One of the most precious gifts of the early stages of your religious life in a congregation is the wisdom and guidance of the Formation or Novice Directress or Director. A mutual spiritual bond is formed from their guidance of your soul and life in community that is deep and lasting.
In the Visitation Order, St. Jane de Chantal clarified the gentle style that the Formation Directress would find most effective with the tender hearts of new members.
The Novice Directress asked: Is it becoming for a Directress to mortify her novices?
St Jane de Chantal: No, Sister, it is not proper nor becoming for 
the Directress to be always scolding her novices ( this is not our spirit), nor to daunt them by many mortifications. This way of fear closes the heart, and only ends in making them avoid evil and do good, from the motive of being afraid of reprimands and penances.
In this Institute, minds must be guided with gentleness: by giving them a great love and esteem of virtue and mortification; by encouraging them to desire and love it, as the only means of arriving at their end, which is the union of their souls with God.
Entering a new community and embarking on a different way of life is a blessed challenge for all those who leave the lay state to enter a Monastery. In the Visitation, our tradition encourages us to encounter our newest members with a spirit of cordiality, gentleness and humility as they accept the Lord’s invitation to become his contemplative religious and Spouses of His Sacred Heart.
(Excerpted, adapted from page 260 of Answers of our Holy Mother St. Jane Frances Fremiot)