S1 EP 002 | Data Mastery: Elevating Leadership & Business Brilliance

Episode #2 

[00:00:00] Taty Fittipaldi: Is he cheating on me? What are people really doing when they go into the trouble of searching messages, phones, and pockets? They are searching for information and what they really want is to then use the information to make a decision. Data is the lifeblood of decision making, especially if it’s well collected, analyzed, and utilized.

[00:00:27] Taty Fittipaldi: The process of data collection is critical to uncovering insights, identifying trends, and making informed decisions that can drive growth and success. Or, well, divorce. But this is not a marriage podcast though, so in today’s episode, we will discuss the importance of data collection and a simple technique to improve tenfold leadership, business acumen, and executive presence.

[00:00:56] Taty Fittipaldi: Hello and welcome to the Leadership Nest [00:01:00] podcast, the podcast that nests stories in your heart. Knowledge and science to soar the leadership in you. I’m your host, Taty Fittipaldi. As always, our podcast will be divided into three phases, a story, a lesson and its application. This way you can have structure and information while also having some fun.

[00:01:22] Taty Fittipaldi: This program is brought to you by Coaching Expatriates.

[00:01:39] Taty Fittipaldi: Everyone was arriving at the big meeting room and was taking their places, looking concerned and agitated. The last person arrived, and it was the most senior executive in the room. There were a total of 20 employees in the meeting room. Everyone looked really stressed. Everyone in Joyce’s department looked very [00:02:00] upset, including her boss.

[00:02:01] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce, however, looked really calm and posed. The most senior executive from the other department started the meeting. We are here today because someone clearly messed up. He said, I am not happy. I understand that my team will have to go over a bunch of paperwork that you guys need for the lawsuit.

[00:02:26] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce’s boss, also a high executive, nervously started to address the. Comment when Joyce quickly tapped his wrist and smiled confidently. Let me take this one boss. She said the senior executive from the other department looked at the scene with a certain disbelief, raising one of his eyebrows, Joyce calmly took her notepad with yellowish papers and slowly turned the pages to find what she was looking for.[00:03:00]

[00:03:01] Taty Fittipaldi: Everyone was looking at her and the suspense was killing everyone. Jack, the senior executive in question, looked a bit impatient, but was clearly curious as to why Joyce was the heck so confident and calm. She started, Jack, on the 5th of January, Mark, from your team, said that he had selected three vendors already, and had even talked to two already.

[00:03:28] Taty Fittipaldi: He was waiting for the last one, so that he could send an executive summary with all three options. To the departments involved at the slightest indication that Jack wanted to say something. She made a sign for him to wait and continued after turning a few more pages on the 26th of January. She said Linda said that one of the vendors was disqualified in the background and requirement check and that Mark would have to come up with a new vendor for comparisons and checks.[00:04:00]

[00:04:00] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce looked at everyone in the room slowly while smiling and said, And then, Sri from your team said on the 4th of February that a new vendor was already selected. Checked. And, since the price was so unbeatable, by the 9th of February we had finalized all contracts with this last vendor. Oh, yes, one important thing I almost forgot to mention.

[00:04:25] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce leaned forward. When we started this whole vendor selection, I told your team, she then turned some more pages. Yes, yes. On the 21st of December last year, that the following lists of key safety requirements were needed for every single vendor. She slipped Jack a paper. That seemed an email copy.

[00:04:49] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce continued while Jack was checking the paper. We’re here today not because someone clearly messed up, she said. We’re here today because we need the [00:05:00] paperwork for the third vendor’s requirement and background check. Jack looked at Mark and Linda, then each looked at each other, then Linda quickly said, Well, I never received any third request for requirements or background check.

[00:05:14] Taty Fittipaldi: Joyce opened her small paper notebook to a blank page and said, All right, that does not matter now. We can improve any procurement process later. What we need to figure out right now, as a team, is how to support the lawsuit paperwork. So let’s go over all the communications with this vendor.

[00:05:36] Taty Fittipaldi: All right. When you think about this story, what is leadership to you? Regardless of who were the bosses, who were the leaders here and what were their power chips? This episode is sponsored by Coaching Expatriates, a leading global executive development company that helps leaders around the world create happier and more [00:06:00] profitable workplaces using the.

[00:06:01] Taty Fittipaldi: Four success pillars in global leadership, an innovative leadership learning methodology, visit their website@www.coachingexpatriates.com.

[00:06:18] Taty Fittipaldi: Today’s lesson,

[00:06:25] Taty Fittipaldi: when we think about collecting data, we might think about collecting numbers, reports, and so on. These are all important things as well, and I am sure every leader has their. Fair share of data collection on a regular basis today. However, the lesson is about collecting facts as data in our story. Joyce’s biggest power chip was having documented each interaction during the project and having all details of.

[00:06:51] Taty Fittipaldi: Who said what and when people talk a lot about communication skills, but very rarely do they include in [00:07:00] communication training, the importance of collecting facts and data as a communication tool, how we connect. Each interaction and communication of a project or task is still communication. Joyce was able to communicate effectively and lead the discussion because she had collected all the data.

[00:07:21] Taty Fittipaldi: Today’s lesson is about the importance of collecting data to appropriately lead and communicate ideas. Collecting data through a simple technique will improve business acumen. and executive presence. And this happens simply because knowing things raises our power chips during discussions, meetings, and events.

[00:07:46] Taty Fittipaldi: Before we explore this further, let me point out that data should not be collected to place blame on others or cover our asses. Blaming is not leading, is getting stuck in [00:08:00] drama. Avoiding this was perfectly exemplified when Joyce said that they were there not because they needed to find out who messed up, but what to do about it going forward to solve the problem.

[00:08:13] Taty Fittipaldi: The simple data collection technique is called journaling. If that makes it sound like you are going to write a secret diary, then call it a day. Note taking instead. The purpose of this data collection technique is that you will use this data in the future to remember, create, validate, and drive ideas.

[00:08:32] Taty Fittipaldi: What’s also important to let you know is that once we review data in the future, we might learn new things from it as well. In this story, reviewing the data that Joyce collected helped the team quickly come up to a conclusion that the third vendor was never checked for requirements and background by a complete mistake.

[00:08:54] Taty Fittipaldi: This could identify a potential process problem or team problem that could be fixed for [00:09:00] better process quality and consistency. A final learning bonus that I want to highlight about notes is that by collecting facts and data this way, going over what we did throughout the year and putting together our performance review and accomplishments.

[00:09:16] Taty Fittipaldi: comes a breeze. We do so much throughout the year that it’s normal to forget a bunch of fabulous things that we did. Today’s tips to apply what you learned.

[00:09:34] Taty Fittipaldi: In this journaling or business note taking technique, you’ll collect data on two levels, meeting wise and project wise. For meetings, we’ll use the technique that I explore in one of my blog posts, and I will leave the link in the show notes if you want to read it in detail. It’s a variation of the Cornell note taking technique.

[00:09:58] Taty Fittipaldi: This technique consists of you [00:10:00] including in your notes the date, the topic of the meeting, its main takeaway, and the outline of the meeting containing three key elements. And then, answering below these three things, the five WH questions for that meeting. The three outline elements are number one. The context of the meeting, for example, payroll vendor decision before vendor’s contract aspiration.

[00:10:27] Taty Fittipaldi: Number two, what’s pending to be done. For example, get procurement to research three other candidates. Number three, the final decision made in that meeting. For example, we need to reduce costs by 20% so we will negotiate with the current vendor and run a new RFP in parallel. If in this meeting, for any chance, no decision was yet made, you can put under this element that no decision was yet made.

[00:10:54] Taty Fittipaldi: The five WH questions that you’ll include in your notes under these three [00:11:00] elements are What, what decision needs to be made? Or, what is the next step in the decision processor project? Why? Why do we need to make this decision? What’s at stake? When? By when do we need to make a decision or take action or complete a task or project?

[00:11:18] Taty Fittipaldi: Where? Where are we going to do this? Another department, off site, using a system. Who? Who’s the owner of this action or next step or who do we need to talk to for the next step? How? How to go about this? What’s our plan? As you can see, these are just bullets. You don’t really need to record much more than that.

[00:11:39] Taty Fittipaldi: This will give you around 10 lines per meeting note. Your objective is to record so that you can review and remember fast in the future. The second level. For projects, besides recording the meeting, as we said before, we need to create an extra record. After we are done with the project, [00:12:00] we’ll write a final entry answering the following questions.

[00:12:03] Taty Fittipaldi: Number one, what went well in this project? Number two, what should I have done that I didn’t? Number three, how did this project make me feel and why? Number four, which skill or experience could I gain to improve my effectiveness the next time? Number five, who could support me the next time?

[00:12:30] Taty Fittipaldi: Key takeaways.

[00:12:35] Taty Fittipaldi: What’s your main takeaway from this episode? Here are mine. Number one, notes are powerful for gathering information to improve business acumen and executive presence and drive ideas more effectively. Number two, note taking can be seen as an integral part of our communication skill set. Number three, we should take notes for every meeting and every project.

[00:12:58] Taty Fittipaldi: In other words, every [00:13:00] interaction in business potentially deserves a note. Number four, notes can be very simple, with bullets for a takeaway, a quick outline, and the 5WH questions. Number five, notes are not for helping blame other people. Blaming is not leading. is getting stuck in drama. Number six, notes provide strong support for data to help us put together all our accomplishments and deliverables for our performance conversations or reviews, especially when a lot of work is more qualitative than quantitative.

[00:13:36] Taty Fittipaldi: This brings us to the End of this Leadership Nest episode. We hope you have enjoyed learning about improving business acumen and executive presence through data collection. Tune into our episode next week, when we will be chatting about the global leadership pillars and how they can reshape performance.

[00:13:59] Taty Fittipaldi: If [00:14:00] you have any questions you’d like us to answer in the future episode of the show, just go to speakpipe. com slash. the show notes below to leave us a brief audio message. Make sure to visit us on our website, www. leadershipnest. com, where you can subscribe to our show anywhere podcasts are streamed, so you never miss a show.

[00:14:28] Taty Fittipaldi: While there, if you find value in our show, you can also subscribe to our global leadership weekly newsletter from CoachingXP. Patriots, where we deliver bite sized lessons on global leadership, decision making, and cultural competence to help you learn how to think, relate, and strategize in a whole different way as a global leader.

[00:14:50] Taty Fittipaldi: If you liked the show, you might want to check our online global executive leadership program, a nine week leadership development and learning system. That will help you [00:15:00] lead internationally while making financially conscious and impactful decisions. Tatia Fittipaldi is also available for private coaching.

[00:15:08] Taty Fittipaldi: See the website for more details at www. coachingexpatriates. com Executive dash coaching. Thanks for joining us this week on the Leadership Nest podcast. Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode. Until the next time, keep nesting. Wherever you are in the globe, this is Taty Fittipaldi wishing you a beautiful day.