Barbara Goldberg starts her workday the way she starts it at O’Connell & Goldberg in Florida: by bringing a stack of newspapers to the office. The CEO of the public relations firm said she likes the physical paper and follows what is relevant to clients, but she also described a different kind of learning that happens in her workplace—one that flows from younger co-workers back to older managers. In her description, the gaps between generations can feel like a mismatch in language, yet some workplaces are using reverse mentoring programs to treat those differences as something to leverage rather than ignore.
Goldberg said that, in practice, staff conversations at O’Connell & Goldberg sometimes drift into the latest slang, digital tools and memes. She said a weekly Monday meeting was meant to discuss how the day’s news could affect clients, but instead employees often compare what is trending. Goldberg said that when she first listened to that shift, she did not dismiss it; she said she thought it was “actually really insightful” and added that she needed to understand the trending audio and the influencers that her younger colleagues follow. She later summarized the dynamic as something her younger workers understood that she did not.
Goldberg’s experience is presented in the context of broader workplace mentoring in which reverse mentoring differs from traditional mentorship. Instead of an older person sharing wisdom with a younger colleague, the model described here gives less experienced staff members the opportunity to teach seasoned colleagues about new trends and technologies. The report said that with at least five generations in the U.S. workforce, workplaces can still face misunderstandings over how people born decades apart approach tasks—yet reverse mentoring can turn those divides into mutual learning.
One example cited is Estée Lauder, which the report said began a reverse mentoring program globally about a decade ago after its managers realized consumers were rapidly getting beauty tips from social media influencers rather than department stores. Peri Izzo, an executive director who oversaw the initiative, said the voluntary program now has roughly 1,200 participants. Izzo said the mentors are millennials born from 1981 to 1986 and Generation Zers born starting in 1997, while mentees are paired with people in the baby boomer generation born from 1946 to 1964 and members of Generation X born from 1965 to 1980, using Pew Research Center generational definitions.
Izzo described how new reverse mentoring relationships can start with icebreakers, including a Gen Z vocabulary quiz. She said young mentors take phrases they use with friends in group chats and quiz older colleagues about what the phrases mean. In one example, Izzo said that when a Gen Zer used the phrase “living rent-free in your head,” one mentee later reacted with “my son lives rent-free in my house,” which she described as humorous because it reflected that the mentee had not understood the TikTok context and how the term is used among millennial and Gen Z audiences. She said the quizzes aim to connect everyday digital slang to real-world workplace understanding.
The report also includes a counterpoint to the idea that reverse mentoring is only about tech or social trends. Madison Reynolds, 26, a product manager on the technology team at Estée Lauder who the report described as a Gen Zer and a reverse mentor, said her role includes teaching phrases such as “You ate it up,” meaning someone did a good job. She said that when her manager tries Gen Z phrases, she provides feedback—for example by saying “No, that’s not right,” or by responding “You got it.” The report presents that feedback as part of the program’s “give and take” approach.
Beyond corporate settings, the report described reverse mentoring in a hospitality context. It said that when 81-year-old hotelier Bruce Haines brought athletes from Lehigh University’s wrestling team to participate in a mentorship program at the Historic Hotel Bethlehem in Pennsylvania, he taught the students about entrepreneurship by having them shadow managers across departments. Haines said he also gained marketing insights he had not anticipated, describing the experience as “energizing” and “almost reinvigorating.” He said his organization had tended to focus on Facebook, but that the students’ guidance showed that a luxury destination hotel needed to be on Instagram and YouTube to reach younger people.
Haines said the students also suggested offering prepackaged pints of ice cream to the hotel’s in-house parlor because their contemporaries did not want to wait for cones. He said the change was not just a marketing idea; it increased ice cream sales and profitability. In the report’s framing, the lesson was that reverse mentoring can work when each side teaches something concrete—whether it is social media reach or a business decision shaped by what younger customers prefer.
The report adds workplace communication examples from a PR firm and a medical group. At O’Connell & Goldberg, Carson Celio, 26, described herself as an account supervisor and said she helps advise the CEO about what is trending on TikTok and what is over. Celio told the report that Goldberg taught her how to work a room and spark conversations in ways that feel natural and organic. She said that her generation had spent more time online—especially during and after COVID-19—so in-person networking could feel overwhelming, and she said Goldberg helped by teaching “the value of actually being face to face with people and building those connections.”
At Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians, a medical group the report said employs 2,400 doctors in eastern Massachusetts, Dr. Alexa B. Kimball described adapting communication styles across ages. She said that when an email conversation reaches “the 15th response,” it indicates someone should pick up the phone, and she said younger trainees sometimes communicate through short six-word texts. The report said reverse mentoring at the medical group was also used during training when Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians launched a new medical records system that required 14 hours of training, with Kimball pairing workers with more tech-savvy colleagues to provide support.
The report also described reverse mentoring as an approach to retirement transitions and knowledge transfer rather than only language learning. It cited Robert Poole, 62, as the only person at Abbott who manages the laser used to create nearly microscopic components of a cardiovascular device, and said Abbott hired Shahad Almahania, 33, an equipment engineer to work alongside him and absorb decades of knowledge. Poole said the equipment is custom and takes a long time to learn and keep running, and he said he also learns from Almahania as he adjusts to newer communication habits—for example, after Abbott removed landline telephones five years ago, he migrated to group chats like Slack and asked her to help decipher the meaning of emojis.
Leena Rinne, vice president at online learning platform Skillsoft, said the goal should not be reduced to generational stereotypes. She told the report that when people remove those stereotypes, “every age group, every person, is looking for some of the same things,” including supportive leadership, opportunities to grow and contribute, and respect and clarity. In the examples described, reverse mentoring functions as a structure for that kind of clarity—pairing different approaches to help people learn how to communicate, train and work together across age gaps.