Workshop Guide: Bridging Perspectives Through Co-Mentorship

We’ve identified co-mentorship – mentorship both up generations and down generations – to be incredibly helpful in eliminating age bias in the workplace. Here you will find a workshop guide on Bridging Perspectives Through Co-Mentorship, which works to discover practical ways to share expertise across the team and collaboratively grow.

Facilitator notes:
– Use language like “varying experience levels” and frame co-mentorship as a team style, not an HR program.
– Normalize that everyone is currently both a teacher and a learner in different domains.
– Reiterate that teams already do this informally, now we’re just making it intentional.

Session 1
Designed to establish the premise that mentorship is fluid, bidirectional, and about cognitive diversity rather than titles, tenure, or age.

Ask each member of the group to share:
– A time you found yourself explaining something to a colleague and walked away also having learned something yourself.
– What’s one area where you’d genuinely value guidance from someone with a different background or approach to your work?
– When have you adopted a better way of doing things from someone whose experience was quite different from yours?

Session 2
Designed to showcase that great work happens when we intentionally mix how different people think, learn, and solve problems.

Split into small groups and discuss:
– What make someone a great mentor, regardless of how long they’ve been in their role?
– How do we make it equally comfortable for newer team members to challenge assumptions and seasoned team members to stay curious?
– When two people with different experience levels tackle a problem together, what’s the ideal balance between guidance and autonomy?
– What’s one meeting, workflow, or project phase where intentionally mixing expertise levels would spark better decisions?
– What could sustainable knowledge-sharing look like for our team vs. the current reality? Where are the gaps?

Session 3
Designed to share insights from break-out session.

Return to the full group and discuss:
– What did you hear that shifts how you see our team’s collective strengths?
– What’s one small, low-friction way we can further test group mentorship?
– Who on this team naturally brings a perspective that complements yours?

If you use this workshop for your own team, drop us a note to let us know how it goes.