Hi Marlene,
Here is what I would suggest other than self-study based on videos:
1. Break the students into teams and get each team to simulate an initial client meeting in front of the class. One team member will pretend to be a consultant and the other members will be part of a team of consultants responsible for solving a specific consulting problem. Discuss the elements of a good meeting with all team members before hand and then ask them to apply them into practice. These elements will include greeting the client, inviting him/her to take a seat, making small talk, taking charge of the meeting, establishing the meeting agenda, controlling the conversation flow, summarizing the main points of the discussion, and so on. Each student consultant would take turns discussing a particular aspect of the consulting problem with the client. Once the meeting is over, the rest of the class can provide constructive feedback on what worked well and what could be improved. Students will learn, at a minimum, how to present themselves to the client in a professional manner, which conveys confidence and expertise. Each team can deal with the same consulting problem for simplicity and ease.
2. Get the students to develop templates for communicating with clients in writing: emails, invoices, letters, reports, etc. They could do this as a group by discussing what should be and shouldn't be included in these documents. Ask the students to discuss specific templates and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This exercise works best if students work in teams for their own (fictitious) consulting companies and use appropriate logos and headers for all documents. Key here is to get the students used to presenting a professional image to the world - an indirect communication of sorts, but one which will take care of a huge chunk of the communication endeavour.
3. Throw a lot of extreme situations at students to get them used to reacting to the challenging aspects of this profession. For example, "your client decided to fire you from a project - how should you respond?" or "it looks like yo will miss an important deadline for your client - how should you approach the client about this?". Have the students discuss as a group best strategies for approaching each extreme situation. The more of these you can cover during a course, the more you will help your students build their "resiliency muscle".
4. Talk about client conflict and ways to mitigate it, manage it and resolve it (if that is possible). This is another example of extreme situation consultants should anticipate in their practices. You may decide to invite another consultant (via skype, say) to talk about a conflict they experienced and the solution they adopted, with the students taking turns to discuss other possible ways of addressing the conflict.
5. Help the students make the connection between communication and decision-making. Why is communication with clients important? Because we want to enable and support them in making good evidence-based decisions. Ask the students to step into the clients' shoes by presenting them with two scenarios for the same problem where they would have access to poor or good evidence for making a decision. Discuss the dangers of making decisions based on poor evidence and in particular the liability aspect of poor decision-making to all parties involved.
There is so much more that could be done but the above gives a reasonable starting point. Personally, I believe in learning by doing, so I would suggest embedding the video watching into more structured exercises similar to the ones I suggested above.
Best wishes,
Isabella
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Isabella Ghement
Ghement Statistical Consulting Company Ltd.
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2015 18:01
From: Marlene Egger
Subject: Videos on Statistical Consulting?
Good tip--but here's what I found---is there more specifically to help student statistical consultants learn consulting/communication skills?
Lynsey at Select Statistics on being a statistical consultant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw-xc8PTOqs
Mark Cary 2003-A customer-Oriented Approach to Statistical Consulting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hkjDm0E-lE
Prof Arnold Barnett: 40 years of Stat Consulting at Sloan
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ku95LXLln4
Statistical Consulting by Sun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPdelvd5Dvk
Example Consulting Case Interview (NO BLOOP SOUNDS), James Piechota
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41YIG6hDwPY
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Marlene Egger
Professor
University of Utah, DFPM
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2015 17:02
From: Mark Lamias
Subject: Videos on Statistical Consulting?
Those "timeless" Janice Derr videos crack me up these days.
A simple search on youtube for "Statistical Consultant" brings up a number of potentially useful videos for the practicing statistical consultant and some perspectives on the industry from other consultants.
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Mark Lamias
Statistical Consultant & Survey Methodolgist
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Original Message:
Sent: 06-10-2015 16:05
From: Marlene Egger
Subject: Videos on Statistical Consulting?
This message has been cross posted to the following eGroups: Teaching Statistics in Health Sciences Section and Statistical Consulting Section .
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I finally have acquired another copy of Janice Derr's 2000 book, 'Statistical Consulting: a Guide to Effective Communication', complete with videos that amazingly still run on the current version of Quicktime, after having my original copy nabbed by a student. I am continuously amazed that this book went out of print.
What video resources are now available for students learning to be statistical consultants?
best regards,
Marlene Egger
Professor
University of Utah, DFPM
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