had an expansive license to use and copy your photos. It has to — that’s how it runs its networks of servers around the world.” The public didn’t understand the terms of use policies as they relate to the services and how they apply to their data when using the service, evidenced by the explosive mass hysteria and digital backlash from users.

While the blog post was written with the good intent to provide users with knowledge of a changing policy, Instagram’s blog not only allowed users to see the change in policy, but brought the original policy to the attention of many users. They seemed to be reading the actual policy after reading the blog, versus when they first subscribed to the free service. They were concerned with its entire composition, not just the composition of the added sentence.

If Instagram understood this long-known truth about its users, they could have been much more forthcoming and avoided this crisis. Instagram did respond with a positive blog post to show they were listening and aiming to please their users. In an age of increased social responsibility, it was wise for Instagram to be reactive in support of their policies while being supportive of their users.

However, Instagram could have avoided this crisis simply by using language that’s easier to understand and being much more transparent with their message describing the policy, the changes being made and how it would affect users.

Most users understand that businesses like Instagram have to start generating money, and in the online world, that involves monetizing user data. If Instagram incorporated or engaged their users more in this process, it could have averted this crisis, and people would understand this need. People aren’t afraid to pay for the things they like, such as how Netflix maintained their membership throughout their price divisions, when they listened and engaged their users and made changes to their proposed price changes to fit the needs of their goals and their users. However, the same consumers who are not afraid to pay are however resistant to clouded change and uninvolved decisions.

As a result of the quick action and response by Instagram, they released a statement denying reports that say about 25 percent of their total daily active users were lost. The company plans to go forward, to take the time to complete their plans and then come back to users and explain how they would like advertising to work. However, the public uproar could have been prevented had Instagram taken a more proactive approach.

The biggest lesson for communicators and practitioners is that transparency rules. In this digital world, where free digital startups begin and explode, the transition that will come allowing these companies to earn will need to involve their users and their supporters instead of only burning up venture capitalist money or changing terms to earn through data but lose trust from users.

Vanessa Barnett, technology and media lawyer at Charles Russell LLP, said, “There’s no free lunch on the Internet, and the modern currency is not pounds, shillings and pence but personal data. What matters, and what the law says, is that if you collect and use personal data, you need to be transparent about it.  As long as we have transparency, we also have free will.”

 

JR Rochester is a digital copywriter for Lowe’s Home Improvement and a recent graduate of East Carolina University with a degree in public relations and interpersonal organizational communication. He has experience in social media, community building digitally and locally, in-depth experience planning, implementing digital product marketing strategies, grass roots efforts, client and brand reputation management, event planning and marketing. He is a member of PRSA Charlotte, PRSA New Professionals Section and Toastmasters International. He is a proud veteran, drummer, avid cook and self-professed geek.