Forward Mentoring: A Reverse Mentoring Initiative to Enhance Cultural Competency and Promote Academic Leadership Capacity

Inadequate cultural competency is a significant barrier that hinders inclusivity, acceptance, and belonging. Programming to enhance cultural competency in the workplace often involves trainings, workshops, seminars, or other group-based didactic offerings. While helpful, these options are often not set up for engaging in robust individual exploration and self-reflection – both critical aspects of developing cultural competence. Reverse mentoring leverages the often more diverse composition of the greater workforce to help broaden the perspectives of senior leaders through honest, personal, and reflective discourse. If approached with curiosity, humility, and openness, reverse mentoring can be a powerful tool to enhance cultural competency among senior leaders/faculty as well as to promote mentor (junior colleague) self-efficacy. Here we describe the initial design and implementation of a reverse mentoring program (Forward Mentoring) at the Indiana University School of Medicine. We introduce the Forward Mentoring framework, outline the programmatic design, and present an evaluation plan that assesses learning, growth, satisfaction, and program efficacy. Evaluation data from a limited pilot is presented and future directions discussed.