Analytical Skills make you competent, but language skills make you succeed

Craig Rude, Chief Data Officer, ALSOWISE^®, writes:

It’s a workplace truism that the person who announces success is often accepted as the prime mover of an initiative. And so, during my thirty-plus year career, my managers often received credit for my work because they were the ones presenting the key findings to the heads of various businesses. Their presentation skills and dexterity with wordplay was never in doubt, even though they were not always equipped to answer the more difficult questions.

This taught me a valuable lesson. As a manager of data scientists, I realized that I had two primary goals.  The first was to make sure my unit provided sound actionable analysis of various business opportunities.  But this was not enough. The second, and, arguably, more important  responsibility, was to ensure that the individuals on my team were both recognised and rewarded for their talents.

Easier said than done!

As I started to manage a larger and more diverse workforce, it became apparent that many of my staff were much more comfortable with computers and data than they were with presentations and business discussions.  This was an issue: while the former skill made my team members valuable to me, the lack of the latter made them invisible and inconsequential to the rest of the organisation.

This was especially true for two of my staff.

The first employee was an exceptional, self-taught, SAS programmer who only had a high school education and was uncomfortable in business discussions because she did not always understand the jargon used by others.  The first time I informed her that she was going to present her analysis, she panicked.  After assuring her that we would do several walk-throughs beforehand and that I would be in the meeting with her, she reluctantly agreed.  Suffice it to say that after several successful meetings she became recognized as a subject matter expert and began to attend group discussions independently.

As a result of her ever-growing confidence while communicating with people, her pay and responsibilities grew fivefold in a decade.

The second employee was a non-native English speaker.  While her analytical skills were excellent, she found it extremely difficult to express her thoughts in English.  During one of her performance reviews, I informed her that it was her lack of confidence in the English language that was preventing her from being promoted.  At one particular annual review, she told me she was aware of her difficulty and was content with seeing out her career at the current level. I was not. I had met her ten-year-old daughter and knew that, unlike her mother, she was fluent in English.  I also knew that at home they spoke to each other only in their native tongue.  After careful consideration I approached her with the suggestion to communicate with her daughter in English for at least one hour every day.  Six months later I was reassigned to another group, unsure if this recommendation had been at all efficacious.

About a year later, however, she called to inform me that she had been promoted and was grateful for the encouragement to hone her language skills.

Experiences such as these constantly remind me that while success often depends on knowledge, skill and delivery, it is always recognised by the confidence and clarity with which we are able to communicate with others.