How To Learn And Get Better On Your Influencing Skills

Transcript

How To Learn And Get Better On Your Influencing Skills

[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician. Today I want to talk about how you can improve your [00:00:10] influencing skills. And when I’m speaking about influencing skills, these are all the different skills that you need to be effective. To convince others about your [00:00:20] ideas, to lead others, and here I’m not just speaking to the supervisors that lead the team, but also all the other [00:00:30] statisticians, data scientists, programmers who need to lead the team cross functionally, who need to lead their peers, and even their [00:00:40] supervisors. Yes, all of these things work actually quite well with supervisors as well. Now, influencing [00:00:50] is really, really important because you can be the Best technical statistician in the world. If you can’t convince your study [00:01:00] team to actually, you know, use these new methods to use better designs for studies, to [00:01:10] have better programming environments, to have better scientific methods.

[00:01:16] Alexander: All of that doesn’t matter. So you need [00:01:20] to invest in your leadership skills. Now, leadership skills are in a way [00:01:30] very very similar to statistical skills. Just by reading a book, you don’t learn it. Yes, you can [00:01:40] go listen to a podcast, you can do all these things, and all of that is good. Because that way you actually understand what is actually [00:01:50] out there, you understand certain concepts.

[00:01:51] Alexander: Concepts, you learn the language, the vocabulary, you know what, you know, test is, you know [00:02:00] what a p value is, all these kind of different things. And leadership also has these different terminologies and you can learn about [00:02:10] them because then you can actually speak about them. The other thing is you can observe these things.

[00:02:19] Alexander: [00:02:20] How others are playing it and it’s a nice thing about these skills is you can observe them all around. You can see [00:02:30] how they’re applied by people within your organization and you can see whether they do it well, don’t do it well. And [00:02:40] especially from the contrast, you can learn a lot about it. You can watch movies, you can look TV.

[00:02:49] Alexander: [00:02:50] How politicians are trying to influence you, persuade you. They do that all the time. What do they do that is effective [00:03:00] and what is less effective? And I’m not speaking about kind of the different parties and all these kind of different things. Just think about what is effective and [00:03:10] what is not effective.

[00:03:13] Alexander: Another way to learn is to speak about it, to discuss it. [00:03:20] That will help you to better dive into it. It will also help you to reflect on it. There’s lots of different ways [00:03:30] to reflect on things. Sometimes it’s really good to speak about it. That will help you to reflect as well. There’s a lot of people that think, [00:03:40] By speaking through it, there’s other people that kind of sit back in silence and reflect about it.

[00:03:48] Alexander: Both is completely fine. [00:03:50] If you teach these, of course, you will even learn even more about it. Yeah, you probably have the same experience [00:04:00] if you explain statistics to someone else. You learn as well. Now, the most important aspect, [00:04:10] however, is doing it. So actually implementing these approaches. Like active [00:04:20] listening, really know how you do listen better.

[00:04:26] Alexander: And you might think like, listening? [00:04:30] Really? Yes. Most people don’t listen to understand. They listen to just [00:04:40] reply to the question or the comment. They don’t really listen to understand the other side. Good [00:04:50] listening skill. is absolutely fundamental as an influencing skill. Likewise, good presentation skills.

[00:04:59] Alexander: [00:05:00] Unfortunately, most of us, by far most of us, are not really good in terms of presentation skills. Yet, presentation skills are so [00:05:10] immensely important in our corporate culture, where lots of the things that we do is not good. Communicate it through [00:05:20] presentations, and good presentations actually reach their goal, bad presentations don’t.

[00:05:28] Alexander: So, [00:05:30] invest in better presentation skills. Do presentations. Deliver presentations. And of course, just doing is great. [00:05:40] But reflecting thereafter about it and also getting feedback about it is even better. Now, for example, when you [00:05:50] do a presentation that is pretty easy, you can ask someone before the presentation to provide you some feedback about it afterwards.

[00:05:59] Alexander: [00:06:00] Also, for meetings that you run, you can ask people afterwards, how was that? You can also ask potentially [00:06:10] peers that are in a negotiation together with you, hopefully on your side, how you negotiated. There’s lots of, lots [00:06:20] of different things that you can do and get feedback about it, then do it again.

[00:06:28] Alexander: Do it again, and [00:06:30] practice. Practice only. Practice makes the master and continuous learning makes the master. Leadership is not [00:06:40] something that you learn on a weekend course and then you are a great leader. It’s like statistics, [00:06:50] there’s so much to learn about it. You can, you should never stop to learn about it.

[00:06:57] Alexander: And by the way, all of these things will [00:07:00] not only help you be a better statistician, a more effective statistician, these things will also help you to be a better [00:07:10] spouse, be a better parent, be a better daughter, be a better community member, all these different things. So please do [00:07:20] invest in your leadership skills.

[00:07:22] Alexander: There’s likely lots of things that you can do within your company and your organization [00:07:30] if your company doesn’t provide these to you. So, or maybe they have these kind of leadership skills only for supervisors, which I think is a [00:07:40] disaster, or when these supervisor trainings If you only focus on, you know, speaking to your direct reports [00:07:50] then I have something different for you.

[00:07:52] Alexander: We have the Effective Statistician Leadership Program. And this program has proven to [00:08:00] be really, really successful and helpful to statisticians. We have had statisticians in [00:08:10] there, let’s say, with one, two years of experience who benefited from it a lot. We also had statisticians with over two decades of [00:08:20] experience who benefited from it a lot.

[00:08:23] Alexander: Just kind of on different levels. And by now we have trained more than [00:08:30] 500, actually we have enrolled more than 600 Nearly said, patients and of course statisticians, data scientists, programmers from across the [00:08:40] industry, academia, CRO, sponsors of course, quite a lot. And we regularly get very, very good [00:08:50] feedback for this training for a couple of different reasons.

[00:08:54] Alexander: First, it is designed from statisticians Gary and [00:09:00] myself, four other quantitative scientists. We specifically take our needs into account. [00:09:10] We specifically take our strengths into account. And we specifically talk about influencing, not [00:09:20] just from this supervisory point of view, which most generic leadership trainings too.

[00:09:27] Alexander: And I think that’s a pretty good example. Big, [00:09:30] big flaws there, because most of the leadership that is required in any of our metrics organization is this [00:09:40] lateral leadership, not the vertical leadership. Yes, that’s also good. But if you’re really good on the lateral part, the vertical part is [00:09:50] so much easier.

[00:09:52] Alexander: So please do invest in your leadership skills. And do it not just by listening to this podcast, [00:10:00] which is great. Also, do practice it, reflect on it, discuss it. And that’s why the leadership [00:10:10] programs that Gary and I created have these Mastermind groups, which consists of small group discussions that occur over time, [00:10:20] during which you will reflect on what you have implemented, discuss it, and get better.

[00:10:27] Alexander: So, this leadership program [00:10:30] has two parts. All these kind of different aspects in it that we talked about. If you want to learn more about this, the next open program, [00:10:40] so that is open to the complete public, starts end of April 2024. So just head over to the Effective Statistician homepage, [00:10:50] check out this leadership program.

[00:10:53] Alexander: And if you have any questions about it, just set up a meeting with me. There’s a link on the homepage. [00:11:00] If your company wants to invest in this, your organization, your university wants to invest in this, then just [00:11:10] write me an email to alexander at the effective statistician. com and we’ll have a chat about how we can make that possible for you.

[00:11:19] Alexander: With [00:11:20] that, have a great day and invest further in your leadership skills.