People who ask take the lead

As statisticians, we work in cross-functional teams, but many people, especially junior people prefer to follow rather than to lead – and that’s okay.

Ask yourself:

  • Do you always take the position of the follower or a leader?
  • Do you need to train yourself to lead?
  • Are you seen as an implementer?
  • Do you have goals for your project?

You can lead as well. According to Forbes, the best leaders lead with questions, not answers. Leading with questions works because really good questions have a direct impact on the brain. When we are challenged by a question that triggers an insight, neurons connect in new ways. This releases neurotransmitters that create the motivation to act. The net result is that the other person not only likes the idea, but they also want to do something with it.

In today’s episode, Benjamin and I will be talking about:

  • How success look like
  • How to create a win-win situation
  • How to get the team involved in creating the goal or at least tune into building relationships with people
  • How to move backwards once you have the goal, and put action steps into place to drive the project forward
  • How to drive things by one-on-one.

Listen to this interview and share it with others, who might learn from it!

Join The Effective Statistician LinkedIn group

I want to help the community of statisticians, data scientists, programmers and other quantitative scientists to be more influential, innovative, and effective. I believe that as a community we can help our research, our regulatory and payer systems, and ultimately physicians and patients take better decisions based on better evidence.

I work to achieve a future in which everyone can access the right evidence in the right format at the right time to make sound decisions.

When my kids are sick, I want to have good evidence to discuss with the physician about the different therapy choices.

When my mother is sick, I want her to understand the evidence and being able to understand it.

When I get sick, I want to find evidence that I can trust and that helps me to have meaningful discussions with my healthcare professionals.

I want to live in a world, where the media reports correctly about medical evidence and in which society distinguishes between fake evidence and real evidence.

Let’s work together to achieve this.