Update on my mentorship skills.

I am happy to report that YoungEinstein has stepped up to the bar. In this post, I explain how I chose I different tactic to manage, what I thought was an underperforming lab tech. Instead of telling him all the things he did wrong, I chose a more respectful and compassionate approach.

Low and behold, it worked!

I am totally aware that there are some people who just have a hard time with certain tasks, but all in all, I'm convinced that if you just treat someone with compassion and respect, they will do their best for you. Sometimes people will fail, but we all fail at some point or another. You just have to have a little faith in someone.

This is so true for students - if you take someone on as a student, then it's important to try and have faith in that student and not give up on someone, even when you're exasperated with them. There are always ways to resolve a situation that is respectful to both parties even if it means parting ways.

So last week, I decided that instead of just producing data, it was high time YoungEinstein learned how to analyze it using R. And although, I know that this will be useful for him during his PhD, I really believe that a lab tech is more than just a minion. And it turned out that this was clearly something he enjoys and is quite capable of doing.

I work in R because it is the most accessible, intuitive, transparent, and flexible computing language out there. We used the data from our experiment and I gave him a few pointers, set out the problem for him to solve in R, and then let him go. He came back 3 days later with the solution. And I know he worked on this at home and every chance he got in between experiments. I think it must have captured his imagination.

Lately, he's been on top of our experiment, reporting more carefully about any anomalies that he sees. His lab notebook is much more detailed and he keeps this up to date. (Occasionally, there's a lapse, but we're all human. ) I get weekly reports from him on the status of my requests. He has kept up to date on all the ordering of our supplies and has managed to do most of the lab management tasks.

Best of all, I think he is happier about coming to work. Instead of our previous professional interactions, our conversations are relaxed and friendly.

I'm thankful to YoungEinstein for giving me a little insight into mentorship, and when we get the next lab tech, I'm sure that I will learn a little something more about myself.