Episode 25: Let’s Set Your Data Communication Goals

In this episode we’ll be setting your data communication goals for this year. I’ll help you figure out what you should focus on and what’s important to you for your data career. 

You can also listen on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Spotify.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode

6 steps to setting your communication goals for this year:

1. Do a self-assessment. What specific areas of communication do you feel strong in? What about weak in?
2. Determine your goal focus. Which areas of communication are the most important ones for your current job role? What about your next job role? Review the list you made in step 1 to highlight/circle the areas you want to focus on based on your immediate career needs.
3. Break down your goals into manageable tasks.
4. Set deadlines. If planning for the entire year seems daunting, just plan for the first quarter of this year, so the next 3 months. 
5. Get an accountability partner. This can be your boss, co-worker, friend, or another loved one. Tell me then your goals and when you plan on achieving them.
6. Get feedback. This doesn’t have to be from your accountability partner.

Get in Touch with Hana

Let me know what you think of the episode, you can message at hana@trending-analytics.com or on Instagram @hanalytx.

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If you enjoyed this episode, check out this episode where you learn how to conquer your anxieties with presentations.

Episode Transcript

Hana: [00:00:00] welcome to season three of the podcast and happy new Year. In this episode, we’ll be setting your data communication goals for the new year. So why set data communication goals. Goals give us a clear target to shoot for, and when you set them correctly, they can help us measure our progress towards that target.

So in this episode, I’ll help you figure out what you should focus on and what’s important to you for your data So there are six steps for setting our communication goals. First, I want you to do a self-assessment. Figure out what specific areas of communication do you feel that you’re strong in, and which areas do you feel weak in.

For instance, you could feel like you’re strong in communicating through writing like emails and reports, but you find yourself weaker in presenting and speaking in meetings and conferences. The second step is to determine your goal focus. So which areas of [00:01:00] communication are the most important ones for your current job role? And maybe if you want to figure out what’s important for your next job role, if you plan on transitioning this year.

So I want you to review the list you made in step one when you did the self-assessment to figure out what you’re strong in, what’s your weak in and then circle or highlight the ones that you want to focus on based on your immediate career needs. 

For instance, maybe your current role requires you to present data more often than writing reports. So you’ll want to focus on public speaking and presentation related skills versus writing.

By now in this step, you should have a smaller list of goals that you wanna focus on for this new year. . The third step is to break down your goals into more manageable tasks. So if one of your communication goals is to improve your data presentation skills, break it [00:02:00] down into specific tasks.

For instance, one of them could be listening to the Weekly Art of Communicating Data podcast. I could also be enrolling in Hana’s present data with confidence course. Another shameless plug. It could also be volunteering to present at meetings at work so that you can get practice. So try to break them down into manageable and specific tasks.

Then step four is to set deadlines. I personally work better if I have deadlines, and when people don’t give me deadlines, I still ask them to set a deadline for me, just because that I know that motivates me. So from the task that you broke down in the previous step, Go ahead and start setting some deadlines.

If planning for the entire year seems really daunting to you, then just plan for the first quarter of this year. So just plan for the next three months. That’s it, and you can set your goals again three months later.

Step number five is to get an accountability partner. This can be your boss, [00:03:00] coworker, friend, or another loved one. So you’ll wanna then tell them your goals and when you plan on achieving them. And then step six, the final step is to get feedback. This doesn’t have to be from your accountability partner necessarily.

For the example we’ve been using for this episode with data presentation skills, you can ask your manager during your one-on-ones for feedback on your recent presentation, and that way you get some idea of how well you’re progressing with your goals.

Cuz again, goals are really effective when they are a clear target for us. They can help us measure our progress towards that target. So that feedback is gonna be really important.

 So I hope this helps you with setting your goals for the new year. This episode is short and sweet because I want you to actually implement what we talked about. So I’m giving you that extra time, and if it’s easier for you, I will have show notes that will have these six steps laid out so that you can go [00:04:00] back to this, go back to the show notes and map out your goals for this year. And if you feel like it, you can share those goals with me by emailing me at hana@trending-analytics.com or you can DM me on social media. I’ll have all the links including my email address and the show notes.

Good luck with setting your goals and happy New Year.