We designed this program for statisticians to strengthen your leadership skills so you can maximize your impact at work even if you don’t have direct reports.
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program, a mixture of webinars, podcast and moderated small group discussions, will have a focus on pharmaceutical statistics and aims at all levels of statisticians. We believe all statisticians can be leaders.
Do you want business partners to honor your ideas more?
Do you want to play a bigger role in key discussions?
Do you want to increase your influence within your organization?
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program can help you:
1. Learn the foundations of leadership
The program will help you better understand leadership relevant to your role, and to build a foundation as an effective statistical leader. You will learn how to:
- Better communicate in situations where you need to show leadership.
- Build trust with the people you work with in other functions, so they follow your advice.
2. Increase your influence
You will learn how to build business knowledge and how to better influence projects and create positive change. The program will teach you:
- Why it is so important to develop your understanding of the pharmaceutical business – and how you can do this.
- How to influence your colleagues’ thinking so the organization makes better decisions.
3. Implement an action plan to improve your leadership
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program will help you to create and implement your personal action plan to continually improve your statistical leadership. We designed the program to:
- Achieve improvements in building trust with collaborators;
- Identify opportunities for statistical influence;
- Implement actions for positive change and develop a plan to enact;
- Continue your study and application of leadership concepts;
From statisticians for statisticians!
Alexander Schacht
I received my PhD in biostatistics from the University of Göttingen in Germany. I have authored more than 70 scientific manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and regularly speak at international conferences – both statistical ones like Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) and medical ones like the European Dermatology Congress (EADV).
In my 16 years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, I focused on late-phase work. Since a couple of years, I head up a team of highly capable statisticians at a major pharmaceutical company. In addition, I serve on the board of directors of Statisticians in the Pharmaceutical Industry (PSI) as Chairman of the Communications Committee.
About Gary Sullivan
I currently consult as a Leadership Specialist and Statistical Scientist for my company Espirer Consulting since March, 2018. Before this, I was the Senior Director for Non-Clinical Statistics at Eli Lilly and Company, where I worked for 28 years. I also worked as a technical statistician in Non-Clinical Statistics for the first half of my career at Eli Lilly.
I led the development and instruction of the first leadership course at the Joint Statistical Meetings (JSM) of the American Statistical Association (ASA) in 2014.. I’ve provided leadership training to over 300 professionals in statistics and other fields, both at Eli Lilly and within the ASA. In addition, I’ve authored several articles and a book chapter on leadership for statisticians.
I hold a Bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of Pittsburgh, and both a Master’s and Doctorate in Statistics from Iowa State University.
Program information
The program comprises six 4-weekly cycles. Within each cycle, you will receive training via different channels. Each cycle follows this structure:
- Webinar with questions and answers,
- Moderated small group discussion
- Podcast episode
- Moderated small group discussion
The small groups will contain only 4 to 7 members to increase interactivity, address individual challenges and questions. They will also serve as accountability groups to follow up on implementing the training at work.
During the program, you will get assignments to apply the learnings into your day-to-day activities. This will ensure, that you think about, what you have learned and also apply it. The learnings from this application will be part of further discussions during the program and enhance the learning experience.
Bonuses
As a first bonus, we have a private LinkedIn group. This will enable us to stay in contact and answer questions fast. We keep this LinkedIn group alive after completion of the program to stay in touch. You’ll also meet the alumni from The Effective Statistician Program there and thus join a bigger community. We’re also posting there further content.
As a second bonus, you’ll get a special training on productivity including all of Alexanders tips and hacks to become more productive and experience less stress. This will also free up the time for you to invest in your leadership skills.
What you will learn
Each of the six 4-weekly cycles will follow one larger topic. These are:
- Leadership basics
- leadership definition,
- leadership skills, and
- learning model.
- Communication
- 1:1 communication,
- presentation,
- virtual communication,
- email,
- communication style,
- goals of communication,
- misunderstandings, and
- dealing with challenging situations.
- Trust and Teamwork
- value of trust,
- trust building activities,
- avoiding trust diminishing actions, and
- success factors for teamwork.
- Understanding the Big Picture
- value of understanding the business and
- example activities to increase business understanding
- Influence and Decision-Making
- mindset – willingness to influence,
- how to influence without authority,
- change management, and
- working effectively with difficult business partners
- mindset – consultant or decision maker,
- analysis paralysis,
- embracing uncertainty, and
- common blind spots
- Focus and Action Planning
- goal setting,
- habits, and
- communication and execution
What past participants said!
“For me – besides the content of course – the concept itself is very helpful: the mix of smaller classes in combination with the webinars and the podcast. The repetition of communication styles, the regular reminders to apply it in our working environment and to talk about it in the mastermind groups is very useful (even with a more than fully engaged working schedule :-)). “
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“ The program really helped me to demystify and break down what leadership is.“
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“ The number one thing that was most helpful is that the structure of the program has helped me to go through the aspects of leadership and evaluate them one step at a time.“
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“I really enjoyed the masterminds because it’s a safe place for us to explore and to sort of break down what happened.”
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“ I think that’s (emphasis on focus in last part of the program) really helping me to try to organize my life, and organize my time, and organize my thinking about what I do – so that I can be more effective in my work and be a better leader. “
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“ I found the assignments very helpful. We talked about different concepts and skills and directly translated this into practice within the assignments. And in my view the structure of the program was very helpful: to have regular meetings and assignments –> I was forced to stay on track. “
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“There was a ton of advice, all extremely useful.”
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
“(most useful were) the personalised advice and accountability of the mastermind groups.”
The Effective Statistician Leadership Program participant.
Why your supervisor should support you attending this program
- More and more, organizational decisions and strategy are being driven by data … how its generated and how its analyzed. As the experts in design, analysis and interpretation of data, statisticians need to not just be at the center of these discussions but also have the ability to influence direction and strategy, impact decision-making. Further, they must develop and contribute their own ideas to deliver greater value to an organization or cause. This requires stronger leadership.
- Statisticians have the raw skills to be strong leaders: We are deep thinkers, good at framing/structuring problems, able to synthesize and process information, adept at problem solving, learning agile, smart and curious, and have high integrity. This is a great foundation for leadership.
- In order to be more effective leaders, statisticians need to improve or develop other skills including communication and presence, conflict management, influence and negotiation, business acumen and business judgment, and courage.
- In order to improve leadership, a statistician must continually invest in their leadership development and apply what they learn. This course will not only provide the relevant content for statistical leadership but is designed both for study and application on a weekly basis for a period of about six months. This will instill the skills and practice and create the habit of leadership study that will serve the statistician well beyond the duration of the course.
- Finally, the positive outcomes will be numerous: value to the organization or cause, an increase in quantitative thinking across the organization, and greater visibility & reward for statisticians to name a few. Additionally, these new statistical leaders will serve as role models for their colleagues which can begin a virtual cycle of improved leadership and impact across the statistical group. Simply put, it will make a big difference – for the statistician, their function, their company, and their customers/stakeholders.
Frequently asked questions
How long do I have access to the material?
If you enroll for the complete 24 weeks, you will have life-time access to the course. We plan to offer this course continuously and will improve the content over time and add further material. Thus, as long as we maintain the site, you will have access.
How much time, do I need to invest?
Plan to spend about 1 to 2 hours per week for the content over the 24 weeks. The implementation of the training will happen in your day-to-day activities and interactions. As you also get additional productivity training as a bonus, you should easily be able to free up this in time in your calendar.
What happens to the small group discussions after completion of the course?
We expect, that the groups will develop enough team spirit in the 24 weeks of the program to continue self-organized far beyond the completion of the program.
What happens, if I don’t like the course?
Oh no! We don’t want that! We offer a 30 days money-back guarantee. If you are unhappy with the course for any reason, let us know and we will refund your payment within 30 days.
What happens to me, if the others taking part in my small group drop out?
We will combine too small groups with the other groups. As long as there is at least one group with at least 4 participants, we will run the program.
When does the course start?
The program itself will start early November 2019.