- 35 minutes ago
Soft skills can make or break your success as a data professional, and this free course breaks down the communication habits, problem solving mindset, and workplace habits that technical training often skips. Drawing from real career experience, it covers communication, collaboration, time management, and how to present data clearly to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
You’ll hear practical advice on eye contact, body language, tone of voice, active listening, writing clear emails, and organizing action items so your message is understood the first time. The course also explains how to approach complex problems with an analytical mindset, define the issue before diving into the data, and avoid common mistakes that happen when you rush straight into analysis. It’s especially useful for data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and anyone preparing for interviews or real-world client work.
Created for viewers searching for soft skills for data professionals, data analyst communication skills, business communication, problem solving in data jobs, and how to communicate results to non-technical stakeholders. It also fits search intent for workplace communication training, professional email writing, analytical mindset, and career development for data analysts.
If you’re looking for a soft skills course for data analysts, communication tips for data professionals, or a practical guide to presenting insights, writing better emails, and improving collaboration at work, this video delivers a clear, career-focused overview. It’s a strong resource for interview prep, onboarding, and day-to-day success in analytics and other data roles.
You’ll hear practical advice on eye contact, body language, tone of voice, active listening, writing clear emails, and organizing action items so your message is understood the first time. The course also explains how to approach complex problems with an analytical mindset, define the issue before diving into the data, and avoid common mistakes that happen when you rush straight into analysis. It’s especially useful for data analysts, data scientists, data engineers, and anyone preparing for interviews or real-world client work.
Created for viewers searching for soft skills for data professionals, data analyst communication skills, business communication, problem solving in data jobs, and how to communicate results to non-technical stakeholders. It also fits search intent for workplace communication training, professional email writing, analytical mindset, and career development for data analysts.
If you’re looking for a soft skills course for data analysts, communication tips for data professionals, or a practical guide to presenting insights, writing better emails, and improving collaboration at work, this video delivers a clear, career-focused overview. It’s a strong resource for interview prep, onboarding, and day-to-day success in analytics and other data roles.
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00:00What's going on, everybody?
00:00:01Welcome back to another video.
00:00:02Today, I am releasing my full Soft Skills
00:00:04for Data Professionals course that's on Analyst Builder
00:00:06and putting it on YouTube for free.
00:00:09In most courses on my YouTube channel
00:00:10as well as on Analyst Builder and on other platforms,
00:00:13it's mostly technical skills.
00:00:14You're gonna learn SQL and Excel and Python
00:00:16and a bunch of other things,
00:00:17but soft skills are a huge piece
00:00:20of how to actually get your job done as a data professional.
00:00:23Right here, we have the course
00:00:24and you can see we have four different modules,
00:00:26one on communication, one on problem solving,
00:00:28one on collaboration and one on time management.
00:00:31And so this is all of the lessons
00:00:33that you're gonna go through.
00:00:35They don't just focus on only those topics,
00:00:38those are just the module headers.
00:00:39I cover a lot of other topics if you look through here.
00:00:41There are other things that are not just,
00:00:43for example, time management.
00:00:45When I was first starting out as a data analyst,
00:00:46I would say I didn't have the best soft skills in the world.
00:00:50I'm very much an introvert.
00:00:51This is an area that I struggled with personally,
00:00:53but throughout the years, I've gotten a lot better at it
00:00:55and so I talk very specifically
00:00:57about how I kind of overcame some of those things
00:01:00and how you can as well.
00:01:01If you struggle with things like effects of communication,
00:01:04that was not one that I was initially very good at.
00:01:07If you like this course
00:01:08and you wanna check out any of my other courses,
00:01:10I will leave a link down in the description.
00:01:12I cover so many different topics on Analyst Builder.
00:01:15And of course, we have our coding section
00:01:17on Analyst Builder as well,
00:01:19where you can actually go in and you can select questions
00:01:21and you can actually write out your code
00:01:23in kind of whatever language you want,
00:01:26whether it be Python, SQL, or R,
00:01:28and you can actually practice these things.
00:01:30With that being said,
00:01:30I'm gonna show you the actual trailer for this course.
00:01:32Then we're gonna get into the content of the course
00:01:34and I hope that you really enjoy it.
00:01:36I hope that it is helpful to you.
00:01:40Hello, everybody,
00:01:41and welcome to the Soft Skills for Data Professionals course
00:01:43here on Analyst Builder.
00:01:45Soft skills are arguably just as important as hard skills,
00:01:48but can be a little bit more difficult to measure
00:01:50as well as teach.
00:01:51I have so many stories and examples to share
00:01:54on almost all of these soft skills.
00:01:56So I'll be talking a lot about what I personally experienced
00:01:58throughout my career.
00:01:59And we'll talk a lot about how you can improve your soft skills
00:02:01and what to expect in a real job.
00:02:03This course is very unique
00:02:04and not a lot of platforms actually cover this topic.
00:02:07And so I'm really excited to dive into this with you.
00:02:16Hello, everybody,
00:02:17and welcome to the Soft Skills for Data Professionals course
00:02:19here on Analyst Builder.
00:02:20If you haven't noticed on Analyst Builder,
00:02:22we focus a lot on the hard skills.
00:02:24So Excel, SQL, BI tools, and a lot of other things.
00:02:27These things are absolutely needed in order to land a job
00:02:30as a data analyst.
00:02:31But something that does not get covered a lot
00:02:34on almost any other platform is soft skills.
00:02:37Honestly, soft skills can be just as important as hard skills.
00:02:40The difficult thing is that soft skills aren't as measurable
00:02:43as technical skills.
00:02:44With teaching SQL, I can tell you,
00:02:46you need to know the select, the where, the from.
00:02:48But with soft skills, it's a lot more subjective.
00:02:51So in this course, we're going to dive into soft skills.
00:02:53And I'm going to give you a lot of anecdotes and things
00:02:55that I've encountered throughout my career.
00:02:57And by the end of this course,
00:02:58you should have a much better picture of what soft skills you need
00:03:00and how to improve them.
00:03:02This is a very unique course.
00:03:03I'm super excited to get started on it with you here on Analyst Builder.
00:03:10Hello, everybody.
00:03:11In this module, we're going to be focusing on communication.
00:03:13I think communication is one of the most important soft skills,
00:03:16but I think it's one that people struggle with the most.
00:03:19So in this module, we're going to cover a ton of stuff on communication.
00:03:22In this lesson specifically, we're just going to be focusing on
00:03:25kind of an intro to communication, why it's really important.
00:03:28The first thing to know is that you're going to be communicating with people
00:03:30in a lot of different ways.
00:03:32Unless you're an individual contributor, you're most likely on a team.
00:03:35So you're going to have team meetings, you're going to have stand-ups,
00:03:37and you may be giving presentations in those meetings as well.
00:03:40But of course, you'll also be communicating just in person and via email.
00:03:44So there really are a lot of different forms of communication
00:03:46that you're going to need to kind of get good at in order to really be effective in your job.
00:03:51And this leads into the next point, which is you're going to need to be communicating
00:03:54with a lot of different people in order to get most of your job done.
00:03:57Now, I just threw in there 90%, but sometimes it's 75%.
00:04:02Sometimes it's 60%.
00:04:03Sometimes it's 99%, depending on your role.
00:04:06This is probably the thing that surprised me the most when I first got started as a data analyst.
00:04:10I thought I was going to be really technical, just keep my head down,
00:04:14working on my computer all the time.
00:04:15And I found out very quickly that I am pretty reliant on a lot of different people
00:04:19in order to get the data, in order to collect the data, to understand the data,
00:04:23to know what I'm actually doing with this data.
00:04:25And at every step of that process, I had to communicate with a lot of different people
00:04:29in a lot of different ways.
00:04:31And so although I just wanted to be by myself working and heads down and in the database
00:04:34and getting in with the data, that wasn't the reality of the job.
00:04:38So my expectations pretty quickly changed after about a year or so.
00:04:41And I definitely think that was for the better because pretty early on,
00:04:44I was getting really worn out.
00:04:46I'm more of an introvert myself.
00:04:48And so my expectations were that I wasn't going to be doing a lot of face-to-face interactions.
00:04:51And so since my expectations were so off,
00:04:54I definitely was feeling drained at the end of every single day.
00:04:57The last thing to know is that if you're really bad at communication
00:04:59and you don't work on it and you don't improve at it,
00:05:02that people will dread working with you.
00:05:04And I have had these people who I have worked with in the past where if I knew I was
00:05:08going
00:05:08to have to work with them, I was like, this is not going to be fun.
00:05:11Not because their personality was bad.
00:05:13You know, I worked with a lot of different personalities over the years,
00:05:15but because I knew that if I needed something that they were so bad at communicating,
00:05:19they were so bad at relaying information and getting back to me in a timely manner
00:05:23that it was just not going to be enjoyable to work with them.
00:05:26And you don't want to have that reputation.
00:05:28You don't want to be that person who's not good at communication.
00:05:30And there's a lot of facets to communication and the way that it's presented
00:05:35and the way that you do it.
00:05:36And we're going to cover a lot of those things in the next several lessons.
00:05:42Hello, everybody.
00:05:43In this lesson, we're going to be talking about communicating effectively.
00:05:46Now, these are kind of the fundamental things that I think you need to know
00:05:49and really do well in order to communicate really effectively in almost any situation.
00:05:54Now, I'm just going to tell you right now,
00:05:55I'm going to do some things that might be a little goofy or a little bit silly in this video.
00:05:59And I'm kind of putting myself out there, but I'm doing it for you.
00:06:02I'm doing it for a good reason.
00:06:04Now, some of you out there may be excellent at communicating.
00:06:06You're just naturally a good communicator.
00:06:09I definitely was not.
00:06:10I am very much an introvert.
00:06:12I get very shy.
00:06:13I also get a little bit intimidated sometimes.
00:06:16And I just haven't in the past historically communicated super well.
00:06:20Over the years, though, I have gained a lot of confidence.
00:06:23And I've also learned a lot about just improving communication in general.
00:06:27So I'm going to share a lot of those tips with you.
00:06:29And we're going to get pretty specific into actually how to communicate,
00:06:32how to say things, how to look people in the eye, things like that,
00:06:36that some of you may not need at all.
00:06:38But there are a lot of people who do need that.
00:06:40The first thing I want to touch on is eye contact.
00:06:43Now, eye contact is pretty difficult for a lot of people.
00:06:46Just even if you are good at communicating,
00:06:48it can be difficult to maintain eye contact.
00:06:51But it does really say a lot about how you communicate
00:06:54and how you're going to be as an employee.
00:06:55Now, I've gotten pushback on this over the years.
00:06:58I've shared this on my YouTube channel.
00:06:59I've shared this on LinkedIn.
00:07:00A lot of people will say, well, you know,
00:07:02there are just different types of personalities.
00:07:04I completely agree with you.
00:07:05For some people, it's just more difficult to maintain eye contact.
00:07:09But it is definitely a respect thing.
00:07:11And it is a confidence thing.
00:07:12And so this is something that you can practice.
00:07:14Now, I will tell you, some data roles are going to be presenting information a lot.
00:07:17And in those roles, that is kind of where it is almost required
00:07:21to give some type of eye contact.
00:07:23This is what I used to do.
00:07:25I used to give the presentation.
00:07:26And then I would kind of look down and be like,
00:07:28and so, you know, that's kind of what we thought,
00:07:30you know, are there any questions?
00:07:32And I kind of like glance up a little bit.
00:07:34And I was very shy.
00:07:35I was just inexperienced in giving presentations.
00:07:39But over my career, now this is what I do.
00:07:42I present the information.
00:07:43I look them in the eye, said, and here's what we found.
00:07:46And I kind of glance around the room at other people,
00:07:48and make eye contact with a lot of different people.
00:07:50That shows people that I am engaged with them.
00:07:52I want to make sure they're engaged with me.
00:07:54It is a really important piece.
00:07:55And for some roles, if you're not able to maintain eye contact,
00:07:58if you're not able to show that in a meeting,
00:08:00it really takes away.
00:08:02And honestly, I've seen that in a lot of interviews
00:08:04where people just can't do that.
00:08:06And I'm like, I know the kind of role that we're hiring for.
00:08:08And this is not a person that would do really well in this role.
00:08:11So that is why eye contact is really important.
00:08:13I myself have had to work on this.
00:08:15I am not naturally kind of an eye contact person.
00:08:18My wife has called me out on this many times,
00:08:20but this is something that you can improve on over time.
00:08:23This next point is going to cover a lot of different things.
00:08:25And I'm going to read it really quickly.
00:08:27It's going to say nonverbals, body language, and tone to reinforce or weaken your message.
00:08:32Now, this is super important.
00:08:33I used to be a person where I didn't use my hands.
00:08:37And I'm looking at myself in the camera.
00:08:38I didn't use my hands when I talked.
00:08:40I wasn't very animated.
00:08:41And I was just kind of, you know, this is the information.
00:08:44And this is, you know, this is it.
00:08:46And I will tell you, I was not as good at communicating information that I am right now.
00:08:51It's taken a lot of practice.
00:08:52It's taken a lot of work.
00:08:54But it's made me a lot better at communicating what I'm trying to get across.
00:08:58So let's look at the first ones, nonverbals and body language.
00:09:00So when I'm communicating with someone or they're communicating with me, I am looking
00:09:04at their body language.
00:09:05I'm also making sure I have proper body language as well.
00:09:08If I sit back and I cross my arms and I'm like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, okay, okay.
00:09:18That's a little bit silly, but I have talked to so many people like that.
00:09:21It's very closed off.
00:09:22It's very standoffish.
00:09:24You're not really engaging in the conversation.
00:09:26Yes, they're listening to you.
00:09:28But the person who's, you know, acting like this and just sitting back is usually not
00:09:33as engaged as someone who's kind of leaning forward.
00:09:35I kind of sometimes will, you know, you can't see it right now, but I'm just putting my hands
00:09:39on my desk, just putting my hands on my desk.
00:09:41I'm listening.
00:09:42My body language is showing that I'm engaged in this conversation.
00:09:45Body language can also be just as simple as looking at your phone, right?
00:09:49If you're disengaged and you're looking at it and you're not paying attention, that is
00:09:53body language.
00:09:54That is you actively showing them that you're not listening, that you're not focused.
00:09:57So everything you're doing does communicate something.
00:10:00Now, when you're on a video call like Zoom or Teams or something like that, it's usually
00:10:04not as important.
00:10:06They can't really see exactly where you're looking, but body language just in general,
00:10:10just making sure you're sitting up, making sure you're looking.
00:10:13You're not like laying down or arms crossed or looking elsewhere, looking at another screen.
00:10:17You're actually paying attention to the conversation.
00:10:19We also have the tone of your voice.
00:10:21Now, I myself am kind of a sarcastic person.
00:10:25I've had to work on that a lot over the years because a lot of times my tone and my
00:10:30sarcasm
00:10:31gets me in trouble, and that has happened in the workplace, and I've had to kind of stop
00:10:35doing that because some people don't pick up on those things.
00:10:38They don't pick up on your tonality or the pitch of your voice or the way in which you say
00:10:43it,
00:10:43and I kind of have dry humor.
00:10:45And so I have to kind of read people.
00:10:47I have to say, okay, is this someone who will understand what I'm trying to say here,
00:10:51or is this someone who, you know, they don't typically understand the tone or the sarcasm
00:10:56in which I am saying.
00:10:57So this one is super important, and I'll give you an example.
00:11:00Let's say we're in a meeting, you're giving a presentation,
00:11:02and at the very end, you're about to give your final recommendation.
00:11:05You can say it in one of two ways.
00:11:07The first one is going to sound like this,
00:11:09and that's why I believe we should decrease quarter force spending for marketing.
00:11:13Are there any questions?
00:11:15Now, that didn't sound very good because it was very high pitched.
00:11:18It was also not very confident.
00:11:20And your tone is really weakening the message in that example.
00:11:24So now I'm going to do a better example of what I think sounds a lot better.
00:11:28And that's why I believe that we should be decreasing our marketing spend in quarter four.
00:11:32Are there any questions?
00:11:33That was a lot more confident.
00:11:34My tone was much more even keel and a little bit deeper even.
00:11:37And so even though the two messages were the exact same thing,
00:11:40the tone changed it completely.
00:11:41The first one was quite weakening to my message.
00:11:44I really wasn't confident and I wasn't sure if that was even the right recommendation.
00:11:48At least that's what I was presenting.
00:11:50The second one sounded a lot more confident.
00:11:53And so the tone does matter.
00:11:55The pitch of your voice, the way in which you say it, the inflection of your voice,
00:11:58all of these things do matter and they come with practice.
00:12:01I promise you, I was really bad at presenting information and communicating way back when.
00:12:07The Alex from eight or nine years ago is completely different than the Alex now.
00:12:11I've had a lot of opportunities to work on these things in the workplace.
00:12:14So just believe me when I say it comes with time, but you do have to identify,
00:12:17say, this is an area where I'm weak.
00:12:19I need to improve in this area.
00:12:21The last thing I want to talk about is active listening.
00:12:23And this does touch on body language and non-verbals quite a bit,
00:12:26but there are some other pieces to this as well.
00:12:28Something that is quite frustrating is when you're talking to someone
00:12:31and like we were looking at before, they're on their phone.
00:12:34Or they're not just on their phone, they're not looking at you in any way.
00:12:37Or they're sitting there, but they're kind of like,
00:12:41but it doesn't seem like they're actually listening to you.
00:12:43I don't know about you, but that frustrates me.
00:12:46I want someone, if I'm telling them something,
00:12:47especially in kind of the professional business world,
00:12:51if you're talking about something,
00:12:52it's probably important and they should be listening.
00:12:54And so if they are not actively listening to you,
00:12:56that can be frustrating.
00:12:57So you don't want to be that person.
00:12:59You want to be someone that shows that they are actively listening.
00:13:02Now, here's what this kind of looks like.
00:13:03Now, let's say you're talking to me right now.
00:13:05Go ahead and ask me a question.
00:13:06I know this sounds silly, but go ahead and ask me a question.
00:13:12Oh, no, I absolutely agree with that.
00:13:16Why do you think that was?
00:13:21Now, all right, that was super silly, maybe even a little awkward,
00:13:25but I was doing it to show you that even though we're not having a real conversation,
00:13:29I can kind of seem like I'm having a conversation with you because of my nonverbals,
00:13:34the things that I'm saying, my follow-up questions.
00:13:36These are things that show I am actively listening to you.
00:13:39You don't have to go overboard with it.
00:13:41You're just trying to show that you are actively listening to that person,
00:13:44asking follow-up questions and saying, I agree with that.
00:13:47Or maybe you have some type of comment on what they're saying.
00:13:50These are things that show that you're interested in the conversation
00:13:52and that you are actively listening.
00:13:54Now, for you, that may have all seemed really silly and kind of obvious,
00:13:57but for a lot of other people, it's not so obvious.
00:14:00And it is things that they need to improve on and they need to work on.
00:14:03So I really hope that that was helpful to you
00:14:05because I know that this is not something that everybody excels in.
00:14:08And I promise you, it's something that you can work out.
00:14:14Hello, everybody.
00:14:15In this lesson, we're going to be talking about communicating results
00:14:17to non-technical stakeholders.
00:14:19Non-technical just means that they are not someone like a data analyst
00:14:22or a data scientist or a data engineer,
00:14:24a data professional that's really going to understand
00:14:27how the data is stored, where the data is coming from,
00:14:29how the cleaning process works, how the data is sitting in the database.
00:14:33Most of the time, they're not going to understand that stuff at all.
00:14:36They do oftentimes understand the data in general.
00:14:38They know that that is data that they may be collecting.
00:14:40They just don't understand the full process
00:14:43or the technical details of everything that you've done in this project.
00:14:46This is something I would say I've really excelled at over the years
00:14:49because I myself came from a non-technical background.
00:14:52I didn't know anything technical at all.
00:14:53And so I really understand the mindset of just not getting it, right?
00:14:58Just not understanding it.
00:14:59And so I feel like over the years, that's kind of been my sweet spot
00:15:02of kind of explaining things to people who just don't get it
00:15:05or don't come from this background.
00:15:06So I'm going to give you some tips that I've learned over the years
00:15:08on how to actually do this really well.
00:15:10The first thing is to present your information in a really simple way.
00:15:14Now, look at these two images on the left-hand side.
00:15:16On this top one, this is a great way to visualize data.
00:15:20I actually kind of really like how this is presented, but I'm a technical person.
00:15:25I understand this.
00:15:26And if you've taken any of my data visualization courses or lessons,
00:15:29this should make a little bit of sense, even not 100% knowing the data.
00:15:33You can look at this and see, oh, I see some trends or patterns,
00:15:35or, you know, I can kind of understand what this means.
00:15:38To someone who doesn't, to someone who's never done this before,
00:15:41who's non-technical, this is an absolute nightmare.
00:15:44You would have to explain super in-depth how this works, what the colors mean,
00:15:48what the X and the Y axis are, everything, so that they would understand this.
00:15:52But let's take a look at the one below it.
00:15:55This one is super simple.
00:15:57Almost anybody who's looked at any basic chart or graph is going to understand this.
00:16:02And so when you are presenting to non-technical people,
00:16:04or you're building a dashboard or insights or a report for non-technical people,
00:16:09the simpler you can make it, the better.
00:16:10The next thing to do is to really adjust how you're explaining things
00:16:14based off of who you're presenting to.
00:16:16I'll present information very differently to a non-technical group of people than I would
00:16:20a technical group of people.
00:16:22For my technical group, I might go a little bit more in depth.
00:16:25They're going to understand the nuances and kind of the data cleaning process,
00:16:28or maybe how we're storing the data.
00:16:29These things might be relevant in the conversation, or we may even talk about how we're extracting
00:16:34the data because they might understand and say, well, have you thought about this?
00:16:37Have you thought about doing this?
00:16:39But with a non-technical group of people, all that jargon, all those buzzwords and keywords
00:16:43that technical people are going to understand, they're going to get completely lost and overwhelmed.
00:16:48So the explanation should be a little bit more simple.
00:16:50Now don't patronize them, right?
00:16:52They're not dumb.
00:16:53They just think differently.
00:16:54Oftentimes I might use some type of analogy or something like that if I think it's appropriate,
00:16:58but understand that they're not stupid.
00:17:01They just think about things in a different way.
00:17:03They're non-technical, but they are probably quite intelligent.
00:17:05Something I'll do when I'm presenting information or when I'm doing visualizations is sometimes
00:17:09I'll show the underlying data, right?
00:17:11Here's the data.
00:17:12Here's where it came from.
00:17:13Here's how we got it.
00:17:14Maybe I'll drill down into a visualization to show some of this underlying data.
00:17:17And non-technical people most of the time aren't really going to understand this,
00:17:22or they're going to have so many questions because since they don't understand,
00:17:26they're going to ask all these different questions that have no relevance to the
00:17:29information that you're presenting.
00:17:31They're going to raise their hands.
00:17:32They're going to say, why is the data look like that?
00:17:34And you're going to say, okay, well, here's what I did.
00:17:36I took the raw data, I aggregated the data, and then we did this to it.
00:17:39And they're going to say, well, why did you do that?
00:17:41Why did you need to take that out?
00:17:42And then you have to explain your whole thought process.
00:17:45Sometimes in a presentation that might have a place,
00:17:48but more often than not for non-technical people, you're going to confuse them.
00:17:52And so adding underlying data can be really powerful depending on what you're presenting.
00:17:56Most of the time though, especially for non-technical people, I do not include it.
00:18:00I keep the visualizations pretty simple.
00:18:02I keep my explanations fairly simple as well.
00:18:05In the end, the recommendations may be the same to both groups,
00:18:08but I'm just presenting in a different way.
00:18:11As the great Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute said, KISS, keep it simple, stupid.
00:18:15This is something that everyone should live by just in general,
00:18:18as it comes to communication and presenting information.
00:18:21But it really is true.
00:18:23The simpler you make it, oftentimes the better it is.
00:18:25These are a lot of the things that are going to help you present
00:18:27to non-technical people a lot better.
00:18:30So I hope that was really helpful.
00:18:31If you're already in a data job, right?
00:18:34You're already a data professional in some way.
00:18:36Then try these things out.
00:18:38The more experience you have doing this, the better you're going to get.
00:18:43Hello, everybody.
00:18:44In this lesson, we're going to be taking a look at writing clear emails and reports.
00:18:48Now, this is something that every single data professional in some way is going to have to do.
00:18:54I'm also going to toss in here a little bit about just messaging people on things like Slack
00:18:59or Discord, because you do communicate quite a bit through those channels as well.
00:19:04But oftentimes, especially for more professional correspondence, when you're messaging clients,
00:19:09when you're messaging managers, oftentimes that is done through emails,
00:19:12which is why the primary focus is going to be on emails in this lesson.
00:19:16The first thing I want to say is how you write does have a reflection on who you are
00:19:20and how you communicate.
00:19:21These things are really important.
00:19:23I have worked with people in the past do like that shorthand, instead of writing A-R-E for R,
00:19:28they write R. So they'll say R and then the letter U.
00:19:31And it's like shorthand text message, but they do that in emails.
00:19:34They do it in everything.
00:19:35I myself, as well as I know others do, really frown upon that and kind of look down on it
00:19:40a little bit.
00:19:40It's like, come on, it's not that much more difficult to write it out properly.
00:19:44But that is something that some people do.
00:19:46And I highly recommend you do not do that.
00:19:48I am of the mind that 99.9% of communication, any type of writing needs to be done really
00:19:54professionally.
00:19:54So whether that's email or messages on Slack or Discord, these need to be professional.
00:19:59But you know, there are going to be times where you get really close with one of the data engineers
00:20:03or something, and you just shoot them a quick message and you say,
00:20:06LOL, and then you go on your way.
00:20:07And that's totally fine because you guys are buddies.
00:20:09That's a totally fine thing to do.
00:20:11But anytime you're interacting with any type of client or stakeholder or manager or CFO or anything,
00:20:16you definitely want to write really well.
00:20:19Oftentimes in writing emails to clients, things get lost in the details.
00:20:23They said something offhandedly in one part of the message, but it wasn't really communicated that
00:20:27that was something that you actually need a deliverable for.
00:20:30Something that I have gotten in the habit of doing, and I do this in almost all my meetings,
00:20:33especially when I'm talking with clients or consulting people that I'm working with now,
00:20:37is I will write out my full email and at the bottom, I'll say action items for me.
00:20:41And then I'll say, is there anything that you need to add to this list?
00:20:44And that action item for me is going to be things that I know that I'm going to be doing,
00:20:48and then they have the expectation that that is on my plate and is something that
00:20:51I will get back to them with.
00:20:52It has worked remarkably well for me.
00:20:54And I've been doing that for maybe the past three or four years.
00:20:58I didn't do it for a long time, but I found that when I start making action items,
00:21:03when I start listing these things out, it is very clear and is very easily understood
00:21:07what I'm supposed to be doing.
00:21:08And sometimes I'll even write action items for other people as well.
00:21:11But most of the time it's for me, right?
00:21:13As the consultant, as a data professional, oftentimes I'm the one doing a lot of the work.
00:21:17So that's typically what I'm putting at the bottom.
00:21:19If you look at this example on the right-hand side, there are two separate emails here.
00:21:23And I think this is a pretty good example of what I'm talking about.
00:21:26The first one says, Hey, I wanted to let you know about the meeting and the project report.
00:21:30It should be submitted soon.
00:21:31I think it's an exaggerated way of saying there isn't anything concrete or clear in this message.
00:21:36I think you need to get that report to me soon.
00:21:38We have a meeting.
00:21:39I don't know what time it is, but then look on the right-hand side.
00:21:42It says, Hi, Jordan.
00:21:42Here's a quick update meeting on Thursday at 2 PM.
00:21:45Submit the project report by Friday.
00:21:46Please review the draft.
00:21:48Best regards.
00:21:49Very professional, very specific, and very clear.
00:21:52There's no misunderstanding with these bullet points.
00:21:55And that's what I personally do.
00:21:56And I really appreciate when other people do this as well.
00:21:59Now, this just may be my personal preference,
00:22:01although I have worked with a lot of other people who have done the same thing,
00:22:04but I highly suggest that you do it because you want to be communicating effectively.
00:22:08And if you start doing this, you start implementing this in your emails,
00:22:11people are going to be like, okay, this person's on top of it.
00:22:14This person knows what they're doing.
00:22:15This person has clearly communicated to me.
00:22:17I appreciate that.
00:22:18And so if you aren't doing it, I think you should do it.
00:22:21Again, that's just my recommendation.
00:22:22If you have a better way of doing it or something that's really worked for you,
00:22:25continue doing that.
00:22:27But if you're like on the left-hand side and you're not doing super well,
00:22:30definitely try out communicating and writing emails like this.
00:22:33The next thing is to avoid writing things that could be perceived incorrectly in emails.
00:22:39As we all know, we've sent a text message or we've sent a message to someone
00:22:43that in our heads had a specific tone, right?
00:22:46You were trying to say it in a really positive way.
00:22:48Then the other person, they took it in the totally wrong way.
00:22:51There's this really funny key and peel sketch.
00:22:53And if you don't know them, they are comedians,
00:22:54but they are messaging each other and they're text messaging.
00:22:57And both their tones are completely different.
00:23:00He's like, yeah, buddy, let's go.
00:23:01And the other guy is taking it as like, yeah, buddy, let's go.
00:23:04Like, I hate this guy.
00:23:05And that happens over email as well.
00:23:08That just miscommunication happens all the time.
00:23:11And so anything that could be perceived in a really negative way,
00:23:14I'd recommend rereading your email and trying to write it in a different way.
00:23:18I definitely do not recommend writing anything sarcastic in emails.
00:23:22I am a sarcastic person.
00:23:23That has gotten me into trouble a few times in the past, if I'm being completely honest.
00:23:26And so I don't recommend doing that because again, the tone in emails is completely different
00:23:32than the tone when you're talking.
00:23:33They can interpret things and read things very differently than how you are actually writing it.
00:23:37And if you're trying to add a lot of tonality into an email,
00:23:41that can be changed depending on the reader.
00:23:42The last thing is highlighting important information.
00:23:45Now, oftentimes emails that I would get are like super, super long.
00:23:48I mean, they just keep going.
00:23:49And sometimes I don't always read it, right?
00:23:53There's a lot to it. Maybe it's just seems like skippable and I can just skip down and
00:23:57I can just keep going, but people are going to do that in emails.
00:24:00And so I will highlight or I'll just, you know, bold it where I'll make it darker than all the
00:24:04other texts to where it draws the attention of someone who is reading it.
00:24:08This is a super simple trick that I think is really important.
00:24:11I also sometimes will highlight or bold in the action items at the bottom,
00:24:15just to make sure that everybody sees them and we're all on the same page.
00:24:17In general, when communicating through email or messages,
00:24:20keep it pretty professional, be very specific, don't use a lot of technical jargon,
00:24:25don't get too sarcastic or use too much tonality in your email,
00:24:28and provide action items and bullet items.
00:24:31I know that you may not like that, but a lot of people do.
00:24:34And so I highly recommend at least trying it out to see what people think.
00:24:38If you get good feedback, then keep doing it.
00:24:43Hello, everybody.
00:24:44In this module, we're going to be focusing on problem solving.
00:24:47By definition, that just means solving problems that are complex.
00:24:50And some people are naturally gifted at this, and some people need to learn this.
00:24:54And this is a skill that can be learned.
00:24:56Before I became a data analyst, I don't think I had the best problem solving skills.
00:24:59But now that I've been doing this for many years,
00:25:02I look at a lot of situations completely differently.
00:25:05In this module and in this lesson, we're going to talk about how we can get better at problem solving.
00:25:09Now, in this lesson specifically, we're going to be talking about how you can get an analytical mindset.
00:25:13Now, when I say analytical, I don't mean you're thinking like a data analyst,
00:25:16because even though I am from a data analyst background,
00:25:19I know a lot of other people who have really benefited from this analytical mindset,
00:25:23people who are data engineers or software engineers,
00:25:26just data professionals in general can really benefit from this.
00:25:29Probably one of the biggest things that you can do is you can change your mindset from
00:25:32this is a task that needs to be completed.
00:25:34This is just something I have to do into this is like a puzzle.
00:25:38This is a mystery that needs to be solved.
00:25:39This turns you more into a detective trying to figure out the solution,
00:25:43rather than just an employee who just needs to get it done.
00:25:46I used to work at a healthcare analytics company.
00:25:48It was one of my first jobs as a data analyst.
00:25:51And one of the mistakes that I just immediately started making was saying yes to things, right?
00:25:56I didn't ask any questions.
00:25:57And so someone on my team would come to me and say,
00:25:58Hey, Alex, can you go and look this up in the database?
00:26:01And I would say, sure, why not?
00:26:02And then I would look it up and I'd send it to them.
00:26:04I wouldn't think twice about it.
00:26:05And oftentimes when I actually sent it over to them, they were like,
00:26:09no, that's, that's not what I meant.
00:26:10I actually kind of wanted this, or that's not really what I was looking for.
00:26:13I don't really know exactly what I'm looking for.
00:26:16And part of my role as a data analyst was not just to do what everyone says.
00:26:20They're not just giving me tasks to do.
00:26:22They may come to me with information, but something that I need to consider,
00:26:25something that I really need to think about is I need to think about what is the business
00:26:29impact of what we're actually trying to do.
00:26:32And so as I got into the role more, as I started getting a little bit more confident in my
00:26:35abilities,
00:26:35I started asking questions.
00:26:37I was like, why do we actually need that?
00:26:39What are you going to be using that for?
00:26:40What does this connect to?
00:26:41Are you getting this for a specific client?
00:26:43What do you need?
00:26:44As I started asking these questions, the picture of what they actually wanted became a lot more
00:26:48clear and what they were asking for wasn't actually what they needed.
00:26:51That's just what they thought they needed because they didn't know the data as well as I did.
00:26:55Now that is a big part of having this analytical mindset.
00:26:58It's just digging in, trying to figure things out, trying to piece all of this information together.
00:27:03But once you actually start getting into it, you may encounter some issues.
00:27:06You may start trying to put all these pieces together and find out that you just don't have
00:27:09the data available or that you can't answer that question in some way.
00:27:14What you need to do is you need to take a step back.
00:27:16Can you look at this from a different perspective?
00:27:18If not, maybe you need to go to them.
00:27:19You need to communicate, hey, here's what I've done.
00:27:21But because of the data or what they're trying to solve, you can't do it with what you have.
00:27:25And so you need to come up with other solutions.
00:27:27As I got more experience, this became even more important, especially as I got to larger companies,
00:27:31when I had to really dig in, there were so many different layers and levels and people to talk to.
00:27:36I really felt like I was solving these complex issues.
00:27:39If you're looking at these things as just a task to do, you're going to hit a roadblock
00:27:43and you're just going to give up on it.
00:27:44Or you're going to say, nope, that task can't be completed.
00:27:47But when you're thinking about it in this mindset, you're going to find ways.
00:27:50You're going to put pieces together and you're going to figure out a way to solve it.
00:27:53In the next lesson, we're going to dive into the problem solving cycle
00:27:55and how you can improve on this skill.
00:28:00Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be taking a look at the problem solving
00:28:03life cycle. Now, all this is, is a way to visualize solving a problem.
00:28:07What I used to do when I first became a data analyst is I would just jump into the data.
00:28:12I wasn't really thinking long term or that far ahead or really solving a specific problem.
00:28:18I was just like, all right, let's jump into the data and see what I can find.
00:28:21Looking back, that wasn't the smartest thing to do.
00:28:23And in fact, I can remember specific instances where someone would send me something
00:28:26in an Excel file. I would do all this work and do all these different things to it.
00:28:30And then I would hand it back to them. They were like, this isn't what we wanted.
00:28:33This actually isn't the right thing at all. And my heart just sank. I was like, oh geez,
00:28:38I absolutely messed up because I didn't actually know what I was doing.
00:28:42This problem solving life cycle will help you identify what you need to do before you go
00:28:46and make mistakes like I did. So let's take a look at this life cycle.
00:28:49We have number one, define the problem. Number two, structure the problem.
00:28:53Prioritize the issues, develop issue analysis, conduct analysis, synthesize your findings,
00:28:59and develop recommendations. Now this may sound complicated, but it's actually quite simple.
00:29:04Really what you're doing is, is you're starting by figuring out what you're actually going to be
00:29:08solving. If you know what you're solving before you dive into the data, you are 10 steps ahead of
00:29:12most people because you already know what you're looking for and what you're actually trying to
00:29:16accomplish. The next several steps are really just about making sure you're going to be doing things in
00:29:20the right way. Oftentimes requests aren't just one request. It's one, two, three, four, five different
00:29:24requests kind of bundled into one question or one thing. And what you need to do is you need to
00:29:29sit
00:29:29down and say, okay, if I was only able to solve one of these things, what would I be wanting
00:29:34to solve?
00:29:34And then you prioritize and you focus on that thing. Of course you want to solve everything,
00:29:38but you're at least getting the main chunk of it, the big ticket item out of the way first. Next,
00:29:43you're going to actually dive into the data and try to figure out what you were trying to solve.
00:29:47Notice that this is number five. You have four different steps ahead of you where you're
00:29:51actually getting things ready and identifying what you're supposed to be doing before you actually
00:29:55dive into the data. After that, you're going to dig in and you're going to find your insights and
00:29:59develop your recommendations. It may not always be a recommendation. Sometimes it is a report.
00:30:03Sometimes it's data cleaning. It doesn't matter exactly what it is, but in the end, you're going to
00:30:07produce something. Those first four steps before you actually dive into the data is really important.
00:30:12It helps you break this larger task into smaller chunks that are a lot more manageable. I myself
00:30:18get overwhelmed somewhat easily, and that's just a personal trait of mine. If I get these huge tasks,
00:30:23I'm like, this sounds and looks impossible. How am I ever going to solve this? But I found that
00:30:27breaking it up makes it a lot easier. The last thing to note is that this is a cycle. It
00:30:31just keeps
00:30:32going. So even though you go from one all the way over to seven doesn't mean you're completely done
00:30:37with everything. Oftentimes they're going to come back with feedback and you have to take that feedback and you
00:30:41have to define a new problem. You have to kind of shift what you're actually looking for and how
00:30:44you break things up. And this is something that is going to happen. You're not just going to do it
00:30:48one time. You're often going to go through this process one, two, or three times for certain larger
00:30:53tasks until you actually get what you're trying to solve. Steps five through seven are usually the
00:30:57technical pieces, right? You're getting into Excel, SQL, visualization, and all these different things.
00:31:02But steps one through four, those are the soft skills. Those are where you're organizing everything and
00:31:06actually getting to that creative problem solving space. Hello, everybody. In this lesson,
00:31:15we're going to be talking about how you can ask the right business questions. This is something that
00:31:19is unique to every single company, every industry, every department, every team. But asking questions
00:31:24is an essential part of solving these complex problems. I'll give you an embarrassing story of
00:31:29something that happened to me many years ago, and I just wasn't asking the right questions. I was,
00:31:33I was very embarrassed. I'm just going to be honest. But it was early on in my career as a
00:31:38data analyst
00:31:38and my manager was, you know, seeing some potential in me. And he's like, hey, I want you to take
00:31:42something
00:31:43over. It's this Excel report that we submit to our biggest client every single month. And I want you to
00:31:48take it over. And I was like, awesome. I wanted more responsibility. I wanted to show that, you know, I
00:31:52knew
00:31:52what I was doing. So I took it and I was like, all right, I will do this. So all
00:31:57he did was, is he showed me
00:31:58one time how he got the data, what he did and how he did it. And that's it. I never
00:32:04asked any questions.
00:32:05He just showed me what he did. He showed me the process. So the end of the next month rolls
00:32:09around
00:32:09and I need to create this report. So I do what I think is exactly what I was supposed to
00:32:14do. I just
00:32:15kind of followed his steps and I got it and I sent it out. One thing I should have done
00:32:21first is I
00:32:21should have had my manager review it to make sure I didn't miss anything, but he was pretty confident in
00:32:25me. I felt like I had it. So I sent it out. I get an email back maybe the next
00:32:30day. And they're like,
00:32:31Hey, Alex, the numbers are totally off on this. This number's wrong. This number's wrong. This
00:32:36number's wrong. This number's wrong. They're like, what's going on? My boss immediately comes over
00:32:40and he's like, Hey, he's like, show me what you did. So I start, you know, going through the process.
00:32:44Here's what I did. And he's just like, he's like, Alex, he's like, yes, you did the steps I told
00:32:50you,
00:32:51but there's a few other things. He's like, the reason we do some of these things are
00:32:55for these reasons. And the reason we do some of these are for these reasons. And we actually need
00:32:59to perform this type of calculation in these types of events. I didn't know any of this. I didn't
00:33:04really even know what to ask. And so looking back, I should have done a much better job of asking
00:33:10questions. Where do we get this data? Why are we presenting this information? If something like this
00:33:15were to happen, should I calculate it in a different way? These are things that I should have known.
00:33:19I will also say that because I was so new, I think my manager just being in a managerial position,
00:33:24having done this report a lot of times, should have given me a little bit more info.
00:33:28In the end, there was a lot more business context and things that I should have been aware of that
00:33:32I just wasn't. And I looked really foolish and I felt really stupid. Now in the next one that I
00:33:37sent,
00:33:38right? I redid the whole thing. I checked with my manager. We ran through a bunch of stuff. We
00:33:42checked everything before we sent it out. And that went a lot better. So as an example of when I
00:33:46failed,
00:33:47when I should have been asking a lot of questions, I just didn't even know. I didn't ask any questions.
00:33:51Now I'm going to give you one more example of a time where I should have asked a lot more
00:33:54questions. I was working with this lady and her name was Judy and Judy was great. I've been working
00:33:58with her for a long time, but she comes over to my desk in like a frantic panic. And she's
00:34:03like,
00:34:03Alex, she's like one of our biggest clients, a different client called. They need this and this and
00:34:08this and this and this. And she's like, they need it now. It's like super important for some reporting
00:34:11or some other thing. So I just get to work. I basically asked zero questions. I'm like, oh my gosh,
00:34:16this sounds really important. So I get to work. I am working, working, working. I dropped all my other stuff.
00:34:20I'm working, working, working. I stayed late that day. And then I came in early the next day
00:34:25and I was working, working, working. I got everything together. I brought it over to Judy.
00:34:28Judy, bless her heart, tells me they actually don't need that until next month. And some of the things
00:34:34that they were requesting, they didn't actually need. And so thank you, Alex, for doing that. But we don't
00:34:38really need this anymore. I don't want to tell you how my wife reacted because she was not happy,
00:34:42but I did try to handle it as professionally as possible. It's just like, oh, okay, you know,
00:34:46no problem. I understand. You know, that's great to hear, but I didn't ask any questions.
00:34:52That's kind of on me too. But of course my wife blamed Judy, thank goodness. But I should have
00:34:56been asking a lot more questions, even in this quote unquote emergency, right? Why do they need
00:35:01this? What do they need this for? When is the reporting date? Let's go back to our clients before
00:35:05I do, you know, six, seven, eight, nine hours of work. Let's go back to our clients and make sure
00:35:10that
00:35:10we are all on the same page of what we need and when we need it. I could have saved
00:35:14myself over a day's
00:35:15amount of work if I just asked some follow-up questions. And we probably would have gotten
00:35:19to that conclusion that we just didn't need it right now, or some of those requests weren't
00:35:22actually needed if I had just asked the right questions. Now I have countless other examples
00:35:27of when that's happened, but they may be more embarrassing and I just don't want to share them.
00:35:31But I've done that a lot where I just didn't ask the right questions. Something that's important to know,
00:35:3590% of the time when someone comes to you with a request, it isn't exactly what they're requesting,
00:35:41right? It's going to be slightly different or sometimes very different.
00:35:44This happened a lot when I was a manager of analytics in the IT department. We had all
00:35:48these different teams asking us for all these different visualizations. And sometimes I would
00:35:53go to them and I'd get in these meetings and I'm like, okay, let's ask some questions. And I would
00:35:56ask these kind of more in-depth questions and they would realize, oh, we don't actually need a dashboard
00:36:01for that at all. We don't. We just need this one report being sent to us. That's actually what we
00:36:06care
00:36:06about. But if I didn't ask those questions, my team would have been doing a ton of really
00:36:10unnecessary work. And so the most important thing when you get in there is to start asking questions.
00:36:14Why do you need this? When do you need this? What business problem is this solving? Understand
00:36:19the business needs of what they're actually trying to solve with what they're requesting,
00:36:22because sometimes they're requesting something that will not actually solve their problem at all.
00:36:27It is very common in business culture when someone else is doing the work. For example,
00:36:31my team was the one who's going to build it and do the work. It's very common for people to
00:36:35just
00:36:35request things. Even if they aren't 100% sure if they need it, they'll at least have it. And so
00:36:39it's
00:36:40really important for the people who are receiving the requests to make sure that you are asking
00:36:45questions before and that you understand the business impact of what you're about to build.
00:36:48I promise you this is a very real thing where you'll build 100 dashboards and people only look
00:36:53at one of them. It's because so many dashboards get built for absolutely no reason. They just get
00:36:57requested and somebody builds it, but it doesn't actually solve any issues. It doesn't have the right
00:37:02data. It doesn't have the right filters. It isn't the right report or whatever it is. Doing this right
00:37:06here. Always asking questions, even when you might look a little bit stupid, just to clarify,
00:37:11that is important. Just to clarify, this is what you're requesting. That is still a very important
00:37:16process. Hello, everybody. In this module, we're going to be talking all about collaboration,
00:37:23and that's how you work with other people within your role. In the next several lessons,
00:37:27we'll talk about very specific things, but in this lesson, we're going to talk about just how
00:37:31you collaborate with people in general. Now, there are going to be some unique times where you are the
00:37:35only data person working at your company. They typically call that an individual contributor,
00:37:39but even when you're the individual contributor, the only data person, you're still going to be
00:37:43working with a lot of different people and a lot of different departments or teams.
00:37:47Typically, though, you are going to be on some type of data team, whether it's just with a manager or
00:37:51there's one other analyst or you're working with a data engineer or a data scientist. Typically,
00:37:55you're going to be on a team of about two to seven people. Within that team, there's often a lot
00:37:59of
00:37:59different roles as well as a lot of different types of employees. So sometimes it's full-time,
00:38:03sometimes they're part-time, sometimes they're your manager, sometimes it's contractor, and
00:38:07those roles are going to vary greatly. Some people are going to be data analysts or project managers
00:38:11or business analysts or data engineers or data scientists, and I could go on and on.
00:38:15So the combinations are quite endless. Sometimes you have a lot of contractors on your team.
00:38:19Sometimes you have a lot of full-time employees on your team. Sometimes it's part-time employees.
00:38:23And so the dynamics can change depending on how many or what kind of people you're working with
00:38:27in your team. With all these different roles, there's a lot of collaboration that takes place.
00:38:32Now, one of the things that you're going to have in almost every team is some type of stand-up.
00:38:36I used to do daily stand-ups, but some teams may only have a weekly stand-up or they do
00:38:40it on
00:38:40Monday, or some will have it two times a week, but oftentimes you're going to have some type of
00:38:45stand-up. If you haven't had a data job before, I think this image on the left-hand side is
00:38:49pretty
00:38:49indicative of what a daily stand-up kind of looks like. Everybody gets together either virtually or in
00:38:54person, and you just give updates on what you're currently working on. So you're going to say,
00:38:57here's what I did yesterday. Here's what I accomplished. Here's what I'm working on today.
00:39:00And here are some roadblocks or maybe some things that I'm trying to resolve.
00:39:04Everybody goes around and does this, and you kind of get updates from other people.
00:39:07And sometimes you can ask, hey, John, you know, I'm working on this project. Have you made any
00:39:11progress on that? And they're like, oh, well, I haven't because, you know, this person hasn't
00:39:14emailed me back. That's very common. And so that's the kind of daily stand-up that typically happens
00:39:19at most companies when you're working in a team. It is important to understand everyone's role within
00:39:24your team, because some people are full-time. Some people are contractors. Some people are data engineers,
00:39:29or some people are business analysts. And so the dynamics can be very, very different with every
00:39:33team. When someone is a full-time employee, they are going to act a little bit different than
00:39:36something like a contractor. Contractors don't have to follow all the exact same rules as a full-time
00:39:42employee. Depending on the contract that the contractor signed, they may not get all the days
00:39:46off that you get. They may also have different PTO. They may have different work hours. And so these are
00:39:51things just to take into consideration. So understanding your team is really important. It helps you
00:39:55understand who you're supposed to go to for certain projects and products.
00:40:02Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about working within a cross-functional
00:40:06team. A cross-functional team is actually quite simple. It's just combining your team with another
00:40:11team and having some type of mix in there. This often happens when there are very specific projects
00:40:16where both of your departments are needed or both your teams are needed, but you don't probably need
00:40:20everybody. So you're going to take two people from one team, two people from your team,
00:40:24and all of you guys are going to work together on this project. This can be a very unique experience,
00:40:29both positive and negative. And I've had both in working with these types of projects,
00:40:33but it is a little bit different than working just within your team. Within your team,
00:40:37you're going to know everybody. You're going to have some type of, you know, relationship with them.
00:40:41But when you're working on cross-functional teams, you're going to be working with a totally
00:40:44different personality, a different background from that person's education and work experience.
00:40:49Now within your cross-functional team, you're probably going to set up some type of messaging system.
00:40:53Now, this is true within your internal team as well. That's kind of expected,
00:40:57but you're typically going to set something up just for this new team. So you might set up a
00:41:00new Slack or Discord group just for that group who are working on the project. You may also have a
00:41:05scrum master assigned to this project. Now, I haven't talked about scrum masters before,
00:41:09but I'm just going to briefly mention what they are. A scrum master is kind of like a project manager.
00:41:14If you want to be a scrum master, there actually is some certification that you have to go through
00:41:17in order to be called a scrum master. You could think of them as just somebody who leads a project
00:41:22or kind of organizes for that project. And so when you have your daily stand-ups
00:41:25and you're working within this cross-functional team, you may talk to that scrum master for that
00:41:30project every day or every week, depending on how much time you're putting in into this project.
00:41:36With that, you may also have something like Jira or Confluence, where you are actually tracking all
00:41:40of the work for this project. As much as I really don't like all these project tracking softwares
00:41:45like Jira, because I used that for many years, they are actually helpful. And so when you're
00:41:50working within teams, you typically are going to be doing that. This is a skill that you kind
00:41:55of have to get used to as you do these stand-ups. You start being able to easily update them
00:41:59on what
00:41:59you did, what you do, what you're working on, any blockers and asking questions in stand-ups.
00:42:03This is something that you just kind of get better with, with experience. As I said before,
00:42:08I've had good experiences working on cross-functional teams. I've also had bad experiences.
00:42:12Looking back, there were sometimes I had expectations that I would be leading this project,
00:42:15because it was my project for the past six months, but then we had to bring someone on
00:42:19from another team, and then they were part of that. And then they started trying to lead it,
00:42:23and that caused conflict, and these things happen. And so setting clear expectations at the front is
00:42:29actually a really important process. You don't want to get two or three weeks into this new project,
00:42:33working with these new people, and all of a sudden you're in this kind of like power dynamic,
00:42:37power struggle of, no, I'm leading this project. No, I'm leading this project.
00:42:40And so looking back, I do wish on some of these projects where I was working with, you know,
00:42:44new people I had never worked with before, that we kind of just set those expectations at the
00:42:48beginning. If you're working at any medium size or large company, you are going to work on
00:42:53cross-functional projects or on cross-functional teams. My biggest recommendation is just kind of
00:42:56going with the flow, be pretty easy going for the first week or two, as you get to know everybody,
00:43:00as these expectations get out there, but definitely voice your opinion. Try to, you know,
00:43:04get involved in the project, make yourself known, and of course be as polite as possible. But as we talked
00:43:09about it in one of our first modules, the communication has to be really good. And so
00:43:13if you don't have that communication, when you're working on these types of teams, it's going to be
00:43:17even more difficult than if you're just working within your internal team where they already know
00:43:21you and they kind of have an expectation of how you communicate.
00:43:27Hello everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about managing expectations and feedback.
00:43:31Now this can be very, very difficult. I have had experiences in the past where I've done
00:43:36very well in this area and I'm like, man, I just nailed this. I knocked it out of the park.
00:43:41Now there are other times where I think I completely failed. And so I'll talk a little
00:43:45bit about some of those experiences over the years, but this is a very important part of working in a
00:43:50team and collaborating. One of the most important ways to manage expectations is to set expectations
00:43:55early and often. Setting clear goals and timelines really help alleviate a lot of people's stress.
00:44:01Because a lot of people, if they don't know when things are supposed to be done, if they feel behind,
00:44:05these things can cause a lot of stress and anxiety within a team. So I'm going to tell you a
00:44:10story
00:44:10of a time where I think I did really well with managing expectations in a very high stress
00:44:14environment. This goes back where I was a contract to hire position at a fortune 500 company.
00:44:19And I was in this contract position. I was hoping they would hire me on full-time,
00:44:23but I wasn't sure yet. But one of our senior directors comes into a meeting one day and they are
00:44:27just
00:44:28really frantic, right? And they say, Hey, we had to fire this whole team who did this specific thing.
00:44:34And I'm sitting there and I'm just listening. And you know, I'm new to the team. I've been there for
00:44:37maybe four months and my contract was for six months, but I'm four months into this contract.
00:44:41And so they come in and they say, this team was doing really bad work. You know,
00:44:45they messed up a bunch of stuff. All of our clients were really unhappy. So we fired them all.
00:44:50But what happened is, is the work that they were doing needed to be submitted within the next like
00:44:55two months. And that was like really big deal. It was something called MIPS. And that has to
00:44:59do with healthcare and submitting all these measures and everything. Now, coincidentally
00:45:03enough, in my last job, I had done that. I had done that for like two years. I knew everything
00:45:08about MIPS. And I had done that with a lot of different hospitals and doctors and all these
00:45:11things. And so I raised my hand and I was like, Hey, are you talking about this kind of MIPS?
00:45:15And so we started talking and we start going back and forth and they realize I am the only person
00:45:19in this entire team who knows anything about this. So I say, I'll take that project on. I would love
00:45:24to
00:45:24lead that. And so I go from being just a contract to hire position to being kind of a leader
00:45:28on this big
00:45:29project. And this is like a multimillion dollar issue that they are trying to solve because MIPS,
00:45:34when you're submitting for hospitals, that's how they get reimbursed for a lot of their money.
00:45:37And so they want to meet these measures and they want to get a big reimbursement in the millions of
00:45:41dollars per hospital. And so I'm taking on this really massive project. So I started assembling this
00:45:46team of other people who I think might be good for it. I need a data engineer. I need a
00:45:49software
00:45:50engineer. I need a data analyst. I need a business analyst. And I start bringing people onto my team.
00:45:54Well, we have a very quick deadline. I'm talking two months of doing four months of work. This is
00:46:00a big process. And so I start delegating. I start setting expectations. I start setting deadlines.
00:46:05And I tell, here's what we have to do in order to meet this deadline that the government has set.
00:46:09Because if we don't meet it, our clients all lose a ton of money. Now, this was a very stressful
00:46:14two
00:46:14months, but we got it all done. And I will say that my team did amazing. We missed basically no
00:46:19deadlines. We finished all the work in those two months and we got everything submitted on time.
00:46:23When that project wrapped up, they were very impressed with how I handled everything and how
00:46:26I took charge and how I managed expectations and got everything done on time. And because of that,
00:46:30I went from a junior data analyst contract to hire and they promoted me twice into a data analyst
00:46:35two position. I was only three years into my career, but I had to do this exact thing. I had
00:46:40to kind of
00:46:40take a leadership role early on. I had to set really clear expectations and goals and timelines.
00:46:45And then we had to manage that and meet it. And it was very tough, but it was one of
00:46:48the best
00:46:48things for my career. All that being said, creating clear goals and expectations
00:46:52is super important when you're working within a team. Now, when you're working on these projects,
00:46:56sometimes your timeline is going to get off. Oftentimes you'll think something takes a week,
00:47:00but then it takes a month. And that happens, right? Once you start getting into the details,
00:47:05once you start digging into the data, or maybe you're waiting on something from another client,
00:47:09sometimes you just get behind. And so communicating early and often is also really important. If you are
00:47:14behind on something and someone is waiting on that, right? You're waiting on your reports or they're
00:47:22not going to be happy. But if you just send them an email saying, Hey, here's what happened. Here's
00:47:26why we're behind. I'll get that to you by this day and set kind of a clear expectation. I'll get
00:47:31it to
00:47:31you in, you know, three days, seven days, whatever it is, that will really help alleviate a lot of the
00:47:36issues that come with working within a team. If you look at this image on the right-hand side,
00:47:40I think this is just applicable to all parts of life, but specifically within collaboration as well.
00:47:46We have these expectations and we have the acceptance. And the acceptance is just kind of like
00:47:51how acceptable we find the actual situation. And so as the acceptance goes up and as the
00:47:56expectations go down, we'll have a lot better happiness because our expectations are down.
00:48:00But if you're on that far left side where the expectations are really high, but what's actually
00:48:05happening is really low, that's going to be very unhappy. And so you want people's expectations
00:48:10and kind of what they accept to be pretty even, but you'd rather have what they accept to be a
00:48:15lot higher.
00:48:15If you set their expectations a little bit lower, that typically makes them a little bit happier because
00:48:20they aren't expecting the moon and the world and flowers and all these different things that they
00:48:24could possibly have. They're just expecting something small. I'm going to share one more
00:48:28story at my very first job as a data analyst. This was actually at a nonprofit. I was a data
00:48:32collection
00:48:32specialist and analyst. I had no idea what I was doing. I was very new, but in this, I would
00:48:38say I
00:48:39failed quite miserably. Most of what my job was, was collecting data from all these different
00:48:43departments within the nonprofit. And we would submit it for grants and grant is basically what the
00:48:48government gives you for doing specific work. I was new into this job, maybe two or three months.
00:48:52So I didn't know a ton, but I was talking to the senior director. This was like my boss's boss.
00:48:57And they were like, Hey, we have to submit this grant data. This is really important to get.
00:49:02So I need you to have this done by the end of the week. And I was like, end of
00:49:05the week,
00:49:06no problem. I got it. I don't know why I was so confident, but I remember being like,
00:49:10yeah, no problem. I just have to go ask this person for the data. So I go to this person,
00:49:13I get the data. I bring the data back and I start looking at it. And I realize this data
00:49:19is really not set up to actually submit because the data has to sit in a specific way. You have
00:49:24to format it properly. You have to do some aggregations. And these were things early on
00:49:28in my career that I just didn't really know. Like I was very, very new. So I should have gone
00:49:34to that
00:49:34senior director and said, Hey, this data is really messy. It's going to take me some time.
00:49:39I'm going to try to get it by this day. And maybe they would have said, Hey, let me help
00:49:42you
00:49:42on this. Let's work together on this. But I wanted to prove myself right. So I got heads down
00:49:47and I just started working on it. And I started digging in and I couldn't figure it out. It was
00:49:52really confusing. I don't know why I was so stubborn, but I didn't communicate this at all. I just wanted
00:49:58to show that I knew what I was doing. And so I worked on, I worked on, I worked on
00:50:02it. Friday came
00:50:03around when it was due. She comes over to me and she's like, Hey, Alex, is everything ready to submit?
00:50:06And I'm like, listen, I got to be honest with you. I could not figure this out. I really need
00:50:11help.
00:50:11So she was very frustrated. I mean, it was visible. She was trying to be nice. I was
00:50:16new to my job. I was a young kid. She was trying to be polite, but I could tell she
00:50:20was visibly
00:50:21very frustrated because then she had to drop everything that she had to do to help me get
00:50:25this data ready to submit. And it was horrible. And I just remember that sinking feeling of like,
00:50:30I really messed up. If I had said that four or five, six days ago, or when I first got
00:50:36this data,
00:50:36the expectations would have been a lot lower and we had a longer timeline to actually resolve it.
00:50:42So I didn't have to make this, you know, small issue and emergency.
00:50:45I just did because of kind of unmet expectations. Let's not dwell on my failures too much. I do have
00:50:50many, but that one I specifically remember really well. Next, let's talk about feedback. Now,
00:50:54feedback can actually be kind of hard to get. Sometimes you kind of need to pry it from people
00:50:58in certain instances, but having a regular feedback loop within projects or within teams
00:51:03is really great. What I mean by that is sometimes things just don't work. They don't work well.
00:51:09The processes don't work. The tools don't work. But if you don't have a feedback loop, oftentimes
00:51:13people just try to push through and they don't feel like they can come to you. So I'll give you
00:51:18just a quick example. Let's say you're working on a team and you have all of your data sitting in
00:51:23SQL and you're like, all right, let's extract that data, put it into a report and then, you know,
00:51:27send that off and then we'll automate that process. Well, you start getting in there and
00:51:32you start realizing the tools that they're using to extract that data and send the report
00:51:35are not working for what you actually need. But that's what they've always used. They've
00:51:40been using that for everything. So you're thinking, I just have to figure it out. I have to get it
00:51:43done.
00:51:44So you start working on it. You keep your head down and you don't give that feedback. Hey,
00:51:48I'm having issues with this project. It's not working for me. Like this tool is not working. Then
00:51:53finally, a week later, someone comes to you and they're asking for this and you're like, well,
00:51:55you know, there's an issue with this and this tool that I'm trying to use. And they're like,
00:51:59oh, I see. Well, let's take a look at it. And you take a look at it. You quickly realize
00:52:03this is a
00:52:03unique use case. You can actually use this tool for what you're trying to do. And they're like,
00:52:07you should have given me this feedback a long time ago. Feedback is a communication thing.
00:52:11You need to have feedback. You need to be communicating. And so creating those feedback
00:52:15loops typically in things like daily standups is really nice to have. Almost always communicating
00:52:20and giving feedback on different tools or projects or whole different things that you're going to be
00:52:25working on within a team. It always helps you kind of align yourself with your team to work in the
00:52:30same direction instead of kind of fighting each other or fighting the system or the processes or the tools.
00:52:38Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about politics. Yes,
00:52:42we're talking about office politics. When you are working on a team, when you're working at any company,
00:52:47there are going to be office politics. And so I'm going to kind of give some stories and looking back,
00:52:52give you some just interesting stories over my time being in the office politics. But office
00:52:58politics is a tool. And so we're just going to talk about politics, talk a little about how you can
00:53:03use
00:53:03it to your personal gain, because I absolutely think that it is something that you kind of need
00:53:08to be aware of and be thinking about when working within a team. Probably the biggest thing that I'm
00:53:12going to say in this entire lesson is that office politics will help you influence decision-making.
00:53:16And this is a very good thing. It can be used really poorly, but it is a very good thing.
00:53:23I'm going to give you an example of a time I was very successful with office politics to kind of
00:53:27get
00:53:27what I want. And this was when I was first hired as a data analytics manager. I was new to
00:53:32managing,
00:53:33I had never done it before, but I was hired on for one specific goal. Within our IT department,
00:53:38we had a bunch of siloed data with cybersecurity and the help desk and all these different departments.
00:53:42There were 11 different departments. So it was a lot. And for the past six years,
00:53:46they had been trying to figure out a solution to get all that data into one place, which as you
00:53:50can
00:53:51imagine is very difficult because everybody has different needs. They have different wants,
00:53:54they have different perspectives and ideas and all these different things. And so my only job was to try
00:53:59to get everyone into one single consensus. And I was trying to get us into a platform, whether it was
00:54:04AWS, Azure, Google cloud platform, Databricks, it doesn't matter as long as it worked for the entire
00:54:08IT department. So I started going around and I started going around to every single department one
00:54:13by one. And I started trying to understand what they did, what kind of data they were working with,
00:54:17what data they needed, what their pain points were, what issues they were having in their business.
00:54:22Believe it or not, that took several months. And over those months, I started to get to know all
00:54:25the different managers, all the people on the team, and, you know, just generally being friendly
00:54:30with them and really trying to sympathize and being understanding with their team and what they were
00:54:34going through and what they were trying to achieve. I started to be able to see kind of what each
00:54:37team
00:54:38was working on and what they needed. So what I did was I went back, I took everybody's feedback,
00:54:42I took tons of notes and I started creating kind of this Excel spreadsheet of needs, wants,
00:54:47how we can solve this out. And then I got every single person together. And that was kind of the
00:54:52trickiest part because there was some office politics that was already there before I got there.
00:54:58And I brought everyone into one room and I said, Hey, listen, this is something we've been trying
00:55:02to do for many years. I was like, now is our time to get it done. Here's what I've laid
00:55:06out.
00:55:06I laid out all the details. I said, I know that you guys all have your own opinion,
00:55:10your own preferences. I know you want Snowflake. I know you want Azure. You guys already use some
00:55:14AWS products. I was like, but here's the deal. We can't use everything. So I was using my influence.
00:55:20I was using my, you know, connections that I had made over those several months.
00:55:23And I got us to all agree on using Azure. It was nuts. No one was able to do this
00:55:28in the past six
00:55:29years. They had tried many times, but I just kind of played the room. I got to know everybody.
00:55:35I talked specifically to everyone's pain points and what they were able to do and how Azure could solve it.
00:55:39That was probably the biggest success as it comes to office politics and getting everyone
00:55:43on the same page as I've ever had. I don't think any of my other stories that were positive would
00:55:48come close to the feeling of getting everyone together on this massive project. In the end,
00:55:53everyone agreed to it, even though some were more reluctant than others, but people wanted to kind
00:55:57of get on board with this and kind of all be on the same page. And then I submitted our
00:56:02budget.
00:56:02It got approved and we started implementing people and hiring on analytic engineers and all sorts of
00:56:06people for this big project. I am 100% confident if I had not gone to everybody and started making
00:56:11friends with them and started kind of getting involved in all these things, I am 100% confident
00:56:16they would not have agreed to it in the way that they did. From what I was told, a lot
00:56:20of the previous
00:56:20people in my position just tried to kind of steamroll it and say, this is what we're doing and make
00:56:24it
00:56:25happen. And people just fought them so much that they ended up giving up. Now that's kind of a big
00:56:28example, right? But if you're just an individual contributor on your team, you're just a data analyst or you're a
00:56:33data
00:56:33scientist or something like that, you can still do the same within your team. Being friends with
00:56:38people and making good connections with your managers, your senior directors, the people on
00:56:43your team, that really goes a long way. One of my biggest pieces of advice in order to be really
00:56:48good
00:56:48in office politics is to avoid the gossip. And I know gossip is fun. You get to hear about what
00:56:54people messed up and what people are doing in their private lives. But when people see you doing that,
00:56:59they're not going to trust you as much. And things spread, right? You know office politics. You say
00:57:04one thing to one person, they're going to say it to another and soon everybody knows. And they know
00:57:08that you don't like that one person. That one person is not going to like you. And then they're
00:57:11going to try to get other people on their side to not like you. And then it's you versus them.
00:57:15And it's
00:57:15a whole thing. And so just not being involved in a lot of the gossip ends up helping a lot.
00:57:21The last thing I want to talk about is giving credit. Now I'm going to give you an example of
00:57:24a time I
00:57:24felt horrible. It was pretty early on in my career, maybe like two, three years. And we were
00:57:29working on this big project and we got into this meeting and the meeting had some higher up. I don't
00:57:34remember if it was a senior director or senior managers, somebody higher up. I was, you know,
00:57:38like a junior data analyst, but I had been working on this project. My product manager was giving the
00:57:42presentation. I was just sitting there. But at the end, this person got all the credit. They did not
00:57:47ever once mention that there was anyone helping. They just kind of said, that's it. That's the project.
00:57:51And they kind of took credit for themselves. And I remember being like,
00:57:56that doesn't feel good. I was like, I worked a ton on this project. I feel like I helped a
00:58:00lot.
00:58:01I didn't get any credit. That really has sat with me. Like I remember that feeling because I was like,
00:58:07kind of hurt by it because I was really a big part of that project. And so that feeling doesn't
00:58:12feel
00:58:12good. And so what you want to do is you want to give credit generously. This is something I think
00:58:16everybody should be doing. If you are in there and you're presenting and somebody helped you be like,
00:58:21hey, you know, we worked really hard on this project. John was a big help. John,
00:58:24that guy right there. John's awesome. Just a super smart guy. Just give people credit,
00:58:28because when you give people credit, they're going to give it back to you in a lot of different ways.
00:58:33If you haven't done that before, I highly recommend trying it. One, it's just a really
00:58:37good feeling when you look over and you give someone credit and they're smiling and they're like,
00:58:40hey, you know, thanks for including me. It's also feels really good when someone does it for you.
00:58:45And I promise you, if you do it for somebody else, they are going to see that. And other people
00:58:48on your
00:58:49team are going to see that. And they're going to want to give you credit. And it kind of lifts
00:58:53everybody. You know, that rising tide lifts the boat, right? You want everyone to come up together.
00:58:58So that is office politics in a nutshell. Of course, there's going to be crazy stuff. There's
00:59:02going to be bad employees. And that's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson,
00:59:05when we talk about just tough employees or tough coworkers to work with.
00:59:13Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about working with tough coworkers. Now,
00:59:17I am almost positive if you've worked anywhere ever, you've had a tough coworker because tough
00:59:23coworkers are everywhere. Or I'll just say bad coworkers. These are people who don't do a good
00:59:28job, have a bad attitude. You don't enjoy working with them. They bring down the team. These are
00:59:33people that typically last a long time at companies for whatever reason. They just, they never leave.
00:59:38They worked there for 20 years and they're the worst people to work with. If you have not worked with
00:59:41someone like that, I assure you, you will. It is only a matter of time. So I'm going to talk
00:59:46a little bit
00:59:46about how you can work with these types of people and what to do. When you're working with a tough
00:59:51coworker, there's kind of two different categories. One, is it work related, right? Is this something
00:59:56that's inhibiting a project? Is it stopping you from getting your work done? Or is this person just
01:00:01annoying, right? Do they just have a bad attitude, but they're still getting their work done? If it is
01:00:05in category one, where it is inhibiting your work or it's inhibiting the project as a whole, these are
01:00:11things that you need to address. Now in category number two, if it's just something that you don't
01:00:16like about them, it's their personality, it's their tone, it's their whatever. Oftentimes those are
01:00:20things that, those are just personality character traits that maybe you just don't really vibe with.
01:00:25You don't really get along with. Typically, these are things that I am not really going to address.
01:00:30Now it is possible that these personal things do actually bleed into being a real problem and you
01:00:34always can address those. But the first category are things that definitely need to be addressed.
01:00:38I'm going to talk a little bit more about those. First, if it's a very small issue, maybe it's just
01:00:42something you're just going to let go and hope they improve on in the future, right? Maybe they said
01:00:46they're going to email you something by the end of the day and they forgot or they just didn't do
01:00:50it.
01:00:50And that's really frustrating, right? But it's not a big deal. Maybe they'll just email it to you in
01:00:55the morning and then you still have it and that's okay. But if it starts inhibiting your work,
01:00:59your ability to meet deadlines, your ability to do things, and this is a repetitive pattern,
01:01:03this is something that one, you can just talk to them about it and say, hey,
01:01:06here's how this affected my project. I needed you to get that to me by Monday and you didn't even
01:01:10start on it until Wednesday. That makes me look bad in front of the customer or the client or my
01:01:14manager. Like I need you to be able to do that. If that's a repetitive pattern though, I would just
01:01:18go to your boss and say, hey boss, here's what's happening. I wanted to talk to you about John.
01:01:22There's this repeated pattern of I'm trying to get my work done and here's what he's doing and here's
01:01:26how it's affecting it. I've already addressed it with him, but it is not improving. Can you help me with
01:01:31this?
01:01:31It is your manager's job to help you as an employee get their job done well. If you have a
01:01:36good boss,
01:01:36they're going to address this and they're going to get you guys into a room or they're going to go
01:01:39talk
01:01:39to them or they're going to help figure out a solution. That is probably going to be my advice
01:01:43for almost any situation. One, if you feel comfortable addressing it with them, if it's inhibiting your job,
01:01:48then address it and just talk to them, be really polite, really kind, just explain things.
01:01:52If it continues, if it does not get better, if that person is just stubborn and they don't want to
01:01:56be,
01:01:56you know, a good coworker, go to your boss, right? That is the chain of command. That is what I'm
01:02:01going to recommend for almost everybody. That does take really good communication skills,
01:02:05really good body language, really good tone so that they don't take it the wrong way.
01:02:08They just understand that you want to get your work done and because of what they did or because of
01:02:12them just not being a good employee, even if you don't say that, you weren't able to get your work
01:02:16done. The one thing that I would never do is start gossiping and start bringing that person down,
01:02:21start talking bad about them to other employees, even if that employee stinks,
01:02:25and everybody does not like them, that is okay. It is not something that I would personally get
01:02:30involved in because typically when you start doing that, although you may build camaraderie
01:02:34in a small group of people, right? For the people who don't like them, there may be other people
01:02:38who do like them and you're going to cut off those people, just like in a previous example that we
01:02:42talked about in one of our last lessons. Another thing to note, and this is just kind of on a
01:02:45personal
01:02:45side is that people are going through things. You never know what's happening in their personal life,
01:02:49with their marriage, with their kids, with their parents, with their friends, with their health,
01:02:53people go through things. And so sometimes good coworkers can become tough coworkers for a season,
01:02:58and that's not something that you should be taking personally. There could be something behind the
01:03:02scenes that they're not sharing or that you don't know. So try to have some compassion,
01:03:06try to be really sympathetic, but if it is inhibiting your work, go to them first and then go to
01:03:11your boss.
01:03:15Hello, everybody. In this module, we're going to be talking about personal effectiveness. Now,
01:03:19these are things that I think are very specific to being in a workplace, but also are very good
01:03:24soft skills just to work on and be aware of and improve on. One of the biggest soft skills as
01:03:29it
01:03:29pertains to personal effectiveness is going to be time management. This is something that a lot of
01:03:33people struggle with, and I'm going to give you some reasons why that happens, and I'm going to talk
01:03:37about how you can resolve that. One of the biggest reasons is that some people just aren't organized at
01:03:41all, right? They're just very messy with things. They use sticky notes to track things, and then projects and
01:03:47tasks slip through the cracks, and that is not a good thing. And so organization plays a big part in
01:03:53both of these things. The other thing that really affects us is the ability for somebody to say no to
01:03:57specific projects, because some people just get assigned projects and they don't say anything, and
01:04:01they just take on so much work. They literally cannot create any type of schedule or prioritize their
01:04:07work to get all of it done. When this happens, you are in a lose-lose situation. You literally cannot
01:04:12do it,
01:04:12but you're also going to spend an immense amount of time and be very anxious and have a lot of
01:04:16stress
01:04:16to try to accomplish something that is not accomplishable. If that is a word, I am not 100%.
01:04:22But how can we actually solve these issues? My first recommendation is pretty simple. One is just
01:04:27to use a calendar. I know a lot of people that they like to write things down, and that's perfectly
01:04:33fine.
01:04:33I also write on sticky notes, and I like journaling and writing on paper. But having something on your
01:04:39phone or your computer, whether it's an app or it's just your Gmail calendar or whatever it is,
01:04:44have something where you have everything in one place. You have something where you have all your
01:04:48meetings, where you have all your deadlines. This will be able to help you visualize and see how
01:04:53much you have on your plate at any moment. Now, that's just for time management in general. That
01:04:57is one of my biggest things that when I started doing that a lot, I started becoming a lot less
01:05:01stressed because I knew when my projects were due, I knew when I had meetings, I knew what my timeframes
01:05:06were. And so I could kind of visualize and see everything. The other thing is using something to
01:05:10prioritize your projects. Now, I personally don't like something like Jira. I use it for many years.
01:05:16I just get exhausted by it. But something to organize your projects. I don't use Jira anymore,
01:05:21but when I was in the workplace, that's what we used. So, if you look at Jira, you can organize
01:05:26projects from most important to least important. Almost always, you're going to do the most important
01:05:32projects first. The ones that have the largest business impact, the ones that are the most important,
01:05:36those are the ones that are going to be prioritized first. Things that are super low on that priority,
01:05:41you may kick those down the road, right? They don't need to be done right now. Maybe they need
01:05:44to be done, you know, by the end of the quarter, maybe in the end of the year, you have
01:05:47a lot of
01:05:48time to work on this. It's not a high priority. That may be something that you literally just shift
01:05:52over and take off your list. And so now your list is a lot smaller. Instead of having this running
01:05:57list of a hundred things, you just say, hey, in this week, here's what I'm prioritizing. These two or
01:06:02three projects. Earlier, I mentioned some people just take on too much. And a lot of this has to
01:06:06do with not having the ability to say no, or maybe they haven't set that boundary within their career.
01:06:11And that can be very difficult. I know I personally did this when I first started. I just wanted to
01:06:15take on as much as I could. I wanted to show people that I knew what I was doing. I
01:06:19also didn't really
01:06:19know when I was supposed to say no. Could I even say no to this project? Could I say no
01:06:24to this
01:06:24coworker? I don't know. But I can tell you right now, you do have the ability to say no. Now,
01:06:30I wouldn't start doing this right off the bat, right? You get a new job and you get in there
01:06:33and they assign you your first project and you're like, no, I'm not doing it. I have to protect my
01:06:38time. You don't have anything on your plate. But as you start getting an actual workload,
01:06:42as you start getting a bigger caseload, then you can start saying no to certain projects,
01:06:46depending on their importance and depending on if that's something that you can reasonably take on
01:06:50in your schedule. And it can look like this. Someone's going to come to you with a request and
01:06:54you're going to be very polite about it and say, hey, I can tell that this is really important.
01:06:57I can't take this on right now due to my current workload. This might be something I can get to
01:07:01in
01:07:02the next two or three weeks. You're not saying no to it forever. You may even validate that,
01:07:05yes, this needs to get done, but you're saying I can do it right now. This is maybe something I
01:07:09can
01:07:09get to in several weeks. One thing I want to mention, and this is super important, is that
01:07:13in data positions, oftentimes people see you as ad hoc generators. They're just going to come to you with
01:07:20a request and they expect you to do it. It's just everything and anything. I've seen it a million
01:07:25times. They come to you and they're like, hey, can you pull this data from this and this and this,
01:07:28then put it into a report, just send it to me by the end of the day. And sometimes you'll
01:07:32be like,
01:07:33yeah, sure. Or you'll be like, no, I can't do that. But what actually comes out of your mouth is,
01:07:38yeah, okay. All right, I guess. And you hope they pick up on that tone or that sarcasm or whatever
01:07:44it
01:07:44is. But most of the time, unless this is coming from like a senior director or C-level exec,
01:07:49these ad hoc requests typically aren't very important. And so a lot of these times when people come to
01:07:54these one-off little requests, you can say, no, you can say, no, I can't get to that.
01:07:58You know, maybe next week, maybe the week after, maybe Josh can look at that because Josh doesn't
01:08:02have much on his plate right now. There are definitely ways to handle that, but you don't
01:08:05have to say yes to all these little requests that take up so much time that really aren't super
01:08:10important. If there's only one lesson that you really grab onto and really apply to your life,
01:08:14let it be this one in this module, because I promise you this one will make or break
01:08:19your career or don't make or break your experience at that company.
01:08:25Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about self-awareness. Now,
01:08:29this is a tough one for a lot of people, myself included. I will say when I first got into
01:08:36just
01:08:36data in general, I was not the most self-aware person in several areas. I've grown in this area,
01:08:43specifically, a lot. And I'll give you just a quick example. I always thought of myself as a
01:08:49very good communicator. Early on, I was like, yeah, I communicate well. Like, of course,
01:08:54everybody communicates fine. Like there's no issues here. So when I got into meetings,
01:08:57I thought I was doing okay, but I didn't have much self-awareness in this area because I was
01:09:02actually not very good. This was a weakness of mine, as well as just being social in general. I
01:09:07kind of thought I would be okay working in an office from nine to five. And I thought I wouldn't
01:09:13be drained at the end of the day, but I was, I was just exhausted. And so my communication skills
01:09:18and my self-awareness and, you know, just my social ability were not the best. And I wasn't
01:09:23super aware of it. And that was very draining on me as a whole. So in order to be self
01:09:27-aware,
01:09:27in order to improve, you kind of need to look at yourself and be like, what are my strengths and
01:09:31weaknesses? Where do I really excel? Maybe it is communication. Maybe that's like your absolute best thing,
01:09:36but maybe you're horrible at time management. The worst thing to do though, is to not be aware
01:09:42that you're bad at time management. I know, you know, someone like that where you keep looking
01:09:47at them and they're like, you make horrible relationship decisions, just horrible. And
01:09:52they're like, no, I don't. And then every single time they start dating someone and they're in like
01:09:57the worst relationship ever, but they have zero self-awareness and it is infuriating. You don't
01:10:02want to be that person in the workplace. You want to be aware of what you're good at and what
01:10:07you're
01:10:07not good at. One of the easiest ways to do this in the workplace is to just ask your manager,
01:10:11say,
01:10:11hey manager, here's where I think I really excel. What are some areas that you think I could improve
01:10:15on? And you can get some feedback from them. You could also go to something like a best friend
01:10:20or a spouse or a girlfriend or boyfriend or something like that. You can go to this person that
01:10:25you trust and say, hey, I kind of want to improve on myself. I want to improve in some areas.
01:10:31Where
01:10:31are my blind spots? Where am I not being super self-aware? As long as you can trust that person
01:10:36and get this feedback, it can really help you kind of identify these blind spots so you can become
01:10:40more self-aware. When I was early on, I started to become a little bit more self-aware that
01:10:45presentations weren't my thing. I wasn't very good at them. And so what I did was I went to my
01:10:49manager.
01:10:49I was like, hey, his name was Tristan. I was like, hey, Tristan, I'm just not doing well
01:10:53in these things. Can you give me some feedback? Because I want to improve on presentations.
01:10:58I just know I'm not the best at them. And Tristan was able to give me really great
01:11:01feedback. He thought I was doing pretty good, but he absolutely had feedback that I started
01:11:06implementing. And now I think I'm a lot better at presenting than I first was as a data analyst.
01:11:11I will tell you though, I still fail in a lot of areas, but I'm a lot more aware of
01:11:16where I'm not
01:11:16really good anymore. Before I just kind of did things. I didn't know if I was good or bad.
01:11:22I thought I was really good at communication. I thought I was really good at different things,
01:11:26but I wasn't. And so now I'm just much more self-aware. I still have things I'm not good at,
01:11:32but I'm aware of them. So I do consulting and I'll get into a team and it's a bunch of
01:11:36different people.
01:11:37And some people are going to have strengths that I don't have. So if a certain task or a certain
01:11:42thing comes up, I can say, hey, John, you're really good at that. You should be working on that task.
01:11:46That's not my area of expertise or hey, we need to present information and geez, Josh,
01:11:51you're amazing at presenting. Let's have you lead that presentation. So I just know my strengths
01:11:56well enough to be like, I am not amazing at this, but I can tell that you are. Let's lean
01:12:01into your
01:12:01strength in your area of expertise. And in other times I'll lead because that's my area of expertise.
01:12:06So being self-aware is really important in working in a team and just in working in general,
01:12:11I'm always going to be changing and I'm always going to have different blind spots.
01:12:15I'm going to get better at some things and worse at some things. I'm trying to just be better at
01:12:19everything, but that's not who I am as a person. I don't think that's realistic for most people.
01:12:24So listen, if you have something that you're not good at, kind of own that. It's okay. It's not
01:12:28something that's going to absolutely cripple or destroy you. For example, I am super introverted.
01:12:33It was very tough for me for the first two or three years to get acclimated to working in person
01:12:39nine to five every day. That was really tough on me because after about two hours,
01:12:43I was drained and I would get home and my wife was like, oh my gosh, you need to stop
01:12:47doing this.
01:12:48Like you're killing yourself essentially. But that was an area I was aware of and I started
01:12:53improving on that over time. And now I can work nine to five. I can be in person with people
01:12:58and
01:12:58that doesn't drain me as much. So it is something that you can work on and improve on. But if
01:13:03you're
01:13:03not aware of it, if you don't kind of realistically look at yourself and look at your strengths and your
01:13:08weaknesses, how can you improve on those weaknesses if you don't even know you have weaknesses?
01:13:14So try to just look internal, try to identify things that you're not the best at, work on them,
01:13:19but also notice if someone else has that strength in that area of your week,
01:13:23let them help you by taking the lead on that. And you can learn from it as well.
01:13:30Hello, everybody. In this lesson, we're going to be talking about work-life balance. And this is a
01:13:34skill. This is a soft skill. It has a lot to do with communication and setting boundaries and all
01:13:38these things. But work-life balance is very important. It is something that I didn't really
01:13:43have, you know, at parts of my career and other parts of my career. And now I have very good
01:13:49work-life
01:13:49balance. Even though I work more hours now than I ever have, I have better work-life balance than kind
01:13:54of at the start of my career. If you don't know what work-life balance is, and I'm sure you
01:13:58do,
01:13:59it's just the balance between how much time you're spending working and how much time you're spending on
01:14:03kind of your real life. That's with your family, with your friends, with your hobbies, with anything
01:14:08else you want to be doing besides just at your computer or at a desk working. If you were spending
01:14:13too much time working and not enough time on yourself, you're going to start going down and
01:14:17it's not good. If you're spending too little time working and you're spending a lot of personal time
01:14:21and not accomplishing anything, that also has negative effects. There is a nice balance where you can
01:14:27get both things done and feel accomplished and feel like you're really being a good member of a team,
01:14:32but also feel fulfilled in your personal life. And that is what we're going to be talking about.
01:14:36In general, this isn't always true. It depends on the season, the time of the year, but in general,
01:14:41if you spend more time working and you spend less time in your personal life, you're going to feel
01:14:45less fulfilled. You're just going to feel like a robot. You're just going to feel like you're wasting
01:14:48your life. Most of the time, a lot of our fulfillment and where we really feel like our best selves
01:14:54is in our personal life with our hobbies and with our friends and with our family. These are the things
01:14:58that
01:14:58really fuel us, but most people need to work. It is something that drives them. It's something that
01:15:04gives them a purpose outside of their personal life. It also provides money. And that is very
01:15:09important in this world. Now, early on, I was working at a nonprofit. If you've never worked
01:15:13in a nonprofit, the pay is really low and the expectations are really high. It's not a good
01:15:17trade-off. Usually if the expectations are really high and the demand for your time and effort is really
01:15:22high, you get paid more. Not at a nonprofit. It's kind of a beautiful irony. And so I'm working at
01:15:28this job and the job is from eight to four. Now, eight to four was my hours because I told
01:15:31them that
01:15:32I had to get off by four to go pick up my kids from school. And so they were like,
01:15:36okay, no problem.
01:15:37Not a big deal, right? But as I got more into the job, two, three, four months go by,
01:15:42more work keeps piling up. I do not have a good work-life balance. I have to start going in
01:15:46a little bit
01:15:47early. I have to staying a little bit late. My kids have to spend more time in aftercare,
01:15:50or sometimes my wife has to go pick them up. And that just did not work for our family.
01:15:55So I did this for several months, but that was not working for me. And so because of this,
01:16:00I ended up just looking for another job because I was like, this job is not doing it for me.
01:16:04I
01:16:04don't have that work-life balance. I really need, especially since I had kids and obligations
01:16:09outside of my work. A lot of this has to do with company culture as well. And sometimes you can't
01:16:13get away for it. Sometimes you don't really even know what's happening until you get into it.
01:16:17So before you get into a job, you can ask about these things, but you won't really know until you
01:16:23get into it. So at the next job that I got, the work-life balance was much better. I still
01:16:29worked
01:16:29eight to four, but I actually got off at four. And my boss let me get off to go get
01:16:34my kids or go
01:16:35on a school trip or different things. My PTO was quite flexible, but I did set those boundaries
01:16:40pretty early. Even in the interview process, I was like, hey, I got a family. This is really important
01:16:44to me. You know, I am a great employee. I'm going to work really hard, but you know, this is
01:16:49something
01:16:49that I really prioritize in my life. And I will say he respected that. Even though he didn't have
01:16:53kids, he was like, hey, listen, I know kids are really important. We want to support you in this.
01:16:57And so even in the interview process, I was talking about setting boundaries. I was talking about
01:17:03prioritizing kind of myself and my life outside of work. And you can do this at any point. You don't
01:17:08have
01:17:08to do it at the very beginning. Even if you've been in a job for five years, if it's not
01:17:12working for you,
01:17:12you don't have a good work-life balance, you can go to them and you can say, hey, listen,
01:17:16this isn't working for me. I'm not able to spend as much time with my kids. I'm not feeling fulfilled.
01:17:21I need to be able to set boundaries in this area in order to have a good work-life balance.
01:17:26Now, if they can't do that, if they're like, hey, listen, you have to do it. You don't have a
01:17:29choice.
01:17:30Then, you know, they don't prioritize you. They're prioritizing the job and the company.
01:17:34And that is okay because that tells you, you can go look for another job. So while you're working in
01:17:39this condition that you don't like, start applying, start looking for another job.
01:17:43Most of the time, if they're a good person, if they're somebody who, you know, you get along
01:17:47with and you respect, they will try to make that happen. A good employee is good for business.
01:17:52Not every manager, not every company understands that, but that is a real thing. So stand up for
01:17:57yourself, set those boundaries, set these expectations so that you can have a good work-life
01:18:02balance. Now, just one caveat to this is not everybody likes work-life balance. Some people
01:18:06don't have a lot of friends or family or hobbies. Their work is what they really find fulfillment in.
01:18:12But even then, you have to set some personal boundaries at that point. You need to say,
01:18:16hey, listen, I can't work 12 hour days every day. That's not good for me. I need to go for
01:18:22a walk.
01:18:22I need to get out there. I need to get a dog. Do something outside of that. Something that is
01:18:26good for your mental health. That's just my one small caveat, but not as many people are like that
01:18:31as people who really do want a good work-life balance. But if you're one of those people,
01:18:34that is something to consider.
01:18:39Hello, everybody, and congratulations on completing the Soft Skills for Data
01:18:43Professionals course here on Analyst Builder. I hope that this was really helpful and you
01:18:46learned a ton. Soft skills are quite difficult to learn, but hopefully I was able to present it
01:18:51in a way that really helped. I know I shared a ton of personal stories, so I'm hoping that those
01:18:56stories really resonated with you and you're able to improve your soft skills and be ready to apply
01:19:00those soft skills in your job. I would absolutely love to hear your feedback, so be sure to head
01:19:04over to the Discord and let me know what you thought of this course.
01:19:07allow you to follow me at Thank you.
01:19:07Let's do this.