Leading great meetings

One day soon, you might find yourself planning a meeting in your role as a data analyst. Great things can happen when participants anticipate a well-executed meeting. Attendees show up on time. They aren’t distracted by their laptops and phones. They feel like their time will be well spent. It all comes down to good planning and communication of expectations. The following are our best practical tips for leading meetings.

Before the meeting

If you are organizing the meeting, you will probably talk about the data. Before the meeting:

• Identify your objective. Establish the purpose, goals, and desired outcomes of the meeting, including any questions or requests that need to be addressed.
• Acknowledge participants and keep them involved with different points of view and experiences with the data, the project, or the business.
• Organize the data to be presented. You might need to turn raw data into accessible formats or create data visualizations.
• Prepare and distribute an agenda. We will go over this next.

Crafting a compelling agenda

A solid meeting agenda sets your meeting up for success. Here are the basic parts your agenda should include:

• Meeting start and end time
• Meeting location (including information to participate remotely, if that option is available)
• Objectives
• Background material or data the participants should review beforehand

Here's an example of an agenda for an analysis project that is just getting started:

Sharing your agenda ahead of time

After writing your agenda, it's time to share it with the invitees. Sharing the agenda with everyone ahead of time helps them understand the meeting goals and prepare questions, comments, or feedback. You can email the agenda or share it using another collaboration tool.

During the meeting

As the leader of the meeting, it's your job to guide the data discussion. With everyone well informed of the meeting plan and goals, you can follow these steps to avoid any distractions:

• Make introductions (if necessary) and review key messages
• Present the data
• Discuss observations, interpretations, and implications of the data
• Take notes during the meeting
• Determine and summarize next steps for the group

After the meeting

To keep the project and everyone aligned, prepare and distribute a brief recap of the meeting with next steps that were agreed upon in the meeting. You can even take it a step further by asking for feedback from the team.

• Distribute any notes or data
• Confirm next steps and timeline for additional actions
• Ask for feedback (this is an effective way to figure out if you missed anything in your recap)

A final word about meetings

Even with the most careful planning and detailed agendas, meetings can sometimes go off track. An emergency situation might steal people’s attention. A recent decision might unexpectedly change requirements that were previously discussed and agreed on. Action items might not apply to the current situation. If this happens, you might be forced to shorten or cancel your meeting. That's all right; just be sure to discuss anything that impacts your project with your manager or stakeholders and reschedule your meeting after you have more information.

Communicating challenges

You’ve been learning about communication strategies and ways to ensure all team members feel understood, valued, and appreciated. Building the skills to help make these things possible takes time and effort, but it can make your projects more successful and rewarding for everyone involved.

What are some strategies for communicating challenges or concerns professionally that you’ve used in your own life? Please provide a short paragraph (50-100 words) in your written response. Then, visit the discussion forum to read what other learners have written, and engage in discussion about two posts.

Test your knowledge on teamwork

Question 1

Your supervisor gives you a new data analysis project with unclear instructions, and you become frustrated trying to figure out how to proceed. Which actions can you take next that demonstrate a responsibility to move the project forward? Select all that apply.

• Find your supervisor in person so they can clearly observe how frustrated you are.
• Schedule a time to ask your supervisor more questions about the big picture goals.
• Do some additional research to better understand the context of the request.
• Send your supervisor an email letting them know they did not explain the project well.

Explain: Doing additional research and asking questions are effective ways to determine how to proceed with a new project.

Question 2

You’re working on a data analysis project with a coworker, and the two of you disagree on what the data is telling you. Things get tense. The best course of action is to go to your supervisor and politely explain that your coworker is looking at the data incorrectly. Then, ask to work with a different coworker on future projects. True or False?

A. True

B. False

Explain: Discussion is the key to conflict resolution. If you find yourself in the middle of a conflict, start a conversation so you can each explain your concerns and figure out the best path forward.

Question 3

A director emails you asking for a report by the end of the week. This type of report takes at least 10 days to complete correctly. What is the best course of action?

A. Complete the report as best you can by the end of the week so you meet the requested deadline.

B. Call the director, and let them know there’s no way anyone could possibly meet that deadline.

C. Forward the email to another data analyst on your team, and ask them to do the report instead. It’ll still be late, but at least it won’t reflect poorly on you.

D. Email the director and say that you would be happy to do that, but you believe it will take 10 days to get the information you need. Then, ask if you can discuss the possibility of a different timeline.

Explain: The best course of action is to email the director to politely explain the timeline required to complete the report properly.