Posted on: 18/09/2025

Thought Leadership

Samantha Darby highlights how reciprocal mentoring is disrupting traditional leadership models and driving culture change. For aspiring leaders, it creates space to share lived experiences and be heard. For established leaders, it’s a challenge to reflect, listen and act differently. For organisations, it’s proof that mentoring can build inclusion, resilience and system-wide transformation.

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  By Samantha Darby - Coaching & Mentoring

  Oxfordshire County Council’s pilot of a reciprocal mentoring programme has transformed conversations, built confidence and changed perspectives. With more cohorts launching this autumn, here’s how mentoring is stepping up as a driver of culture change.

  Seeing Leadership Differently:How Mentoring is Shaping the Future

  When Oxfordshire County Council (OCC) set out to pilot a reciprocal mentoring programme, it wasn’t just launching another leadership initiative. It was taking a bold step towards inclusion, belonging and cultural change.

  Unlike traditional mentoring, reciprocal mentoring places both partners on equal footing. Aspiring Leaders - colleagues with lived experience of disadvantage, share their perspectives with Established Leaders, who in turn reflect on their leadership practice and commit to change. Both mentor, both learn.

  This shift challenges one of leadership’s longest-standing assumptions: that experience always equals authority. In reality, leadership today requires the humility to listen and the courage to act on uncomfortable truths.

  We know the public sector doesn’t just need more leaders; it needs leaders who can see differently. Where traditional mentoring can reinforce hierarchy; reciprocal mentoring disrupts it. That disruption is where culture change begins.

  The year-long pilot, run in partnership with WME, paired senior managers with colleagues who had experienced disadvantage linked to race, disability, sexuality or religion. The aim was to have honest conversations about power, privilege and organisational culture.

  The results were striking.

  • All participants reported gaining a better understanding of different lived experiences.
  • 93% felt more confident navigating organisational dynamics.
  • 80% reflected deeply on their own power and privilege.
  • Every participant said the programme should be expanded.

The personal reflections were just as powerful. One Aspiring Leader shared: “It was the first time I didn’t have to explain or justify who I am. I could just speak.” For an Established Leader, the challenge was the catalyst: “This wasn’t always comfortable—but that’s the point. You can’t grow without a bit of discomfort.”

Encouraged by such positive feedback, OCC is now preparing to roll out four new cohorts from October, with the first two already fully booked. The next phase will broaden the focus, inviting colleagues with any lived experience of disadvantage to take part.

You can read the full case study on the OCC pilot here.

Why It Matters Now

Mentoring feels like it’s having its moment and not before time. Across local government and the wider public sector, it’s fast becoming clear that mentoring is no longer the “poor relative” to coaching.At a time when leaders are stepping into new shoes, organisations are navigating waves of change, and generational shifts are reshaping our workforce, the benefits of mentoring - for individuals, teams and whole systems - are too significant to ignore.

It’s increasingly being recognised as a tool for:

• Inclusive leadership for a changing workforce — helping leaders step into new roles with greater awareness of diverse experiences and perspectives.
• Resilience through uncertainty — giving individuals and teams the human connection and support they need to navigate organisational change.
• Bridging generations and boundaries — creating space for dialogue across age groups, cultures, and sectors, so knowledge flows both ways and systems adapt more quickly.

Expanding the Future

That’s why WME is putting a spotlight on it. We’re investing regional Workforce Priority funding into four councils to test and refine models that are agile, responsive and impactful, and the lessons we learn hope to shape a stronger, sustainable mentoring offer across the Public Sector Coaching and Mentoring Pool. This is just the start: in the months ahead we’ll be sharing stories, insights and practical lessons that help shift the dial on mentoring’s place in the sector.

What Oxfordshire achieved shows what’s possible when organisations commit to mentoring, not as a “nice to have” but as a driver of culture change. As one participant put it: “I see the organisation differently now — and I think the organisation sees me differently too.”

If leaders aren’t opening themselves up to challenge, dialogue and different perspectives through mentoring, are they truly ready for the workforce of tomorrow? The future of mentoring is bigger than one project or a pilot it’s about embedding a culture where learning never stops, and where everyone has both something to give and something to gain.