How To Set Your Mentoring Relationship Roadmap

Once your vision is set, it’s time to get to the roadmap.  Planning ahead of time and setting your course means that you know the points where a change in direction may occur and what roadblocks you may encounter.

The Explorer We All Know

When it comes to setting a course and making it happen, we can consider Dora as one of the best in the business. Backed by 26 seasons and 196 episodes overall, she never had an episode where she didn’t get to her destination. For this reason, we chose her to be our spirit guide for our second principle “Setting a Roadmap” and her three symbols to embody our principle and what it is all about.

• Grab Your Boots & Get Out There
• Map it Out
• Pack Up Your Backpack

As Dora would say it, Come on, vamonos, everybody let’s go! Let’s dive deeper into these symbols.

Grab Your Boots & Get Out There

Dora’s trusty old friend, the monkey, Boots. He’s been with Dora for as long as we know it and together they go on countless journeys.

We can relate the countless journeys they’ve been through to a mentoring relationship because as a mentor, you need to be out there and gather perspective and experience that you can share with your mentee. These will turn into a great story or advice that you can give your mentee that adds a deeper connection to your relationship. As a mentee, you’re on a journey to find that perfect mentor and start your adventure together.

Map it Out

We all recognize Map as one of Dora’s friends, mainly because he always says his name in his opening song each episode. Map is the one that guides Dora to her destination in the fastest path possible.

We can also use something like Map in our mentoring relationships. Something that’ll always lead our vision to our destination. Map also gives dora the insight of who they’ll meet or places they’ll see along the way which is a great thing to know so that you can make plans in advance to make sure that you’ll be staying on the right path even when an unexpected event takes place.

What Can We Learn from Dora in Our Mentoring Relationships?

Dora became the symbol for our principle because she greatly exhibits the following:

• Active Listening Being an active listener, you can absorb more perspective and ideas along the way

• Getting Out There The more you are on the journey, the more opportunities for you to learn and find out your mentor profile

• Engaging If you’re out there, be engaging for more ways to learn
• Be Complimenting A great way to get more ideas out of a person is by complimenting what they’ve shared. This way, they’ll know that you’re serious in learning more from them.
• Know Your Destination You should always keep in mind your destination no matter where you are.
  
  

Swiper, No Swiping!

We are no stranger to the sneaky little fox, Swiper and we know that he always finds a way to try to ruin Dora’s day. You should be wary of the people or things like Swiper in a mentoring relationship. They will do what they can to mislead or distract you from your vision/goal as they really want your attention.

We Did It!

If there’s one thing that Dora really likes to do is to celebrate whenever they reach their destination or goal. They always recap the journey they went through and the challenges they faced along the way. They even ask the viewers what was their favorite part of the day.

This is something that we should incorporate not just in our mentoring relationship but also in life. People tend to move forward after accomplishing your goals. We should enjoy the achievement while recapping the things that went well and the challenges we faced along the way.

Summary

Setting a roadmap is no easy task! But doing so, makes your journey much more worth it. Just make sure that whenever you’re out there, keep your active listening ears open and engage to learn more along the way then I am sure that you’ll reach your vision without you even realizing that you’re already there.