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OneUpOneDown

Why the best mentor is a few steps ahead, not decades ahead

Near-peer mentoring pairs people a step or two apart. Why it solves the mentor supply problem, and a matching framework that leads to first meetings.

OneUpOneDown · 2 November 2026 · 8 min read

OneUpOneDown started with a single mentoring match. In 2019, our two co-founders were paired as mentor and mentee. One was in London and the other in New Zealand, on opposite sides of the world. That match turned into a friendship, and then a co-founder relationship, which was the foundation of OneUpOneDown. They worked together almost every day for nearly three years before they ever met in person.

When people ask why it worked, our answer is always the same. They weren't decades apart. They were a few steps apart.

That idea is in our name. One up, one down: someone a step ahead of you, someone a step behind you, and you in the middle, learning and giving at the same time. After years of running programmes for associations, federations and industry bodies, it's the design choice we'd most like more programme owners to make on purpose.

What near-peer mentoring means

Near-peer mentoring pairs a mentee with a mentor who is one or two steps ahead of them, rather than at the very top. A first-time manager learns from someone who became a manager three years ago. An early-career engineer learns from a senior engineer, not the CTO.

It sits alongside the other models most organisations already know:

  • Traditional mentoring: a senior leader guides a junior colleague, often decades apart.
  • Peer mentoring: people at the same level support each other.
  • Reverse mentoring: a junior colleague mentors a senior one on a specific topic, such as technology or culture.
  • Near-peer mentoring: the mentor is a few steps ahead, and most participants are both a mentor and a mentee at once.

That last part is what makes it different. In a near-peer programme, the person being mentored on Monday is mentoring someone else on Thursday.

You can see the shape of it in real data. In the FIA Women in Motorsport programme, the average mentee was 27, the average mentor was 43, and the people who signed up as both were 36. The middle of the pool is where most of the energy sits.

Two women sitting beside table and talking
Photo: Christina @ wocintechchat.com M on Unsplash

Why it works for organisations

It's relatable

One of the reasons OneUpOneDown exists is that generic advice is not that helpful. Someone who did your job recently remembers the details: the first difficult conversation with a direct report, the promotion case that didn't land, the meeting where nobody heard you. Their advice is specific because the experience is fresh.

That isn't a criticism of senior mentors. It's a recognition that the most useful person for your next step is often the one who just took it.

It's available

Senior leaders are generous, but their diaries are full. In the Association of Business Mentors' 2025 report on UK workplace mentoring, HR and People Directors named lack of time and availability as the biggest barrier to their programmes (47%), followed by difficulty matching mentors and mentees (39%).

Near-peer mentors are easier to reach and easier to schedule. Meetings actually happen, which is most of the battle.

It solves the mentor supply problem

The most common worry we hear from programme owners is "we won't have enough mentors". With a traditional model, that's often true. If only senior leaders can mentor, you have a short supply and a long queue.

Near-peer changes the maths. Anyone a step ahead of someone else can mentor. In the FIA Women in Motorsport pool, 58% of participants signed up as both mentor and mentee, and 51% of mentors said they were willing to take more than one mentee. In the Global Gaming Women and Climate Bridges programmes, around a quarter of participants (27% and 26%) chose both roles.

Most organisations already have the women leaders their rising talent needs. They just haven't been connected yet.

Mentors grow too

Mentorship isn't one-way. The best relationships grow both people. The long-running Sun Microsystems study, reported by Knowledge at Wharton, found that mentors were promoted six times more often than people not in the programme, and their retention was 69% compared with 49% for non-participants. We see the same on OneUpOneDown: 64% of mentors say they built a meaningful connection, and 30% say they developed leadership skills.

Alexandra Rabensteiner, a Marketing Director at IGT and a mentor in the Global Gaming Women programme, put it simply: "Mentoring has definitely helped me grow - as a leader, and also as a coach."

When everyone can be a mentor and a mentee at once, that development reaches far more of your people than a small group of senior volunteers ever could. Across OneUpOneDown, 30% of members already do both. If you run a programme, encourage your people to sign up as both. Everyone benefits: mentees get more choice, and mentors keep learning.

Near-peer only works if the match is right

None of this matters if the pair never meets. Chronus's 2026 State of Mentoring survey of 94 senior HR and talent leaders found that only 8% say their matching quality is strong today. Nearly half (47%) say their matches feel generic or shallow. And the drop-off starts immediately: 39% of participants match but never schedule a first meeting, and 54% meet once and don't continue.

In our experience, the right match matters more than the right title. Here is how we design matching so that pairs get to a real first meeting, and keep going.

A framework for mentoring matching that leads to first meetings

1. Match on three things, in this order

  • Goal. What does the mentee want to work on in the next three months? Start here, because a shared focus gives the first conversation something to hold on to.
  • Step gap. Has the mentor recently done the thing the mentee is about to do? One or two steps is the sweet spot. Ten steps and the advice gets abstract; zero steps and it becomes peer support.
  • Compatibility. Working style, availability, time zone and any stated preferences. For example, we ask participants whether they're happy to be matched with someone from their own organisation, and we respect the answer.

Customise the questions to your context. A motorsport federation and a professional association will care about different things.

2. Keep a human in the loop

Our matching uses AI to propose pairs on goals, experience and compatibility, and then a human matchmaker reviews every pair before it goes out. The human check catches what data misses: a line-management relationship, a step gap that looks right on paper but isn't, or a mentor who has already said yes to enough people.

3. Make the first meeting the goal of the match

A match isn't a success until the first meeting happens. On OneUpOneDown, 74% of pairs hold their first meeting, against the 61% implied by the Chronus survey. So we design for it:

  • Book the first meeting into a set window. In our standard structure, that's the kick-off in week one.
  • Put everything needed to book it in the match introduction: who the person is, why they were matched, and how to schedule.
  • Send reminders and nudges inside that window, so neither person has to chase.
  • Decide in advance what happens if a pair hasn't met by the end of the window: a personal check-in, then a rematch if needed.

4. Give the match a shape and an end date

Open-ended matches drift. We run three-month cycles with four meetings: kick-off in week one, a check-in in week four, a deep dive in week eight and a close in week twelve. A clear end makes it easier to say yes, especially for busy mentors.

5. Rematch without drama

Not every match works, and that's fine. Ask both people for feedback after the first meeting. End poor matches early, extend the good ones, and rematch at the end of each cycle. In a near-peer pool, someone who finishes as a mentee is often ready to start as a mentor.

Woman in white and blue stripe tank top holding black and yellow power tool
Photo: ThisisEngineering on Unsplash

How to measure match quality

If you only measure sign-ups, you won't see where a programme is losing people. These are the measures we'd put on a programme dashboard:

  1. First-meeting rate: the share of pairs who meet inside the set window.
  2. First-meeting rating: both mentor and mentee rate the match from 1 to 5 straight after meeting one.
  3. Continuation: the share of pairs who reach the second meeting and complete the cycle.
  4. End-of-match rating: both sides again, at week twelve.
  5. Extensions and rematches: how many good matches choose to continue, and how quickly poor ones are rematched.
  6. Pool health: the balance of mentors, mentees and people who are both, so you know before it becomes a problem if you need more of one.

Ask both sides, every time. A match that feels great to a mentee and draining to a mentor won't last.

Across OneUpOneDown, members rate their match 4.5 out of 5 from 3,880 reviews, and 89% rate it 4 or 5. That number is the one we watch most closely, because everything else in a programme follows from it: after the first meeting, 93% of mentees name at least one concrete gain, and 87% report high or very high trust with their mentor.

A few steps apart

Our co-founders didn't need decades between them. They needed someone who was close enough to understand and far enough ahead to be useful, and a match that gave them a reason to keep showing up.

If you're designing a mentoring programme and want to talk through near-peer matching for your people or members, we're happy to jump on a call. It's always useful to hear what you're working with.

Book a demo

Sources

Cover photo: Christina @ wocintechchat.com M on Unsplash

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