Criticism and Feedback

Set regular meetings to go over progress, where you can give feedback and criticism. In the beginning, probably better to have progress meetings more frequently.

Start with positive reinforcement (things mentee is doing well and strong characteristics of their work), then move on to areas of improvement. Be careful with the words you use, keep a light tone of voice and try not to be accusatory or antagonistic. Avoid using words that will undermine or discourage them. Maybe give examples of what impact this improvement will cause, short-term and long-term.

Try your best to give feedback to your mentees in private to avoid harm of embarrassment.

Ask them what they think are areas of improvement. How they think what they are doing can be improved and optimized. Then, based on what they say, you can gauge what their weak areas are (if they do not want to tell you).

Give them a chance to also give you feedback so that you can know if you are not meeting their expectations.

If you are doing an experiment that is more complicated, give them instructions before they start. After the experiment, walk them through what they did, how it can be improved, what they could have done differently, etc.

Safety takes priority: If your mentee is doing something unsafe, do not wait to give them feedback later, do it immediately. Do not shout so you don’t make the situation worse, but make sure they hear you. They will probably be more upset if they get hurt or hurt others. Later, you can tell them that you are not mad at them, but that you care about their safety.

When safety is not an issue, let your mentees make mistakes and talk through those mistakes later.

Allow the mentee the freedom of making mistakes and learning from them, especially when the work at hand is not critical. Nonetheless, also be sure to intervene if the extent of a mentee's errors might be demotivating for them.