In the third part of the leadership series with Gary Sullivan, we talk about:
- What skills does it take to influence a statistician?
- When it’s about driving change – what are the rational, operational, and emotional challenges?
- How do I get a “seat at the table” and have more influence?
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Gary Sullivan
I worked in and around the field of statistical science in both technical (13 years) and management roles (15 years) for Eli Lilly and Company, a major pharmaceutical manufacturer in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Couple this experience with my leadership study – almost 10 years of creating, implementing, and instructing leadership programs. The result is a perspective from all sides: the employee, the manager, and the leadership expert.
This allows me to understand what will be helpful and insightful to any person or group seeking to improve their leadership.
Transcript
Skills you need to become a better leader! – Interview with Gary Sullivan
00:00
You are listening to episode 43 of the Effective Statistician. Skills you need to become a better leader. Interview with Gary Sullivan part number 3. Welcome to the Effective Statistician with Alexander Schacht and Benjamin Piske. The weekly podcast for statisticians in the health sector designed to improve your leadership skills.
00:26
widen your business acumen and enhance your efficiency. We are coming up with a great free webinar on leadership. Sign up at thee slash webinar to learn more about the webinar and purchase stuff for it. It will be awesome. We will talk about five big reasons why statisticians fail to lead and how you can overcome them. So just check out thee
00:56
and leave your email address there.
01:00
In this episode we’ll talk about leadership again and it’s the third part of the leadership series with Gary Sullivan. We will answer questions such as what skills does it take to influence as a statistician? When it’s about driving change, what are the rational, operational and emotional challenges that you will face? And the question that I do
01:30
a seat at this table where the decisions are made and how can I have more influence of more convincing skills for us. Thus, after this episode you will exactly know what to do and what to work after in this episode. And also watch out for next week’s episode, which is the last one with Gary, as we’ll have something for you to accelerate your leadership development.
01:56
This podcast is created in association with PSI, a global member organization dedicated to leading and promoting best practice and industry initiatives. Join PSI today to further develop your statistical capabilities with access to special interest groups, the video on demand content library, free registration to all PSI webinars and much much more.
02:20
Visit the PSI website at PSIweb.org to learn more about PSI activities and become a PSI member today.
02:32
Welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician. And again, I have a guest here that is Gary Sullivan. Hi, Gary, how are you doing? Hi, Alexander, doing very well, thanks. Okay, so this is actually the third episode in this series about leadership for statisticians. And in the last two episodes, we talked about actually what is leadership. Gary came up with a very, very nice
03:03
definition about leadership and about the influencing skills that decisions need to have. We talked a lot about kind of trust and ways to build trust as that is a fundamental part in influencing. And today we actually will go a little bit deeper into this kind of influencing thing and we’ll talk more about kind of
03:31
what it takes to influence and what are kind of different aspects of this influencing thing. So it will get a little bit more crisp in terms of what you can actually do. Sounds good. So, very good. If you haven’t listened to the other two episodes, I will encourage you to just stop here, scroll back in your podcast player and listen to the other two episodes.
03:59
and then maybe jump back to this one here. Okay, so just as a kind of intro, maybe Gary, you can just repeat your nice leadership definition of what is actually the leadership that we’re talking about.
04:20
Sure, we define leadership, I should say I define leadership, although we’ve used it in some other courses, is the ability to consistently deliver value to an organization or a cause by inspiring people to take a specific direction when they truly have the freedom or choice to do otherwise. Yeah, and I think there is some literature that says there’s kind of three different
04:50
of ways you can influence people. So I think when the first one is if you have the authority, so the role to actually influence people. So that is very often kind of what people think of first when they think about leadership. That is, you know, you’re the supervisor, you’re the boss, you’re the manager, and therefore you tell people what to do. And that is what
05:20
what I would say called role power. But that is not usually the power that statisticians are using. However, statisticians have this really unique opportunity because they are experts in their field. Yes. And so if you think about these cross-functional teams, very often they are the only statisticians.
05:50
on the at the table. So just by that position, they have something that you could talk to as expertise power or expertise influential dimension. Yeah.
06:09
So what do you think is that kind of the key thing that statisticians need to kind of rely on to influence people? Their statistical education? Yes, I think and I think we talked about this last time. I think it’s a key thing. It’s one thing, but it’s not the thing. As we talked about in terms of being able to develop trust.
06:37
having that technical competence, demonstrating that you can add value with your technical skills, being able to speak to different types of technical methods and approaches is important in terms of gaining credibility and trust. But unfortunately, it doesn’t all end there. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the…
07:05
Actually, the biggest piece in all these different things is really this relationship influencing dimension. So that you actually inspire others, that you say they want to follow you, you convince people, you sell your ideas. And I think that is also what good supervisors do. They don’t kind of…
07:32
tell you what to do, they explain it to you, they sell it to you so that you buy into it and you’re not just doing it because you’re commanded to do it. When it comes to influencing people, what we usually want to do is we want to drive change.
08:02
making sure that something different happens. So, and if we talk about change, I think there’s kind of very different parts to driving change. What do you think about that? Yeah, I’ve read in the past, and I sort of adopt this, that when we talked last time about there’s sort of this technical piece, which you can think of as sort of this logical or rational
08:30
piece of change or the way that people think in a way Is one way is very sort of technically or rationally. I think the other way is very operationally or structurally Or you could call it sort of physically like can we even? Make this happen. Do we have the processes? Do we have the? the the tools the resources And I think the the third piece is this sort of emotional piece
08:59
And I think this is maybe the most challenging part of influence and that sometimes when you’re trying to create change, it can come across as daunting to the decision maker or the team leader just because it’s new. So it’s going to require maybe them to learn new things, to…
09:29
try things in a way that they haven’t before. They may see it as threatening because they may have known how to do things in the past, and now you’re telling them we should do things differently and they’re not familiar with that. So that’s a threat in some ways to maybe their authority or their competence. But I think that’s the third sort of piece of this. So sometimes you may come across like, okay, I know this makes sense, so it’s very rational, logical.
09:59
I know we have the systems and the processes to make it happen, but they may still be a little resistant. Some of it is just getting over the hurdle of accepting it, being able to make themselves vulnerable as an individual, maybe make themselves vulnerable as the team leader because there’s a risk in making change. I think this is the other aspect that statisticians need to take into account.
10:31
Okay, so if I understand you correctly, it’s really about this kind of, even if you, if the other person understands kind of logically that it makes sense to do things a different way, even if you have the tools, the processes, the software, the budget, whatever, all these kind of things in place and you can figure this out, you know, okay, first we need to do this and this and this and this and this and this kind of, you know.
11:01
from a resource point of view, everything is there. Still, things might not change because there is this fuzzy emotional part into it. In terms of emotions, what are the emotions that are hindering change that you typically see?
11:26
Yeah, I think one is it can in some ways be the threat to power. Okay, so if someone has a way of doing things all the time, I can speak to specific instances when I was a statistician where I remember when I was working with fermentation scientists and trying to design certain experiments for them. And I understood, I think I came to understand fermentation pretty well.
11:55
And I was trying to sell a colleague on a certain type of experiment. And they kept pushing back and they said, eventually they said, well, I said, well, does that just not make sense or do I just not understand fermentation? And they said, you just don’t understand fermentation. And so I said, okay, well, maybe I still need to learn more.
12:22
But then after we left the meeting, one of the other scientists who was in the meeting with me, we walked away and she turned to me and she said, you understand fermentation just fine. They just don’t want to do what you’re suggesting that they do. And again, I think we’re all like that when we’re asked to change the way we do something. We have to get our heads around it because it can create stress. It can create risk.
12:51
make us vulnerable because if it doesn’t work, then we can be sort of held responsible. So these are normal emotions and it’s these types of things that we need to be cognizant of. So a lot of times it may just require spoon feeding people and getting them to…
13:19
to eventually sort of buy into the change. So present the ideas once or present it to them in a private setting where you’re not in front of the team so that they can ask questions. They can be vulnerable in front of you where they don’t have to be vulnerable in front of the team. You have to give them time to get their head wrapped around. And so like I said, that they can monitor, do I wanna take the risk? Am I comfortable enough with this? Am I capable?
13:49
of learning it and being able to communicate it to my superiors as to why we’re doing it. So all those things come into play when you’re, you may be proposing a new way of doing things. And those are things, that’s the other thing I think statisticians need to be sort of cognizant of that. Again, you may have a perfect technical argument.
14:13
you may be able to pull off what you’re suggesting that the team do operationally, but it’s that emotional piece that people need to get comfortable, if I can sort of use that word, with the idea of doing things a different way. Yeah, I’m just thinking of a phone call I had some time ago,
14:42
more people on the line. And from the stats side, we wanted to convince the…
14:53
project leads that we want to do something in a different way. And actually, there was lots of logical argumentations, there was all the processes in place, we had good kind of track record in there. And she just didn’t want to go down that route in the meeting.
15:18
From a stat side, we were kind of hammering on the logical arguments, on the kind of operational things again and again and again, and only made the situation worse. Because we came across as being arrogant, we came across as being, you know, knowing it all, we, you know, not listening to the concerns and
15:46
Later, I had a follow-up one-to-one with that person and I was actually not speaking so much. I was actually listening much more and I was kind of hearing her concerns and said, yeah, of course, these kind of things can happen and giving her much more kind of the feelings that I acknowledge her kind of fears.
16:16
and things like that. And at the end, we found a really nice kind of way that we said, okay, for the first part of the project, we go with this new proposal, then we evaluate where we are, and then we make a second kind of, second decision about the rest of the project. And so that…
16:40
took out the fear because she was much more fearful of the second part of the project and was much more happy with going our way with the first part. But I think it was really this much more active listening and just going on to the emotional side. Okay, we have been through this together. We have…
17:10
done it’s a different way together last time and it actually didn’t work out quite well. So playing to this relationship aspects and I think also making it safe in terms of having just a one-to-one discussion. Yeah, I was going to say, I think it goes back to, I think you mentioned a lot of good things there in terms of you mentioned the word fear. That’s a…
17:38
That’s a basic human emotion. We all have fears. And if you think about putting yourself in the position of a decision maker that may be making a call on a project or a change that might cost so many millions of dollars or maybe even hundreds of thousands of dollars, or if it works, it may accelerate the project by two weeks. If it doesn’t work, it may delay it by three weeks. Those are all the…
18:07
And again, that’s some of the logical stuff, but you have to allow people to think through that. The initial thoughts are the fear, the risk, the vulnerability, the accountability, those types of things. And it gets back to the trust thing. I mean, if I have no relation, what you said about relationships, if I have no relationship with the decision-makers, so they’ve never worked with me before.
18:37
They have no track record with me. You can put yourself in their shoes and say, why should I listen to you? I don’t know whether you’re truthful, reliable, dependable, competent, all those types of things. Once you establish that relationship and you demonstrate with them that you do have good ideas and you won’t…
19:00
abandoned them and you will see them through and you’ve thought about the different aspects and the things that can go wrong and the benefits and the concerns, then they’re in a much more comfortable place and they’re much more likely to buy into an idea sooner rather than later. So I think that getting back to that whole relationship aspect.
19:25
and developing that relationship and developing that trust is important in influence. Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of, you know, you first need to pay a lot of trust money, so to say, into the account before you can actually pull from it. And that was actually, you know, just a moment where we needed to pull from it, where people just need to kind of, yeah.
19:55
belief in a sense, and overcome their fear. So fear is, I think, a very, very key emotion in that. Any other kind of emotions that you can think of that are these emotional challenges? I think we covered most of them. Like I said, the other one, I think, is just a, in a sense, it is fear as well, but it may be fear of losing.
20:23
your authority or expertise. So for example, let’s suppose in your situation, you know, a new statistician comes in and says, I have this new way of doing things. This method that I spent my time writing my dissertation on and I wanna use it. I mean, that in some ways, you could perceive that as a threat that, okay, now is my knowledge obsolete? Will I be replaced?
20:53
if I don’t have that technical competence or authority, am I gonna lose my ability to influence? So I think a lot of it does revolve around different fears that people will have with regard to any change. And again, I think people are different from a standpoint of some people are much more willing to take on risks and they don’t have those fears and other people, it takes them a while to…
21:21
to come about and embrace the change, and some never will. Because the other thing is just the, I guess the predictability of sort of the status quo. If you don’t make change, you know what to expect. There’s probably no fear, there’s little new stress, there’s not new things that you have to learn.
21:50
So sticking with what works is very safe. Yeah. I like the things that, you know, it says people that are sometimes more risk averse and people that are less risk averse. And if you have the opportunity to actually, you know, implement change and you have, can choose for different projects.
22:20
I consider when choosing the project, are the people. So where are the innovators? Where are the people that want to be avant-garde? Where are the people that actually want to do something different? That’s a key point. Yeah, I agree. That speaks to their leadership.
22:49
to make changes or look for ways to improve how they do things, how efficiently they do things, the speed in which they do things, then maybe you don’t want to attach yourself to them because maybe they’re not much of a leader. So these are all good things to think about. Yeah. Well, so these are all kind of really, really nice things. But…
23:15
where I see lots of people, statisticians actually struggle is they don’t even get into these kind of discussions. They can’t even build a relationship because they don’t even have a seat at the table when these kind of discussions happen. Any advice on kind of if you’re that stuck at the beginning?
23:44
not even invited to the meetings, not even on these committees where these kind of discussions are done, or that you’re, you know, what do you do there in terms of to get the seat at the table? Do you just go to the meeting organizer and say, well, I need to be there because I can, you know, I need to learn about this and, you know, and it helps.
24:13
me to be seen out? What do you do? Yeah, that’s a problem that we all face the statisticians. I think there’s a couple different approaches. Yeah, one is it never hurts to ask. It never hurts to ask and say, can I come to the meeting? Can I attend the meeting? Can I at least just come and sit and listen just to be able to hear the discussion? I mean, that’s helpful. Even if you
24:43
in the meeting, it allows you to hear things that you might not otherwise hear that may be helpful for you to understand the big picture, you to understand some of the key questions and challenges that maybe you don’t. So it’s worth trying. It doesn’t hurt to ask. I think the best route to take is to, as we talked about, in getting back to the trust thing, it’s how do you demonstrate that you can add value? How do you…
25:12
gain credibility for yourself, and that’s by actually doing. So if you can demonstrate your technical competence, demonstrate a broader understanding of the problem and that you can help in ways that they don’t see that you can help, then that allows you to then maybe get a place at the table. Or then the next time you ask to be included, maybe they say,
25:41
Yeah, that makes sense because you can think very broadly, you’re a good problem solver, you’ve demonstrated key contributions to the project and it will help us in that way. Sometimes I see that point that you don’t want to be seen as someone that just wants to be said for.
26:10
my personal kind of development or my personal kind of thing, you’re much more likely invited if for the person that invites you, they get actually additional value. So I think that is kind of a key thing to turn around. It’s not about you, it’s about them. And so you need to demonstrate this value.
26:40
can’t be in the meeting. How do you demonstrate the value? Yeah, it’s that sort of chicken egg thing. So in thinking back again to a couple different experiences, I guess I’ve had one and one kind of goes back to what you were saying about who you work with. So I had experience, I remember one project where I had worked with a scientist.
27:08
quite a bit and he enjoyed working with me and he saw me as very competent, as someone that could understand the big picture. And so when we both got included on a team, he was part of the core team, but he immediately sort of got me invited to some of the core team meetings because I had built that relationship with him and he knew.
27:38
that I could bring value, not just as a statistician, but as a problem solver. So I think that’s one way is that over time, as you build trust and credibility with key people, that they will sort of bring you along. You become part of them in some ways because they see you as bringing value. I think the other way is to…
28:07
is to do it sort of very gradually or slowly. Because again, it gets back to the idea of change. Well, this is the core team, and here’s who we have sit in the core team, or this is the committee, and here’s who we typically have sit in the committee. So I think demonstrating value, I had this experience as a supervisor in coaching some of my statisticians, and I remember one individual that
28:37
They were sharing with me that someone was presenting the results that they had generated. They had done some analysis, and these were, I think, pretty sophisticated analysis, and they were the ones that suggested that analysis. But when it came time to present, it was the scientist. It wasn’t even the person. This person was sort of a, I would say, at a similar level to them.
29:06
And I understood that it was going to be asking too much to say, OK, don’t let them present. You need to present this. But the first step was, OK, if they’re presenting, why don’t you ask to at least be in the room? And you could sort of position it as, if there’s any questions, I can help you answer questions. You can do the presentation. I can sit in the room. Once you get in the room, there are going to be situations where then you
29:36
advantage of that opportunity. So you have to come in prepared with not just an understanding of what you did, but you know why you did it, what bigger question it was answering, some of the the non-statistical concerns that people might have, how you see it as bringing value further down the road. So I think it’s maybe getting invited into the room first and then
30:06
at the table. I can think of one other example when I was working as a collaborating statistician and there was a person from the FDA on site and they were asking questions and I was one of the people that I was asked to be in the room but I wasn’t at the table. So I was sitting in the room and sure enough.
30:34
the investigator was going across some different technical documents and they came across some data and as soon as they started asking questions, the person that I had been working with sort of looked at me, shifted their chair over and sort of motioned for me to step up to the table because I was the one that had performed the analysis and knew the methods.
31:01
And then in that situation, I was then prepared to, I didn’t go into the room thinking, I’m just gonna sit back here. I was prepared to be called to the table. And so when I was, I was able to answer the questions. I was able to speak, not just in statistical terms, but in broader terms, this was a situation where we were dealing with some…
31:27
I wouldn’t say sort of contaminants, but some environmental monitoring data in a production setting. So I knew the different regulations. I knew the different challenges within each of the different rooms that were being discussed in the different processing areas. So being able to speak to all those things when you get your opportunity then allows you to get invited back to the table. So a lot to do there.
31:56
So I had a similar experience in terms of advisory boards. When I started in medical affairs, there were no statisticians invited to these customer-facing interactions because people couldn’t see why should a statistician go to these meetings with customers where physicians were talking to physicians mostly. And
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I first came into this just to listen in, in case there are questions. Of course, statistical questions came up in terms of, I think at that time, it was about analysis of longitudinal data. What is the difference between mixed models and LOCF analysis and these kind of discussions.
32:53
And so over time, I kind of showed how I can help that and actually provide unique value to the customers through that knowledge. And then there was actually later on, there was some kind of trickle-on effect because other physicians were seeing, oh, these kind of advisory boards where the statisticians are.
33:23
they get much better ratings in terms of, you know, these surveys that you send to customers afterwards. And there’s much more engagement and you know, the, that’s actually the physicians had another kind of benefit because they didn’t need to present all the time. And more and more things came into it and other physicians were adopting the approach and it became overall much more easier.
33:51
for statisticians than to go into these meetings because physicians were talking to other physicians and they said, ah, now I don’t need to know about all these kind of difficult things and I can rely on my statistician to explain these kind of things and we can present things together and that makes the presentations even more engaging and things like that. So, what I…
34:19
The key thing is that it happens slowly and then you can create trust with the other person and that trust actually can spill over to other relationships as well. So there is some kind of halo effect that is happening over time. So okay, so that is…
34:46
That’s a very, very nice way to get the seat at the table.
34:52
So one last thing that we want to talk about in this episode today is about communication skills that people need. And actually, we are planning to do something more about all these kind of communication pieces as well to help you become a better, more effective statistician in terms of your leadership skills.
35:21
and we’ll talk a little bit about that at the end of the episode. But in terms of communication skills, what are your key thoughts about the different aspects of communication skills that are needed to convey that change and to communicate this expertise power, to communicate the…
35:49
to build these relationships. Because all of that is done through communication. I think the first thing there is just being able to communicate your own expertise. I think most schools and universities understand this and do a good job of it in terms of impressing upon statisticians that first and foremost, you need to be able to communicate statistical concepts to non-statisticians.
36:17
And if they don’t, then it’s really the first step that statisticians need to take along the lines of developing their own communication. Because if you can’t explain to a non-statistician what it is that you’re doing and how you’re doing it, then it’s gonna be a real uphill battle for you to communicate other ideas that deal.
36:44
you know, maybe partially with statistics and partially with the business or the science or those types of things. So I would say that’s the first part to start is being able to explain to people what, like you said, LOCF is or what the difference between different types of designed experiments or, you know, the difference, what a P value, those types of things. If you can’t explain those things.
37:11
then it’s going to be difficult. So that’s, I think, a foundational thing is being able to explain your own field of expertise.
37:25
And what kind of communication skills do I need to build trust, for example? Yeah. And again, I think starting with what we just talked about is the way to begin there. The other part is, as we discussed in terms of, and I think you were given an example of this before, when we talked about trying to create change is listening skills.
37:55
So when it can’t be just, hey, I’ve got some ideas and I’m going to get those ideas across to you and force them down your throat. I need to first understand what it is that you’re dealing with. So in a collaborative type of setting, again, better to listen and then to try to sort of impart your ideas.
38:24
better to listen and add value the ways that the team initially needs the value to build that credibility. And then you can start to maybe share your own ideas and try to redirect them if you think they need to be redirected. So I think one of the other big things is listening skills. And statisticians, again, I think this is a strength in terms of…
38:54
a statistician’s ability to become a strong leader is that typically in our study that we are trained to listen. We have to understand the problem, the experiment, the constraints, the nuances, all those types of things. So we can leverage that skill as a leader as well. But I would say that’s another big thing.
39:24
In terms of communicating the ideas, I know that there’s of course this part of explaining the stats methodology in it, but what else do I need to do? What other techniques or skill sets do I need to have to communicate ideas well?
39:52
Could you give some examples regarding this? I think it, again, it kind of goes back to some of the other things in terms of understanding the bigger picture. So if you want to propose a new idea, a new approach to doing something, you have to demonstrate, I think, a broad understanding of what the benefits and concerns are. So I think in terms of.
40:22
communicating a new or different idea. Again, I’ll go back to my experiences as a statistician in an industrial setting. Before I could try to promote a certain strategy of experimentation, I had to demonstrate an understanding of the timeline. I had to demonstrate an understanding of the resources. I had to demonstrate an understanding of the key questions. I had to demonstrate an understanding of
40:52
what the challenges around the product or the process were. So I think the first part is making sure that you have a foundational understanding of the big picture in the team or the project that you’re working on. Again, without that. So basically you need to kind of frame things from a bigger picture at the beginning so that people can have a starting.
41:18
Yes, that’s a great word in terms of framing them to help them understand here’s why I’m here, here’s the problem I’m trying to solve, here’s why I think we need to solve it or here’s why I think we need to do it differently and here’s how I’m going to explain it. So presenting that bigger picture frame is important. You mentioned one other word.
41:45
earlier and that is also in the leadership definition. It’s about inspiring people. How do I inspire people? Well, I think the, again, it kind of goes back to some of the things that we said in terms of if you walk into a room with a new idea or a different way of doing things, anticipating
42:14
the types of questions and the types of thinking going on around the people in the room is important. So these may not even be questions that they articulate, but when you step into a room and you say, I wanna share a different way to approach this sequence of experiments, what do you think is running through their mind? The first thing might be, okay, we have a timeline.
42:44
How is this going to affect the timeline? We have a budget. Are we going to be able to do this? How is this going to benefit the team? Is it going to help us end up in a place where we have a better product or a higher quality product? So thinking about all those types of things is the questions that they have. And in a sense, at the highest level, it’s kind of like,
43:13
What’s in this for us? Okay, maybe you wanna apply some new type of method, but what’s in it for us? What’s in it for the team? What’s in it for the organization? What’s in it for our stakeholders? And I think going back to your question about how do you inspire that, it doesn’t have to be in terms of a rah rah type of speech or something that’s gonna get them energized.
43:40
But I think a team or a decision maker is going to be energized by things like, this can bring greater value to the organization. This can save us money. This can allow us to do this faster. This can bring a quicker solution to the patient, to the stakeholder. Those are the types of things that are going to inspire, I think, decision makers.
44:09
So it’s really about painting this picture of a better future in terms of a better future for them? Yes. For the others. Yeah. OK. What kind of techniques do you use to kind of communication techniques do you use to kind of convey that message?
44:35
I think it gets back to some of the things we talked about in terms of how you can create change. There’s certainly going to be a logical or technical piece to it. But I think the emotional piece may be the first piece that you want to address. And it gets back to those questions of what’s in it for us and for the stakeholders. So in some ways, starting there in terms of saying, you know, I’m going to talk to you about doing this a different way.
45:04
I’ll get into the details, but I think in the grand scheme of things, this will allow us to do it faster. It will give us greater information. It will allow us to save resources. Those, I think, are gonna be the things that emotionally maybe sort of connect with people. It will bring value to the patient or our ultimate customer. It will please them. How will it please them? Those types of things. So,
45:33
So I think connecting with them emotionally in that way. And again, you may think of those things, well, those are sort of nuts and bolts things. Those are how you run the business, but those are the things that are going to resonate with them more emotionally. It’s not going to be, you know, we’re gonna run this new statistical method or use this new approach. That’s not gonna get them jazzed up. They’re gonna get jazzed up by.
46:01
we can bring value to our stakeholder. So I think starting there is the place to start. And in terms of explaining the value, really tapping into these kind of emotional pieces that you kind of share a story, that you kind of paint a picture, that you can speak to the emotional aspects of it, that kind of…
46:27
people will feel better, that we will be able to do it in half the time or that will save us so much cost and therefore enable us to do different things and will ease some sort of pain and use these kind of words that trigger these emotions rather than…
46:57
Number, number, number, number. Yeah. OK. So in terms of that, I think there’s a lot of other aspects about communication that we could talk about and we can talk about here for forever to tease out further things that you can do to…
47:24
better communicate, to become a better communicator in different settings, whether it’s one-to-one, it’s one-to-many, whether you’re leading the meeting, whether we could talk about different communication channels and what are the pros and cons, all these different pieces. We are already far beyond the…
47:52
half an hour target that we usually have for these episodes. We break this one into two maybe. And we are actually working on a course to actually help you become better with these communication influencing skills thing to make you actually a better leader at work.
48:22
to be more influential and to get your job done in a more effective way so that you don’t have the pain that you want to drive change but you run into all kinds of different hurdles, some of which we talked about. In the next episode, actually, with Gary, we will talk a little bit more about this course that we are creating.
48:52
that we are offering and there we will speak about what you will get from the course. We will speak about what other different things that you can do outside of the course in terms of improving your leadership skills. So stay tuned. If you haven’t done yet, subscribe to the podcast and I’m
49:20
happy to speak with Gary again. Thanks, Gary. Yes, this has been great. Yeah, let’s continue the discussion. Okay, very good. Then dial into the podcast next week again. Bye. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, don’t forget to sign up for the leadership webinar at thee
49:47
It’ll be awesome and you don’t want to miss out on this. The webinar, of course, is for free. This show was created in association with PSI. And next week, you’ll learn more about leadership in our last episode with Gary, and we have some really, really nice surprises there for you. Thanks for listening. Please visit zeeeffectors.com to find the show notes.
50:11
learn more about our podcast to boost your career as a decision in the health sector. And again, don’t forget the webinar!
Join The Effective Statistician LinkedIn group
This group was set up to help each other to become more effective statisticians. We’ll run challenges in this group, e.g. around writing abstracts for conferences or other projects. I’ll also post into this group further content.
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.
