Reaching down for ideas through reverse mentoring has defined some of Bharti Airtel's internal and external business strategies.

“The challenge before our senior leaders was to remain connected to the changing environment. Reverse mentoring was set up to support them in this endeavour,” says Mr Krish Shankar, Executive Director, Human Resources, Airtel.

Through this, the Airtel management board and function heads are mentored by Young Leaders (YLs) - people who are 2-3 years into the organisation. And the topics the seniors are educated on include branding, downloading apps, fashion trends, latest gadgets or what young people do in their free time. “Of course, it's not just soft stuff, even hard business strategies get discussed and sometimes adopted by the company,” says Mr Shankar.

In fact, the genesis of Bharti Airtel's association with football club Manchester United for a promotion campaign was through one such mentoring partnership. The mentor felt that cricket was for Gen X, while Airtel customers comprising Gen Y had moved towards football and so should the telecom player.

Another is Sparkplug, a platform for employees to talk about an area of interest. It encourages cross functional interaction of teams where employees can share business ideas. Over a 100 employees have participated in the event so far, says Mr Shankar.

There is intense competition among the young employees to get into this programme. The selection and pairing of the mentors and mentees is done through a survey to judge and match areas of interest of both sets of people. Currently, there are 20 such mentoring pairs within the company.

Mr Shankar says apart from the obvious benefit of senior leaders getting a fresh perspective to their businesses, the young leaders gain a lot in areas of self-confidence and communications skills.

> anjali@thehindu.co.in

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