Google Data Analytics Professional

Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions

WEEK4 - Always remember the stakeholder

Successful data analysts learn to balance needs and expectations. In this part of the course, you’ll learn strategies for managing stakeholder expectations while establishing clear communication with your team.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss communication best practices for the data analyst including reference to office communication, conflict resolution, facilitating meetings, and status reports
• Discuss the importance of focus on stakeholder expectations
• Identify common limitations with data, with specific reference to speed versus accuracy and responding to time-sensitive requests

Balance team and stakeholder needs

Communicating with your team

Balancing needs and expectations across your team

As a data analyst, you'll be required to focus on a lot of different things, And your stakeholders' expectations are one of the most important. We're going to talk about why stakeholder expectations are so important to your work and look at some examples of stakeholder needs on a project.

In other words, they hold stakes in what you're doing. There's a good chance they'll need the work you do to perform their own needs. That's why it's so important to make sure your work lines up with their needs and why you need to communicate effectively with all of the stakeholders across your team.

Your stakeholders will want to discuss things like the project objective, what you need to reach that goal, and any challenges or concerns you have.

These conversations help build trust and confidence in your work. Here's an example of a project with multiple team members. Let's explore what they might need from you at different levels to reach the project's goal.

Imagine you're a data analyst working with a company's human resources department.

The company has experienced an increase in its turnover rate, which is the rate at which employees leave a company. The company's HR department wants to know why that is and they want you to help them figure out potential solutions. The Vice President of HR at this company is interested in identifying any shared patterns across employees who quit and seeing if there's a connection to employee productivity and engagement.

As a data analyst, it's your job to focus on the HR department's question and help find them an answer. But the VP might be too busy to manage day-to-day tasks or might not be your direct contact. For this task, you'll be updating the project manager more regularly. Project managers are in charge of planning and executing a project. Part of the project manager's job is keeping the project on track and overseeing the progress of the entire team. In most cases, you'll need to give them regular updates, let them know what you need to succeed and tell them if you have any problems along the way.

You might also be working with other team members. For example, HR administrators will need to know the metrics you're using so that they can design ways to effectively gather employee data.

You might even be working with other data analysts who are covering different aspects of the data. It's so important that you know who the stakeholders and other team members are in a project so that you can communicate with them effectively and give them what they need to move forward in their own roles on the project. You're all working together to give the company vital insights into this problem.

Back to our example. By analyzing company data, you see a decrease in employee engagement and performance after their first 13 months at the company, which could mean that employees started feeling demotivated or disconnected from their work and then often quit a few months later.

Another analyst who focuses on hiring data also shares that the company had a large increase in hiring around 18 months ago. You communicate this information with all your team members and stakeholders and they provide feedback on how to share this information with your VP.

In the end, your VP decides to implement an in-depth manager check-in with employees who are about to hit their 12-month mark at the firm to identify career growth opportunities, which reduces the employee turnover starting at the 13-month mark.

This is just one example of how you might balance needs and expectations across your team. You'll find that in pretty much every project you work on as a data analyst, different people on your team, from the VP of HR to your fellow data analysts, will need all your focus and communication to carry the project to success. Focusing on stakeholder expectations will help you understand the goal of a project, communicate more effectively across your team, and build trust in your work.

Working with stakeholders

Executive team

Customer-facing team

Data science team

Working effectively with stakeholders

• Jason Fried, Basecamp, www.inc.com/magazine/201809/jason-fried/illusion-agreement-team-project.html

Focus on what matters

About the importance of staying focused on the objective. This can be tricky when you find yourself working with a lot of people with competing needs and opinions. But by asking yourself a few simple questions at the beginning of each task, you can ensure that you're able to stay focused on your objective while still balancing stakeholder needs.

We were dealing with a lot of different team members and stakeholders like managers, administrators, and even other analysts. As a data analyst, you'll find that balancing everyone's needs can be a little chaotic sometimes but part of your job is to look past the clutter and stay focused on the objective. It's important to concentrate on what matters and not get distracted. As a data analyst, you could be working on multiple projects with lots of different people but no matter what project you're working on, there are three things you can focus on that will help you stay on task.

The first question you can ask is about who those stakeholders are. The primary stakeholder of this project is probably the Vice President of HR who's hoping to use his project's findings to make new decisions about company policy. You'd also be giving updates to your project manager, team members, or other data analysts who are depending on your work for their own task. These are your secondary stakeholders. Take time at the beginning of every project to identify your stakeholders and their goals. Then see who else is on your team and what their roles are.

Next, you'll want to ask who's managing the data? For example, think about working with other analysts on this project. You're all data analysts, but you may manage different data within your project. In our example, there was another data analyst who was focused on managing the company's hiring data. Their insights around a surge of new hires 18 months ago turned out to be a key part of your analysis. If you hadn't communicated with this person, you might have spent a lot of time trying to collect or analyze hiring data yourself or you may not have even been able to include it in your analysis at all. Instead, you were able to communicate your objectives with another data analyst and use existing work to make your analysis richer. By understanding who's managing the data, you can spend your time more productively.

Next step, you need to know where you can go when you need help. This is something you should know at the beginning of any project you work on. If you run into bumps in the road on your way to completing a task, you need someone who is best positioned to take down those barriers for you. When you know who's able to help, you'll spend less time worrying about other aspects of the project and more time focused on the objective. So who could you go to if you ran into a problem on this project? Project managers support you and your work by managing the project timeline, providing guidance and resources, and setting up efficient workflows. They have a big picture view of the project because they know what you and the rest of the team are doing. This makes them a great resource if you run into a problem in the employee turnover example, you would need to be able to access employee departure survey data to include in your analysis. If you're having trouble getting approvals for that access, you can speak with your project manager to remove those barriers for you so that you can move forward with your project.

Your team depends on you to stay focused on your task so that as a team, you can find solutions. By asking yourself three easy questions at the beginning of new projects, you'll be able to address stakeholder needs, feel confident about who is managing the data, and get help when you need it so that you can keep your eyes on the prize: the project objective.

So far we've covered the importance of working effectively on a team while maintaining your focus on stakeholder needs.

Understanding stakeholder roles

Vice president of sales The VP of sales provides strategic and operational direction but is less interested in specific details. Ning prepares questions ahead of time to focus on the key findings that the company expects from an annual sales report.

Sales team Members of the sales team have direct interactions with customers and are highly attuned to how the company performed over the past year. They can provide detailed information on the types of data that will matter most to the company’s customers.

Data analytics team The data analysts on Ning’s team each have a dataset that they focus on and can help pull the various types of data that Ning needs to satisfy the other stakeholders. Ning collaborates with them to complete the report.

Data science managers The data science managers oversee all of the company’s datasets and can help Ning prioritize the types of data and analyses required for the annual report. They can also advise on making an effective presentation.

Communication is key

Clear communication is key

A big part of that is building good relationships with the people you're working with. How do you do that? Two words: clear communication.

Now we're going to learn about the importance of clear communication with your stakeholders and team members. Start thinking about who you want to communicate with and when.

Have you ever been in the middle of telling a really funny joke only to find out your friend already knows the punchline? Or maybe they just didn't get what was funny about it? This happens all the time, especially if you don't know your audience. This kind of thing can happen at the workplace too.

Here's the secret to effective communication. Before you put together a presentation, send an e-mail, or even tell that hilarious joke to your co-worker, think about who your audience is, what they already know, what they need to know and how you can communicate that effectively to them. When you start by thinking about your audience, they'll know it and appreciate the time you took to consider them and their needs. Let's say you're working on a big project, analyzing annual sales data, and you discover that all of the online sales data is missing. This could affect your whole team and significantly delay the project. By thinking through these four questions, you can map out the best way to communicate across your team about this problem.

First, you'll need to think about who your audience is. In this case, you'll want to connect with other data analysts working on the project, as well as your project manager and eventually the VP of sales, who is your stakeholder.

Next up, you'll think through what this group already knows. The other data analysts working on this project know all the details about which data-set you are using already, and your project manager knows the timeline you're working towards.

Then you'll ask yourself what they need to know to move forward. Your fellow data analysts need to know the details of where you have tried so far and any potential solutions you've come up with. Your project manager would need to know the different teams that could be affected and the implications for the project, especially if this problem changes the timeline.

Finally, the VP of sales will need to know that there is a potential issue that would delay or affect the project. Now that you've decided who needs to know what, you can choose the best way to communicate with them. Instead of a long, worried e-mail which could lead to lots back and forth, you decide to quickly book in a meeting with your project manager and fellow analysts. In the meeting, you let the team know about the missing online sales data and give them more background info. Together, you discuss how this impacts other parts of the project. In this case, the VP of sales didn't need to be invited to your meeting, but would appreciate an e-mail update if there were changes to the timeline which your project manager might send along herself.

When you communicate thoughtfully and think about your audience first, you'll build better relationships and trust with your team members and stakeholders. That's important because those relationships are key to the project's success and your own too.

When you're getting ready to send an e-mail, organize some meeting, or put together a presentation, think about who your audience is, what they already know, what they need to know and how you can communicate that effectively to them.

Tips for effective communication

Coming up, We'll learn some practical ways to help you adapt to those different expectations and some things that you can carry over from team to team. Let's get started. When you started a new job or a new project, you might find yourself feeling a little out of sync with the rest of your team and how they communicate. That's totally normal. You'll figure things out in no time. If you're willing to learn as you go and ask questions when you aren't sure of something.

For example, if you find your team uses acronyms you aren't familiar with, don't be afraid to ask what they mean. When I first started at google, I had no idea what L G T M meant and I was always seeing it in comment threads. Well, I learned it stands for looks good to me and I use it all the time now if I need to give someone my quick feedback, that was one of the many acronyms I've learned and I come across new ones all the time and I'm never afraid to ask.

Every work setting has some form of etiquette. Maybe your team members appreciate eye contact and a firm handshake. Or it might be more polite to bow, especially if you find yourself working with international clients. You might also discover some specific etiquette rules just by watching your coworkers communicate. And it won't just be in person communication you'll deal with. Almost 300 billion emails are sent and received every day and that number is only growing. Fortunately there are useful skills you can learn from those digital communications too. You'll want your emails to be just as professional as your in-person communications. Here are some things that can help you do that. Good writing practices will go a long way to make your emails professional and easy to understand.

Emails are naturally more formal than texts, but that doesn't mean that you have to write the next great novel. Just taking the time to write complete sentences that have proper spelling and punctuation will make it clear you took time and consideration in your writing. Emails often get forwarded to other people to read. So write clearly enough that anyone could understand you.

I like to read important emails out loud before I hit send; that way, I can hear if they make sense and catch any typos. And keep in mind the tone of your emails can change over time. If you find that your team is fairly casual, that's great. Once you get to know them better, you can start being more casual too, but being professional is always a good place to start. A good rule of thumb: Would you be proud of what you had written if it were published on the front page of a newspaper? If not revise it until you are. You also don't want your emails to be too long. Think about what your team member needs to know and get to the point instead of overwhelming them with a wall of text. You'll want to make sure that your emails are clear and concise so they don't get lost in the shuffle. Let's take a quick look at two emails so that you can see what I mean.

Here's the first email. There's so much written here that it's kind of hard to see where the important information is. And this first paragraph doesn't give me a quick summary of the important takeaways. It's pretty casual to the greeting is just, "Hey," and there's no sign off. Plus I can already spot some typos.

Now let's take a look at the second email. Already, it's less overwhelming, right? Just a few sentences, telling me what I need to know. It's clearly organized and there's a polite greeting and sign off. This is a good example of an email; short and to the point, polite and well-written.

But what do you do if, what you need to say is too long for an email? Well, you might want to set up a meeting instead.

It's important to answer in a timely manner as well. You don't want to take so long replying to emails that your coworkers start wondering if you're okay. I always try to answer emails in 24-48 hours. Even if it's just to give them a timeline for when I'll have the actual answers they're looking for. That way, I can set expectations and they know I'm working on it. That works the other way around too. If you need a response on something specific from one of your team members, be clear about what you need and when you need it so that they can get back to you. I'll even include a date in my subject line and bold dates in the body of my email, so it's really clear.

Remember, being clear about your needs is a big part of being a good communicator. We covered some great ways to improve our professional communication skills, like asking questions, practicing good writing habits and some email tips and tricks. These will help you communicate clearly and effectively with your team members on any project. It might take some time, but you'll find a communication style that works for you and your team, both in person and online. As long as you're willing to learn, you won't have any problems adapting to the different communication expectations you'll see in future jobs.

Data scenarios and responses

Project example

Project follow-up email sample

Balancing expectations and realistic project goals

We discussed before how data has limitations. Sometimes you don't have access to the data you need, or your data sources aren't aligned or your data is unclean. This can definitely be a problem when you're analyzing data, but it can also affect your communication with your stakeholders. That's why it's important to balance your stakeholders' expectations with what is actually possible for a project.

We're going to learn about the importance of setting realistic, objective goals and how to best communicate with your stakeholders about problems you might run into. Keep in mind that a lot of things depend on your analysis. Maybe your team can't make a decision without your report. Or maybe your initial data work will determine how and where additional data will be gathered. You might remember that we've talked about some situations where it's important to loop stakeholders in. For example, telling your project manager if you're on schedule or if you're having a problem.

Now, let's look at a real-life example where you need to communicate with stakeholders and what you might do if you run into a problem.

Let's say you're working on a project for an insurance company. The company wants to identify common causes of minor car accidents so that they can develop educational materials that encourage safer driving.

There's a few early questions you and your team need to answer. What driving habits will you include in your dataset? How will you gather this data? How long will it take you to collect and clean that data before you can use it in your analysis? Right away you want to communicate clearly with your stakeholders to answer these questions, so you and your team can set a reasonable and realistic timeline for the project.

It can be tempting to tell your stakeholders that you'll have this done in no time, no problem. But setting expectations for a realistic timeline will help you in the long run. Your stakeholders will know what to expect when, and you won't be overworking yourself and missing deadlines because you overpromised. I find that setting expectations early helps me spend my time more productively. So as you're getting started, you'll want to send a high-level schedule with different phases of the project and their approximate start dates. In this case, you and your teams establish that you'll need three weeks to complete analysis and provide recommendations, and you let your stakeholders know so they can plan accordingly.

Now let's imagine you're further along in the project and you run into a problem. Maybe drivers have opted into sharing data about their phone usage in the car, but you discover that some sources count GPS usage, and some don't in their data. This might add time to your data processing and cleaning and delay some project milestones.

You'll want to let your project manager know and maybe work out a new timeline to present to stakeholders. The earlier you can flag these problems, the better. That way your stakeholders can make necessary changes as soon as possible.

Or what if your stakeholders want to add car model or age as possible variables. You'll have to communicate with them about how that might change the model you've built, if it can be added and before the deadlines, and any other obstacles that they need to know so they can decide if it's worth changing at this stage of the project. To help them you might prepare a report on how their request changes the project timeline or alters the model. You could also outline the pros and cons of that change.

You want to help your stakeholders achieve their goals, but it's important to set realistic expectations at every stage of the project.

You've learned about balancing the needs of your team members and stakeholders, but you also need to balance stakeholder expectations and what's possible with the projects, resources, and limitations. That's why it's important to be realistic and objective and communicate clearly. This will help stakeholders understand the timeline and have confidence in your ability to achieve those goals. So we know communication is key and we have some good rules to follow for our professional communication.

Sarah: How to communicate with stakeholders

"I'm Sarah and I'm a senior analytical leader at Google. As a data analyst, there's going to be times where you have different stakeholders who have no idea about the amount of time that it takes you to do each project, and in the very beginning when I'm asked to do a project or to look into something, I always try to give a little bit of expectation settings on the turn around because most of your stakeholders don't really understand what you do with data and how you get it and how you clean it and put together the story behind it. The other thing that I want to make clear to everyone is that you have to make sure that the data tells you the stories. Sometimes people think that data can answer everything and sometimes we have to acknowledge that that is simply untrue. I recently worked with a state to figure out why people weren't signing up for the benefits that they needed and deserved. We saw people coming to the site and where they would sign up for those benefits and see if they're qualified. But for some reason there was something stopping them from taking the step of actually signing up. So I was able to look into it using Google Analytics to try to uncover what is stopping people from taking the action of signing up for these benefits that they need and deserve. And so I go into Google Analytics, I see people are going back between this service page and the unemployment page back to the service page, back to the unemployment page. And so I came up with a theory that hey, people aren't finding the information that they need in order to take the next step to see if they qualify for these services. The only way that I can actually know why someone left the site without taking action is if I ask them. I would have to survey them. Google Analytics did not give me the data that I would need to 100% back my theory or deny it. So when you're explaining to your stakeholders, "Hey I have a theory. This data is telling me a story. However I can't 100% know due to the limitations of data," You just have to say it. So the way that I communicate that is I say "I have a theory that people are not finding the information that they need in order to take action. Here's the proved points that I have that support that theory." So what we did was we then made it a little bit easier to find that information. Even though we weren't 100% sure that my theory was correct, we were confident enough to take action and then we looked back, and we saw all the metrics that pointed me to this theory improve. And so that always feels really good when you're able to help a cause that you believe in do better, and help more people through data. It makes all the nerdy learning about SQL and everything completely worth it."

The data tradeoff: Speed versus accuracy

We live in a world that loves instant gratification, whether it's overnight delivery or on-demand movies. We want what we want and we want it now. But in the data world, speed can sometimes be the enemy of accuracy, especially when collaboration is required. We're going to talk about how to balance speedy answers with right ones and how to best address these issues by re-framing questions and outlining problems. That way your team members and stakeholders understand what answers they can expect when.

As data analysts, we need to know the why behind things like a sales slump, a player's batting average, or rainfall totals. It's not just about the figures, it's about the context too and getting to the bottom of these things takes time. So if a stakeholder comes knocking on your door, a lot of times that person may not really know what they need. They just know they want it at light speed. But sometimes the pressure gets to us and even the most experienced data analysts can be tempted to cut corners and provide flawed or unfinished data in the interest of time. When that happens, so much of the story in the data gets lost. That's why communication is one of the most valuable tools for working with teams.

It's important to start with structured thinking and a well-planned scope of work, which we talked about earlier.

If you start with a clear understanding of your stakeholders' expectations, you can then develop a realistic scope of work that outlines agreed upon expectations, timelines, milestones, and reports.

This way, your team always has a road map to guide their actions.

If you're pressured for something that's outside of the scope, you can feel confidence setting more realistic expectations. At the end of the day, it's your job to balance fast answers with the right answers. Not to mention figuring out what the person is really asking. Now seems like a good time for an example.

Imagine your VP of HR shows up at your desk demanding to see how many new hires are completing a training course they've introduced. She says, "There's no way people are going through each section of the course. The human resources team is getting slammed with questions. We should probably just cancel the program."

How would you respond? Well, you could log into the system, crunch some numbers, and hand them to your supervisor. That would take no time at all. But the quick answer might not be the most accurate one. You might say, "I can certainly check out the rates of completion, but I sense there may be more to the story here. Could you give me two days to run some reports and learn what's really going on?" With more time, you can gain context. You and the VP of HR decide to expand the project timeline, so you can spend time gathering anonymous survey data from new employees about the training course. Their answers provide data that can help you pinpoint exactly why completion rates are so low. Employees are reporting that the course feels confusing and outdated. Because you were able to take time to address the bigger problem, the VP of HR has a better idea about why new employees aren't completing the course and can make new decisions about how to update it. Now the training course is easy to follow and the HR department isn't getting as many questions. Everybody benefits.

Redirecting the conversation will help you find the real problem which leads to more insightful and accurate solutions. But it's important to keep in mind, sometimes you need to be the bearer of bad news and that's okay. Communicating about problems, potential solutions and different expectations can help you move forward on a project instead of getting stuck. When it comes to communicating answers with your teams and stakeholders, the fastest answer and the most accurate answer aren't usually the same answer. But by making sure that you understand their needs and setting expectations clearly, you can balance speed and accuracy. Just make sure to be clear and upfront and you'll find success.

Limitations of data

• The case of incomplete (or nonexistent!) data
• Don't miss misaligned data
• Deal with dirty data
• Tell a clear story
• Be the judge

blog: Occam's Razor

Think about your process and outcome

Data has the power to change the world. Think about this. A bank identifies 15 new opportunities to promote a product, resulting in $120 million in revenue. A distribution company figures out a better way to manage shipping, reducing their cost by $500,000. / Google creates a new tool that can identify breast cancer tumors in nearby lymph nodes. / These are all amazing achievements, but do you know what they have in common? They're all the results of data analytics. You absolutely have the power to change the world as a data analyst. And it starts with how you share data with your team.

We will think through all of the variables you should consider when sharing data. When you successfully deliver data to your team, you can ensure that they're able to make the best possible decisions. Earlier we learned that speed can sometimes affect accuracy when sharing database information with a team. That's why you need a solid process that weighs the outcomes and actions of your analysis. So where do you start? Well, the best solutions start with questions. You might remember from our last video, that stakeholders will have a lot of questions but it's up to you to figure out what they really need. So ask yourself, Does your analysis answer the original question? Are there other angles you haven't considered? Can you answer any questions that may get asked about your data and analysis? That last question brings up something else to think about. How detailed should you be when sharing your results? Would a high level analysis be okay?

Above all else, your data analysis should help your team make better, more informed decisions.

Here is another example: Imagine a landscaping company is facing rising costs and they can't stay competitive in the bidding process. One question you could ask to solve this problem is, can the company find new suppliers without compromising quality? (If you gave them a high-level analysis, you'd probably just include the number of clients and cost of supplies.)

Here your stakeholder might object. She's worried that reducing quality will limit the company's ability to stay competitive and keep customers happy. Well, she's got a point. In that case, you need to provide a more detailed data analysis to change her mind. This might mean exploring how customers feel about different brands. You might learn that customers don't have a preference for specific landscape brands. So the company can change to the more affordable suppliers without compromising quality.

If you feel comfortable using the data to answer all these questions and considerations, you've probably landed on a solid conclusion. Nice! Now that you understand some of the variables involved with sharing data with a team, like process and outcome, you're one step closer to making sure that your team has all the information they need to make informed, data-driven decisions.

Amazing teamwork

Meeting best practices

Now it's time to discuss meetings. Meetings are a huge part of how you communicate with team members and stakeholders. Let's cover some easy-to-follow do's and don'ts, you can use for meetings both in person or online so that you can use these communication best practices in the future. At their core, meetings make it possible for you and your team members or stakeholders to discuss how a project is going. But they can be so much more than that. Whether they're virtual or in person, team meetings can build trust and team spirit. They give you a chance to connect with the people you're working with beyond emails. Another benefit is that knowing who you're working with can give you a better perspective of where your work fits into the larger project.

Regular meetings also make it easier to coordinate team goals, which makes it easier to reach your objectives. With everyone on the same page, your team will be in the best position to help each other when you run into problems too. Whether you're leading a meeting or just attending it, there are best practices you can follow to make sure your meetings are a success.

There are some really simple things you can do to make a great meeting. Come prepared, be on time, pay attention, and ask questions. This applies to both meetings you lead and ones you attend.

What do I mean when I say come prepared? Well, a few things. First, bring what you need. If you like to take notes, have your notebook and pens in your bag or your work device on hand. Being prepared also means you should read the meeting agenda ahead of time and be ready to provide any updates on your work. If you're leading the meeting, make sure to prepare your notes and presentations and know what you're going to talk about and of course, be ready to answer questions. These are some other tips that I like to follow when I'm leading a meeting. First, every meeting should focus on making a clear decision and include the person needed to make that decision. And if there needs to be a meeting in order to make a decision, schedule it immediately. Don't let progress stall by waiting until next week's meeting. Lastly, try to keep the number of people at your meeting under 10 if possible. More people makes it hard to have a collaborative discussion. It's also important to respect your team members' time. The best way to do this is to come to meetings on time. If you're leading the meeting, show up early and set up beforehand so you're ready to start when people arrive. You can do the same thing for online meetings. Try to make sure your technology is working beforehand and that you're watching the clock so you don't miss a meeting accidentally.

You don't want to miss something important because you were distracted by something else during a presentation. Paying attention also means asking questions when you need clarification, or if you think there may be a problem with a project plan. Don't be afraid to reach out after a meeting. If you didn't get to ask your question, follow up with the group afterwards and get your answer. When you're the person leading the meeting, make sure you build and send out an agenda beforehand, so your team members can come prepared and leave with clear takeaways. You'll also want to keep everyone involved. Try to engage with all your attendees so you don't miss out on any insights from your team members. Let everyone know that you're open to questions after the meeting too. It's a great idea to take notes even when you're leading the meeting. This makes it easier to remember all questions that were asked. Then afterwards you can follow up with individual team members to answer those questions or send an update to your whole team depending on who needs that information.

Now let's go over what not to do in meetings. Try to make sure you give other team members a chance to talk and always let them finish their thought before you start speaking. Everyone who is attending your meeting should be giving their input. Provide opportunities for people to speak up, ask questions, call for expertise, and solicit their feedback. You don't want to miss out on their valuable insights. And try to have everyone put their phones or computers on silent when they're not speaking, you included.

Now we've learned some best practices you can follow in meetings like come prepared, be on time, pay attention, and ask questions. We also talked about using meetings productively to make clear decisions and promoting collaborative discussions and to reach out after a meeting to address questions you or others might have had. You also know what not to do in meetings: showing up unprepared, late, or distracted, or talking over others and missing out on their input.

Ximena: Joining a new team

Joining a new team was definitely scary at the beginning. Especially at a company like Google where it's really big and everyone is extremely smart. But I really leaned on my manager to understand what I could bring to the table. And that made me feel a lot more comfortable in meetings while sharing my abilities. I found that my best projects start off when the communication is really clear about what's expected. If I leave the meeting where the project has been asked of me knowing exactly where to start and what I need to do, that allows for me to get it done faster, more efficiently, and getting to the real goal of it and maybe going an extra step further because I didn't have to spend any time confused on what I needed to be doing. Communication is so important because it gets you to the finish line the most efficiently and also makes you look really good. When I first started I had a good amount of projects thrown at me and I was really excited. So, I went into them without asking too many questions. At first that was an obstacle, because while you can thrive in ambiguity, ambiguity as to what the project objective is, can be really harmful when you're actually trying to get the goal done. And I overcame that by simply taking a step back when someone asks me to do the project and just clarifying what that goal was. Once that goal was crisp, I was happy to go into the ambiguity of how to get there, but the goal has to be really objective and clear. I'm Ximena and I'm a Financial Analyst.

Leading great meetings

Sample Agenda

From conflict to collaboration

It's normal for conflict to come up in your work life. A lot of what you've learned so far, like managing expectations and communicating effectively can help you avoid conflict, but sometimes you'll run into conflict anyways. If that happens, there are ways to resolve it and move forward. We will talk about how conflict could happen and the best ways you can practice conflict resolution.

A conflict can pop up for a variety of reasons. Maybe a stakeholder misunderstood the possible outcomes for your project; maybe you and your team member have very different work styles; or maybe an important deadline is approaching and people are on edge. A conflict can pop up for a variety of reasons. Maybe a stakeholder misunderstood the possible outcomes for your project; maybe you and your team member have very different work styles; or maybe an important deadline is approaching and people are on edge. Or maybe a teammate sent out an email with all of your insights included, but didn't mention it was your work.

While it can be easy to take conflict personally, it's important to try and be objective and stay focused on the team's goals. Believe it or not, tense moments can actually be opportunities to re-evaluate a project and maybe even improve things. So when a problem comes up, there are a few ways you can flip the situation to be more productive and collaborative.

One of the best ways you can shift a situation from problematic to productive is to just re-frame the problem. Instead of focusing on what went wrong or who to blame, change the question you're starting with. Try asking, how can I help you reach your goal? This creates an opportunity for you and your team members to work together to find a solution instead of feeling frustrated by the problem.

Discussion is key to conflict resolution. If you find yourself in the middle of a conflict, try to communicate, start a conversation or ask things like, are there other important things I should be considering? This gives your team members or stakeholders a chance to fully lay out your concerns. But if you find yourself feeling emotional, give yourself some time to cool off so you can go into the conversation with a clearer head. If I need to write an email during a tense moment, I'll actually save it to drafts and come back to it the next day to reread it before sending to make sure that I'm being level-headed.

If you find you don't understand what your team member or stakeholder is asking you to do, try to understand the context of their request. Ask them what their end goal is, what story they're trying to tell with the data or what the big picture is. By turning moments of potential conflict into opportunities to collaborate and move forward, you can resolve tension and get your project back on track. Instead of saying, "There's no way I can do that in this time frame," try to re-frame it by saying, "I would be happy to do that, but I'll just take this amount of time, let's take a step back so I can better understand what you'd like to do with the data and we can work together to find the best path forward."

Nathan: From the U.S. Marine Corps to data analytics

"Hey, I'm Nathan. I'm a principal data analyst in the Trust and Safety Organization at Google. I joined the Marine Corps Reserves when I was attending college, and the reserve unit I joined was a field artillery unit. So after a challenging Marine Corps boot camp, I went to field artillery fire direction control school. And for those of you that might not know, fire direction control is considered the brains of field artillery, and we use all sorts of computers to do our artillery calculations. But just in case the computers went down, we also were trained how to use slide rules as a backup. And then, a year later, I had the opportunity to be activated as a truck driver instead of my primary job as a field artillery man and was deployed to Iraq to drive trucks for an infantry company. After I got back from Iraq, I finished up my bachelor's degree and then worked as an applications engineer in Austin, Texas, and eventually saw the need to pivot more to focus more on business. And that's when I really fell in love with data analysis was when I was learning a lot more about business. It actually took me a couple of years, when I really sparked an interest in data analysis to land a role where I got to do it full time and really get my hands dirty with the data. Some of the things I did to lay the groundwork to be ready and be qualified for that was I took a Coursera course on R and I also did some data science hackathons where you spend an entire weekend at some university. And they release the dataset Friday night and by Sunday afternoon, you have to come up with some recommendations. So those were two really good ways to really prepare myself, get good experience and really show a strong interest in data analysis. My first job, where I got to do data analysis full-time was at a large bank and I was just in heaven. I got to really do SQL for real, and also I got to use Tableau a ton. Got to go to a Tableau conference. It was really cool. Then I was fortunate enough to get an opportunity to move to Google into my current role. That's in trust and safety. And what's super exciting and fulfilling about that is that similar to the military, it has an overall mission of protecting people, so that's super exciting for me. The things that were instilled in me in the Marines that I use to this very day would be attention to detail. That's super important in the military overall, but especially in field artillery. Secondly, is the importance of communication. You have your own details locked in. You need to make sure that those are communicated really clearly to other people that you're working with and the third would be collaboration. In the military teamwork makes the dream work. You really rely on the team. That's definitely been the case in my post Marine Corps career and jobs.

Module 4 challenge

Course 2 Module 4 Glossary