Are you tired of rushing through endless meetings, juggling countless tasks, and feeling like the grind never stops?
Do you wonder if all this hustle is worth the toll it’s taking on your health, relationships, and happiness?
In this episode of The Effective Statistician, I challenge the unsustainable culture of constant hustle and offer a better path: long-haul leadership. I’ll show you how focusing on personal growth, prioritizing your well-being, and building meaningful connections can help you break free from the burnout cycle. Let’s explore how to create a career that’s not only impactful but also sustainable for the long run.
Key points
- Hustle Culture
- Mental and Physical Health
- Long-Haul Leadership
- Continuous Personal Growth
- Adaptability and Change
- Nurturing Relationships
- Values and Principles
- Prioritizing Well-Being
- Building Consensus
- Leaving a Legacy
Adopting the mindset of a long-haul leader isn’t just about improving your work—it’s about transforming your entire approach to life and career.
By focusing on sustainability, growth, and well-being, you can build a fulfilling, impactful future without falling into the burnout trap.
If you’re ready to make this shift and take control of your career for the long term, this episode is for you.
Listen now to discover practical strategies for thriving as a long-haul leader. If you find this episode valuable, don’t keep it to yourself—share it with your friends, colleagues, and anyone who could benefit from these insights.
Together, we can create a healthier, more balanced approach to work. Tune in and start your journey today!
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Transcript
Why Becoming a Long-Haul Leader Matters
Alexander: [00:00:00] Welcome to a new episode of the effective statistician. I’m super happy that today I’m talking about a topic that is really, really important and that is hustling. I’m not getting any younger and I’ve learned that hustling isn’t sustainable, you know, working more and more and longer and longer hours and rushing each day to get more done and having lots of back to back meetings and trying to kind of find all the emails and chat messages and all the other things that come in all the time.
That is not how it works. However, I see more and more people adopting that kind of work style. And that is really, really bad. I have seen so many people that kind of, Complain about [00:01:00] the huge pressure that is mounting. Yeah, these kind of buzzwords from upper management. Do more with less. And you think like, well, What should I do?
What should I prioritize? Nobody prioritizes for you. And things just get mad and more and more. And then you think like, Ah, maybe I can do it up to the next database log. And then things will turn out better. Unfortunately, they never really turn better. And If that is exhausting to you you will have Longer term problems, you will struggle with your mental health.
You will struggle with your physical health. You will struggle with your relationships. If you take all that stress home, it will not be good for your [00:02:00] partnership, for your family. And if you don’t have a family, then it’s probably even worse, yeah. Then there’s even less of a limitation and you might start working on the weekends or maybe even during your vacation.
And you have always your work phone with you, and it’s not joyful when you look at it, but you just see there’s another disaster that I need to take care of, or there’s another request that I need to work on. And you kind of work, work, work, work, work, and there’s this constant grind. Well, there’s no badge of honor for working long hours.
Although you might think like, ah, yeah, your company will reward it. Probably it won’t. Because your long working hours [00:03:00] probably get a lot of unnoticed. Or people will think like, Well, that person can’t really prioritize the work. And can’t kind of get the work done within the dedicated working hours.
So. Is that really a person that we should put to the next level? If he or she can’t manage the work that she’s currently doing, how should she be able to manage the work on the next level? There’s also a lot of impact on your mental health, for sure. Yeah, we call it burnout. In fact, it’s just depression.
And you don’t want to end up in a hospital because of that, or get on long term medication for that. And I can also [00:04:00] tell you it likely will have impact on your
other parts of your health. If you’re not eating well because of that, if you’re not sleeping well because of that, if you don’t exercise enough because of that, that all leads to all kind of different problems, not mentioning the stress related problems. And By the way, also working these long hours isn’t increasing your productivity.
Actually, it may even decrease your productivity because there’s more errors that occur, there’s more mistakes that are done, and that is not really helping. So instead of working kind of all the time, want to talk today about something that a term. [00:05:00] That I lately found on the internet and that is long haul leadership.
So, what is long haul leadership? You may think about a long haul flight that is kind of, don’t know, across the Atlantic or maybe to Sydney or somewhere far away. Well, Sydney is far away for pretty much everybody except those people living in Sydney. And So what is it that, you know, is more of a sustainable thing, a more proactive working on things rather than a reactive working on things.
More that is a marathon rather than a sprint. Now, we need to have that within our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, our, healthcare, medical research area, because most of our projects are long term [00:06:00] projects. Unless you work in phase one most of the projects you will work on lasts, A year longer and they require resilience and balance and you know, you don’t get a new drug approved over time.
You don’t even get a paper published over time. Everything takes quite some time and therefore you need to have that long haul approach. Your career will hopefully last decades. That’s not something that you can do just in terms of sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint. And even if the agile movement tells you, well, there’s another sprint, and then another sprint, and then another sprint, that isn’t working.
So here are a couple of traits that I think [00:07:00] are really, really important about this long haul leadership. And it goes also back to this article about long haul leadership. The first is a commitment to continuous personal development. And Alan talked about this earlier on the podcast, this sharpening the saw.
Anecdote from the book by Stephen Covey about seven habits of highly effective people. You need to continuously work on yourself and have that growth mindset that you will keep growing over time. That you’re always staying up to date with what is happening around you in terms of the business evolution, the different methodologicals, set up Coming up, yeah, you need to be [00:08:00] adapted to generative AI.
I’m pretty sure these kind of tools will help you so much. Of course, you also need to keep up with regulations. You still haven’t applied estimates in your protocols and in your analysis and in your reportings. Well, hurry up. This is already there.
Being on top of the innovation, at least within a certain part, otherwise at least being aware of these things, is really, really important. The second trait of that long haul leadership that they talk about is an open minded approach. Embracing new ideas and adapting to change. There is always change. I worked for 20 years in the pharma companies and When there was one thing that was always there was [00:09:00] change.
Change in supervisors, change in structure, change in the compounds that you work on, change in the therapeutic areas that you work on. Always change. And I remember one poster in my first pharma company that I worked on. Change is our opportunity. And change can be your opportunity. What can you take from your old world that you can bring to the new world?
And there’s always something you can learn from. You have a new supervisor? Well, you will learn something new from this new supervisor. Hopefully it will be a better supervisor, or maybe it’s just a different supervisor, and you can learn to work with that new supervisor.[00:10:00]
The next trait of this long haul leader is nurturing others. We have an awesome community. We have lots of people that help with all kind of different associations like PSI, FSPI, BBS, ASA, and there’s also lots of people that help with the effective statistician. Help your colleagues. Work within your teams, mentor more junior statistician, or find mentors and do this mentorship where, you know, the much older person mentors the younger person, and the younger person also tells more about their struggles to the older person.
Help also in your cross functional teams. Networking is so important and building this trust across different team members will help you succeed.
I talk about trust here [00:11:00] on the podcast quite a lot and I had this whole series about how you can increase trust with others. Just scroll back a couple of different episodes. The next trait of a long haul leader is that you’re grounded in values and principles. Make sure that you stay true to your values and principles.
What are your values? You can very often easily find out about these if they are not taken into account. If something upsets you, annoys you, then that is something to look a little bit closer in. What value is here violated? What principle is violated? And Make sure that your professional values are aligned with the organizational ones.
If you [00:12:00] see that there’s a stark difference between them, I would say that is a sign you’re working in the wrong organization. Find a new organization that aligns with your goals, with your values, with your principles. The next trait of a long haul leader is prioritizing health and well being. Both your emotional, your mental, your physical health are pillars of your success.
If you don’t prioritize them, they will prioritize it for you. Don’t wait until you get sick. Make sure that you take care of yourself all the time. Health, both mentally and physically is important, but it’s never urgent until you get sick, and then it becomes urgent. And that is a classical part within the Eisenhower matrix [00:13:00] of urgent versus important.
Health usually sits in the Important, but not urgent part. Prioritize it. Make time for it.
The next trait of long haul leaders is adaptability and embracing change. See change as an opportunity rather than a threat. There’s a new regulatory guideline. See how you can bring it to your team and how you can help the team work with it. There’s new technologically advancements from a statistics side, or maybe you can apply generative AI in your area, or you can apply better data visualization in your area, or you can apply a new adaptive design in your area.
If it helps you, bring it to the team. That will make a huge [00:14:00] difference and show your leadership. Trait number seven, building bridges and consensus. Although I’m not a big fan of consensus all the time, especially in clinical trial teams, It is actually quite good because everybody will bring a different perspective.
Step up, of course you need to raise your voice and make sure that you are heard. And I’m talking about this all the time here on the podcast. And we have the medical team. Data leaders community coming up in February, where we talk about this quite a lot. Help to bring others on board, the regulatory scientists, the real world evidence scientists, the physicians, the medical writing team, whoever you need to bring on board.
Bring them on board. and get them aligned. And if you have no clue [00:15:00] how to do that, then join the medical data leaders community. We’ll talk about this a lot. Last but not the least trait is leaving a lasting legacy. You’re probably working for decades in this industry. What do you want to have an impact?
An impact on your teams, on your colleagues, maybe on the overall community. How do you want to be remembered? Have you ever thought about this? I think this is a very, very important thought to have, especially when you’re now kind of Think about this new year, 2025. Where do you want to be by the end of 2025?
Where do you want to be in five years? Think about this. What kind of legacy do you want to leave? Do you want to leave behind [00:16:00] or is work just a way to earn some money, which, by the way, is also fine. But I think lots of the listeners here really wanna have an impact in the overall society on patients.
And so here’s a real big opportunity for you. So, let’s recap. Hustle is not the right way to work longer term. This is a marathon, this is not a sprint, and this is also not a series of lots of lots of different sprints. You need to be here for the long term. So make sure that you take your time, that you commit to continuous personal improvement.
There is the five day workshop that will help you to fight overwhelm at the start of January [00:17:00] 2025 from the 3rd to the 7th of January. January that is coming up. I highly encourage you to take part in this. On Monday, Wednesday and Friday we will have a one hour learning session and on Tuesday and Thursday we will have a one hour Q& A session to help you Implement what you have learned in the learning sessions.
We will have this two times for the day, one in the morning at, so that, you know, people from Europe and Australia and Asia can participate, and one in the European afternoon, so that people from North America, South America can attend as well. And well, those in Europe can attend either in the morning or in the afternoon.[00:18:00]
Check out theeffectivestatistician.com where you will find everything about this workshop. And I hope I will see you there so that you become a long-haul leader.
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