Business Skills for Data Professionals
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Duration: 14-16 hours (plus additional time for exercises)
Learning Overview:
This Learning Pathway is designed to help you, as a data professional, develop your own personal impact in the workplace. You will acquire a range of knowledge, skills and tools to be effective amongst your peers, whilst seeking to influence those you work with and/or who manage you. It is aimed at those new to the world of work, although the skills learnt are just as valuable for anyone looking to upskill, thus increasing your influence within a team or the wider business.From employing sound communication and influencing skills, writing persuasively in a business context, through to solving problems in a logical and structured way, this specially curated learning journey will set you up to deliver great results in any business environment.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- Adopt important strategies for communicating with and influencing others effectively.
- Employ behaviours to work positively with others in teams.
- Identify key skills for effective business writing, including emails and reports.
- Implement critical thinking and problem-solving techniques to help solve your most pressing challenges.
Pre-requisites:
This learning pathway is aimed at data professionals new to the corporate world or looking to develop their core business skills.
You should already have:
- Previous experience in a business environment, if possible (although this is not essential).
- Experience of working with others in other settings such as education, clubs, societies or volunteering.
- A desire to learn aimed at increasing your personal impact and influence in the workplace.
Learning Modules:
Communication, Influence and Teams
Learning Objective: Adopt important strategies for communicating effectively, influence colleagues and stakeholders plus work successfully with others in a business context.
- Describe the difference between ‘wants’ versus ‘needs’
- Know the difference between open and closed questions
- Explain the difference between introverts and extroverts
- Practice active listening skills
- Describe the importance of and know how to interpret body language
- Explore the four emotional worlds and get a basic understanding of the importance of Emotional Awareness in business
- Explain the importance of being able to influence in business
- Explore the concepts of ‘power’ and ‘empathy’
- Describe the four-stage model of consistency
- Practice influencing techniques
- Explain the concepts of ‘credibility’ and ‘presence’
- Describe different types of teamwork
- Explain a four-stage model for running a team
- Describe ways in which conflict within teams can be used to good effect
- Explain how to communicate effectively with team members and maximise time in meetings
- Understand the importance of rapport and how to use it to good effect
- Explore self-communication and how to appreciate its importance for managing your own health and wellbeing as well as communicating with others
Business Writing
Learning Objectives: Adopt key skills for effective and persuasive business writing, including emails and reports.
- Reflect on who your audience is and why you are writing in a business context
- Describe what it is your readers want from your writing
- Explain how to write with purpose
- Describe a method for planning and structuring your writing
- Explain what ‘flow’ is when writing in a business context
- Describe how you can make your business writing easy to follow
- Explain how to write a great sentence
- Describe words that can attract and repel your readers
- Explain four basic concepts which demonstrate the use of good punctuation and grammar
- Describe how to get feedback on your business writing and why this is useful
- Explain how to edit your work and why this is valuable
Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
Learning Objective: Implement critical thinking and problem-solving techniques to help solve your most pressing challenges.
- Describe what ‘critical thinking’ is and (as importantly) isn’t
- Explain two core principles of critical thinking
- Describe the reality of decision-making in a business context
- Explore the concepts of ‘proportionality’ and ‘availability’ when gathering evidence
- Explore the importance of data quality
- Understand four important concepts when gathering data
- Describe an approach to effective qualitative data gathering and interviewing
- Define your desired outcome when problem-solving
- Explore methods for examining your problem in more detail
- Explain how to generate options for solving your problem
- Describe methods for analysing your options
- Explore ways in which you can make better decisions
- Describe how to implement your chosen solution/s
- Explore evaluation methods to ensure your solution is effective
- Describe ways to present your solution and influence decision-makers towards accepting your recommendations
- Describe five key questions which will help you think critically and solve problems more effectively