Our Reverse Mentoring Program Has Started!

28.12.2020News From Ford

We live in a world where change and unpredictability are accelerating, access to information is increasing, and different perspectives are becoming more and more valuable. With the vision of being Turkey's most valuable and most preferred industrial company; we believe that each and every person is different and has unique potential. As we continue our journey with this belief, we are fitting in learning leadership rather than knowing leadership. With the Reverse Mentoring Program, we aim to strengthen two-way learning and development by increasing the share of information and synergy between the younger generation and previous generation managers.

We have experienced the pilot project that was built by our Competency Management Task Team which consists of our voluntary employees from different points of the company; with 5 mentees and 9 mentors in the past months, together with the support of our Human Resources department. The feedback we received after our pilot implementation was very positive. Taking strength from this, on December 4th we started the implementation in a more powerful and inclusive way with 38 mentees and 54 mentors who completed their training.

We made sure that the topics were up-to-date and social, easy to talk about by everyone, interesting and knowledgeable for our young colleagues, and enthusiastic for our more senior managers in terms of self-improvement and being informed. Taking the opinions of our participants "Agile Work, Innovation, New Generation Communication Methods, Digital World, Social Media, and Culture" were determined as the topics. We made sure that our matched mentees and mentors were from different functions. During our 6-month program, we expect our participants to have at least 6 meetings.

Reverse Mentoring Program coincides directly with the "self-management and willingness" and "empowering leadership” principles of our common culture Dynamic Balance. It feeds our value of" openness to change and innovation". For these reasons in which this program has special importance for us, as it is difficult for young employees and managers to come together under normal conditions due to task dynamics; they are experiencing a process in which hierarchical distances are diminished and an environment of open communication and trust comes to the fore. Thanks to the program, we are able to help both our young talents to be inspired by our company history; and our managers to gain different perspectives from our new generation colleagues while enabling the strengthening of the social environment within our company. The most enjoyable thing is the opportunity of getting to know each other closely.

We hope that our innovative Reverse Mentoring Program, which facilitates the relationship between different generations and strengthens the communication within the company, will be enjoyable and productive for all participants and the number of participants will increase day by day!