Why Psychological Safety is the Foundation of Reciprocal Mentoring Success

What is reciprocal mentoring? Reciprocal mentoring is when a more senior colleague is the “mentee” and the more junior colleague is the “mentor”. Rather than wisdom flowing one way, from senior to junior, both colleagues share insights and both colleagues learn from each other. With a previous programme I helped to launch, an established leader gained fresh insight into emerging technology at the firm as well as lived experiences of a colleague from a different background, while a mentor (junior colleague) developed commercial awareness and enjoyed accessing to one-to-one time with a more senior colleague who he wouldn’t normally have contact with. However, this exchange only works if both colleagues feel safe enough to be honest, to share what they don't know, what they are curious about or what skills they really need to develop and to challenge one another in a respectful way. That is where psychological safety comes in.

Having worked closely with a number of law firms and corporates on launching and re-launching their reciprocal mentoring programmes, it has been essential to talk about building trust and psychological safety when equipping mentees and mentors to be the best collaborators. The term “psychological safety” was coined by Harvard professor Amy Edmondson, who defined it as a shared belief that a team is safe for “interpersonal risk-taking” — a working environment or conversation space where people can speak up, ask questions and make mistakes without the fear of embarrassment, shame, negative career repercussions or punishment.

Its importance was also highlighted by Google's Project Aristotle, a multi-year study into what makes teams truly effective. After examining numerous teams, the researchers found that the single most significant factor was not talent, resources or individual brilliance, but psychological safety. Teams whose members felt safe to contribute ideas, viewpoints or constructive challenges consistently outperformed those who did not.

Apply this to reciprocal mentoring and the connection becomes clear. The reciprocal relationship may depend on openess and vulnerability, especially if the mentoring matching discusses complex topics which impact the workplace, individuals or wider society. A leader who is a reciprocal mentee must be willing to say if they do not know much about a certain topic (this isn’t always easy when they may usually be or respected as “the expert”. Having been a reciprocal mentor myself, I know how as the more junior colleague I needed to feel confident enough to offer candid feedback to someone more senior than me. My reciprocal mentee said upfront that she was interested in my views and what she could do better. I welcomed this from her too. Without psychological safety, conversations don’t explore topics or perspectives in depth, workplace hierarchies can prevent open conversations and the reciprocal learning could be less visible.

So what can you do to build psychological safety as a reciprocal mentee (more senior colleague)?

1. Building psychological safety takes intention - Agree ground rules or ways of working when you start working with your reciprocal mentor.

2. Be mindful to listen without judgement - We’re human and we all bring our own perspectives or viewpoints. Communicate curiosity rather than defensiveness, and treat talking about any career failures as learning lessons.

3. Use “psychological safety” as a talking point - As a senior colleague, share when you have positively experienced psychological safety during your career. Can you remember the fist supervisor or line manager who created psychologically safe meeting spaces or welcomed different perspectives from the team? When both the reciprocal mentee and the reciprocal mentor can see that honesty will be welcomed, reciprocal mentoring becomes genuinely transformative — for the individuals involved and the colleagues around them.

So what can you do to build psychological safety as a reciprocal mentor (more junior colleague in the mentoring matching)?

1. Think about what you would really appreciate from your reciprocal mentee when it comes to building psychological safety and trust with each other to aid your conversations? Share this when you first catch up.

2. Reciprocal mentees also need psychological safety - As a reciprocal mentor, remember it’s just as important that you build psychological safety so your reciprocal mentee can be open and if they wish, vulnerable when sharing any carer learning lessons. Remind your reciprocal mentee that you welcome their honesty if they have any knowledge gaps or if they feel unsure about discussing a particular topic. Let them know you’re not expecting them to know everything.

3. Welcome ideas from your reciprocal mentee - How would you like your mentee to share any ideas which might benefit your career growth or impact in your role at the organisation? Let them know that you welcome their perspectives even if you may have different career paths or lived experiences as individuals.

Thanks to all of the reciprocal mentees and reciprocal mentors who have worked with us at Collective Insight over the years.

Informal Sponsorship: How Busy Leaders Can Open Doors

In fast-paced, high-performing organisations, your talent at all levels may look to benefit from informal sponsorship. Trust me, I’ve been there. I have needed informal sponsorship and also as a leader, I have actively sponsored colleagues. Colleagues who are less senior than you may wish to build their visibility and they may need your support with this. Informal sponsorship is valuable for everyone in their careers. Can you remember a time when you benefited from informal sponsorship or someone championed you in your career?

One of the examples in my own legal sector career was when a Managing Partner of a leading law firm informally sponsored me by putting me forward for an opportunity to deliver a talk in-person at the firm’s first Partners’ Conference post-lockdown. I was up against another potential speaker, one who was more well-known at the firm. At the time, I didn’t expect this informal sponsorship but he knew that I was keen to share my insights raise my profile as a specialist at the law firm. However, I know that not everyone has been able to benefit from informal sponsorship.

Informal sponsorship is different to mentoring

One way I describe this difference is that a mentor talks with you or shares guidance with you; a sponsor talks about you, in the rooms where work allocation or opportunities are discussed and where decisions are made. Mentoring builds capability and confidence through guidance, reflection and friendly challenge. Sponsorship, even at an informal level, builds opportunity and positive exposure. It puts the sponsor's reputation and social capital behind a colleague’s role or career progression at an organisation.

Another difference which I have noticed in my own career is that mentoring may be about private and developmental conversations; sponsorship is public and visible with the sponsor happy to champion the colleague. Both matter, but sponsorship can directly impact who gets noticed, stretched and even promoted at an organisation.

How can informal sponsorship show up?

I wanted to share some small informal sponsorship actions.

• Mentioning a colleague’s name in the right room. Let your leadership or decision-maker peers know about the colleague. You can champion them during team-wide talent discussions, promotion or succession conversations or project opportunities come up. Mention their name when you’re talking about key developments or team impact with your senior peers.

• Passing on opportunities. If you or someone you know is unable to take up an opportunity, who else can this opportunity be shared with? The colleague put forward for this may need relevant guidance or on-the-job support to deliver this.

• Crediting their work publicly. Attribute ideas and results to them in senior meetings, emails and if relevant team-wide updates. Remember that not all colleagues have advanced self-advocacy skills. Colleagues also rely on their senior colleagues and leaders to recognise their work and contributions.

• Making introductions. A two or three-line email connecting a colleague to an influential colleague or a senior colleague they wouldn’t normally access can open doors for different opportunities at your organisation. It may also benefit the senior colleague you’re connecting them with. This is something I have enjoyed doing in my career. Author Malcolm Gladwell would probably describe me as a “connector”.

• Inviting them into strategic conversations. If appropriate, invite colleagues to meetings they may not normally be a part of. You could invite them to attend a brief slot at a senior meeting, share their insights at strategy session or join an external event as an observer or contributor. My top tip is to mutually agree how they can best contribute to these conversations to put them in the best light.

• Endorsing applications for promotions or sideway moves. Act as a referee for your colleague, or let hiring managers in the business know you would recommend them due to their role achievements, skills or potential. This is key for retaining top talent. Some organisations have more formal sponsorship programmes for top talent, or those on track for leadership roles.

• Share the unwritten rules. I have delivered a number of workshops and keynote talks about the corporate unwritten rules. Many of us will spot these as we become more established in our careers. Share the unwritten rules you have come across in your own career and remind them who also needs to know about their contributions.

• Defending them when they're not in the room. This isn’t always easy, but spot opportunities to challenge any unfair assumptions made about a colleague’s performance or qualities.

Sunita’s other top tips to be an effective informal sponsor

• Learn more about their aims. Sponsorship works when it support their career aspirations and aims, not assumptions about them and their career paths.

• Work examples. You can only advocate credibly for what you've seen or know about, so if relevant ask them for a short update on their key contributions.

• Build informal sponsorship into existing meetings. Use one-to-ones, leadership meetings and talent discussions to champion talent which peers may not always hear about. Is there a meeting coming up where you could informally sponsor a colleague peers do not normally hear about?

• Check your sponsorship habits. Notice who you naturally champion. Notice who you don’t tend to champion or talk about. Affinity bias means we may sponsor people like us.

• Let them know about your actions. Tell them when you've put them forward, or championed them and if appropriate, share honest feedback on how decision-makers responded or share any follow up actions to support their careers at your organisation.

• Be specific. Describing a colleague as just “great" can easily be forgetten. Instead, describe what they did and the impact this had on the team, client, the firm or the colleague’s reputation so this is more memorable. This is something I often talk about in my workshops on giving effective feedback for high-performing teams.

Informal sponsorship is one of the most powerful levers leaders have for building and maintaining high-performing teams. Which informal sponsorship action will you deliver to benefit others’ careers at your organisation?

What does a "sense of belonging" in the workplace mean to you?

What does a "sense of belonging" in the workplace really mean to you? It can vary whether everyone in your team feels genuinely welcomed in the workplace or workspace.

Not everyone gets to be themselves in their working environment.

Many of us know that when we step into certain work spaces, our difference will be the first thing people see or pay attention to.

How do we know this? We read communication signals from others whether this is how people look at us, how people speak to us, how people don't communicate with us, the questions people may ask us or how people behave towards us.

Over the years, I've redefined the meaning of a "sense of belonging" to focus on

✔️ I belong in workspaces because of the skills, expertise and experience I bring.

✔️ I belong in a team, or in my client teams because of the impact I can make to benefit everyone.

✔️ I belong in workplaces because I'm proud of my difference, whether this is regarding my gender as a woman, my ethnicity as a Mauritian British-born, my education, my mental health and IVF journeys.

✔️ I belong in workspaces as I have had to navigate my own share of setbacks and challenges so bring empathy for others who are working through their own experiences.

✔️ I belong in the working environments because I genuinely enjoy connecting with others who could share similar differences and experiences to me.

✔️ I belong in the working environments because I genuinely enjoy connecting with others who I have absolutely nothing in common with when it comes to our heritages, backgrounds, identities or lifestyles.

I will always be proud of being different and will create my own belonging in every workplace or workspace I contribute to.

When delivering a number of keynote speaker talks throughout the year, whether it's for International Women's Day, Race Equality Week, Mental Health Awareness Week, Fertility Awareness Week or South Asian Heritage Month, my audiences find my story and practical tips for navigating work-life intriguing, interesting and inspiring.

Get in touch if you’d like to book me to deliver a bespoke talk, workshop or webinar for your organisation.

How can we deal better with failure?

Failure is a strange thing. Many of us have been taught to avoid failure during our careers as well as during our education years. However, moments of failure will pop up during our careers. Sometimes we can’t avoid it. Failure can even help us out, if you master how to view it as a learning experience and move forward with the development actions. It’s important to know how we can work with failure, especially if we care about our own professional impact and how our teams are performing. What, if anything, is going to make us feel better about it? Here’s seven top tips on how to deal better with failure.

1. Is it personal?…Yes, it’s good to acknowledge if you could have approached something a bit differently. It's also courageous to accept responsibility for when things go wrong. Many of us will know of colleagues or ex-colleagues who aren't comfortable in accepting this responsibility. Just because something went wrong or didn’t turn out as you’d hoped doesn’t mean this is solely down to you. There could be all kinds of reasons. Sometimes we’re too hard on ourselves and assume failure is all about us. Identify what caused the failure or mistake so these failures can be avoided in the future. Share your honest learnings with others in your team.

2. Speak to someone you trust…At times when things feel things are going upside down, it’s good to chat it through with a friend, trusted colleague, coach or mentor. Sometimes you need to share how you felt about failure; it could be anger, disappointment, regret or just frustration. Discussing this situation can also provide you with another perspective and help you to assess the impact.

3. Accept that success can take a while to grow…We all want to be successful in our own roles and careers. Success takes time and it’s important to accept that failures are part of any success journey. As a business coach with over 20 years of experience in my field, I know first hand how success is rarely a smooth ride. People who are successful often have to experience failures, rejection, challenges or pitfalls along the way.

4. Don’t let past failures stop you from giving things a go…The failure feeling can really hold you back. It can really dent our professional confidence levels, so don’t assume things will turn out the same way next time.

5. Ask others about how they have dealt with failures before…Learn from others’ experiences. Ask why something didn’t feel smooth-running for them? What did they learn from it? How do they pick themselves up after any mistakes or bad decisions? Having coached senior leadership teams, directors and CEOs over the last 12 months, many of my amazing clients agree that strong leaders are those who are happy to speak about their own failures.

6. Stay away from failure shame…Remember that everyone, yes everyone, experiences failure at some point. You don’t need to keep any failures a secret. It is normal and people may even respect you more for being open and sharing the positives from a situation or experience. Over the last 10 years, I have seen leaders of organisations being more open to discussing how things could be better or they can learn from difficult economic challenges.

7. Your mistakes may surprise you as they can even inspire you…When something doesn’t go to plan, it might even provide some innovation, inspiration or ideas. Things that have not gone as well as planned may teach you about what’s important to you. Failures are here to stay, in whatever shape or form they appear in our careers or businesses.

If you would like me to write an intranet or website article for your organisation, get in touch via sunita@collectiveinsight.co.uk

Sunita is currently working with a diverse range of corporate companies, law firms and organisations when providing:

• Tailored coaching programmes for talent and new joiners across your business

• Practical and engaging online skills development workshops / lunch and learns

• Inclusion strategy development, roll-out of diversity and inclusion workshops and equipping leaders and teams with inclusive leadership skills

• Panellist and speaker appearances for a number of professional growth, inclusion, mental health, flexible working, women in business and career management topics.