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Mentoring is often too narrowly defined as hierarchical, overlooking more immediate sources of growth.

Peer relationships provide real-time, honest feedback grounded in everyday behaviour.

Development is shaped through interaction, not just occasional advice.

The most valuable mentors are often already around you, but under-recognised and underutilised.

Mentoring has the potential to change lives, rocket-fuel career development, and unblock major challenges. But what if we have been looking in the wrong direction for the right people to mentor us? What if the support we need is all around us, yet we’re focused elsewhere?

When we think of mentoring, it’s natural to picture the traditional hierarchical model—a junior person, or someone ascending the ladder, turning to someone more experienced, more senior. Someone who has already walked the path that their mentee wants to follow.

Looking in just one direction, however, means overlooking other opportunities to find invaluable help.

In a recent Connected Leadership Podcast conversation, Alexis Redding, a developmental psychologist, lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and editor of Mental Health in College, shared an observation that challenges how many people think about mentoring.

“I was listening to recordings from the 1970s, young people talking about their careers, anxieties, and uncertainty,” she told me. “What struck me was how familiar it all sounded. The questions they were asking are the same questions people are asking today.”

Despite decades of change in how we work, the human experience of development hasn’t shifted as much as we might expect. Which raises an important point: If the challenges are the same, why do we assume the solution always lies in a rigid, hierarchical mentoring model?

The Limits of Looking Upwards

It’s understandable to seek out someone more senior when looking for a mentor. Mentoring is often about one person passing on their experience to someone following a similar path. But not always.

We can often gain value from people who might not have the experience to share but do have a different perspective or can act as a sounding board. And that perspective can be more valuable when it’s offered by someone closer to the action and available in the moment.

Alexis explained, “Mentoring relationships with senior leaders are often quite infrequent. You might meet occasionally, with a structured conversation. But they’re removed from the day-to-day reality of how you’re actually operating.”

That distance matters. Formal conversations with mentors at distant intervals rely heavily on what we choose to share. A range of personal biases will influence what we put on the agenda, whether it’s the challenge we choose to focus on, a focus on other people’s behaviour rather than our own, or recency bias— forgetting something that happened shortly after our last mentoring session, which has faded from memory.

A senior, formal mentor will often not be around you and your work all the time. This is particularly true if they are outside your direct reporting line, which we strongly advise. This means that, although they may know others’ perceptions of you and your work through their own conversations, they typically rely on your version of events, not on experiencing how you actually appear to others.

This is where Alexis sees effective mentoring coming from a different direction. “I use the term ‘mirror mentors", she said, “to describe the people around us who reflect back what we can’t see in ourselves.”

Mirror mentors aren’t formally assigned; they aren't necessarily more experienced, and they rarely hold the title of mentor. More often than not, they’re your peers and colleagues.

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“Peers see you in real time,” Alexis explained. “They observe how you behave, how you communicate, and how you respond under pressure. Not how you think you do, but how you actually do.” That distinction is critical. The gap between intention and impact is where much of our development needs lie.

The real advantage of such relationships is the frequency of interaction and the immediacy of feedback and accountability in relation to the event. Rather than monthly or even less-frequent interactions with a formal mentor, engagement with peers is constant. Working together and bouncing ideas off each other leads to a very different kind of learning.

“The feedback is immediate; it’s grounded in real situations. And often, it’s more honest,” Alexis stressed.

The lack of hierarchy can also lead to greater openness in both directions. The key is to create an environment in which feedback is both given in a supportive spirit and received the same way, creating a psychologically safe space for honest sharing.

We need that feedback and honesty if we are to achieve our full potential. Alexis explained, “We don’t develop in isolation. Our sense of who we are is shaped through our interactions with other people.” Development does not happen best in occasional, formal conversations. It happens best in the flow of everyday work.

According to Alexis, “It’s those everyday interactions—how people respond to you, how they interpret you—that are impacting your development more than you realise”. The people you interact with most frequently are those who best understand you and, therefore, are best placed to support your growth.

So why do we overlook such relationships?

“We don’t always recognise them as developmental,” Alexis said. “Because they are informal, we don’t invest in them the same way.” Instead, we focus our efforts on building relationships with people we perceive as more important, or with those whose job titles draw us towards them.

While there are benefits to developing strong, supportive relationships with people of greater seniority or more experience, excessive effort can be an inefficient use of our time and energy. We can chase relationships that we feel are strategic, while underestimating those that actually are.

Alexis’s conclusion is simple. “If we broaden our understanding of mentoring, it becomes much more dynamic and accessible. It’s not just about finding the right mentor; it’s about recognising where mentoring is already happening.”

Instead of seeking new mentors elsewhere, ask yourself:

Whose work and mindset do I admire?

Who already sees me clearly?

Am I learning from them?

Am I making it easy and rewarding for them to be open, honest and supportive?

We can spend years trying to access the right people while underinvesting in the people who already have the greatest insight into our behaviour. As Alexis’s work makes clear, the most important mentors in your career may not be the ones above you.

They’re right beside you.

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