One of the things they didn’t tell you when you started doing Data Science (DS) courses and MOOCs, is that a lot of your time (a looottt) will be spend in meetings.

These meetings are important. Very important. There you can understand the business, the goals of the area, their KPIs, and what are the requirements for the work they want you to do.

Listening. The Hard Parts.

Sometimes listening it’s very hard. You may hear some things that you don’t want or have all your beliefs shaken.

For this reason, learning to listen is a skill that is acquired over time. Commonly in work meetings, there will be many different points of view, and instead of trying to impose your point of view always, it is better to try to reach agreements and more general solutions that solve the problems.

Careful here, that doesn’t mean that if you are right, and you have the means to prove it, you should just stay there and agree to whatever. The concept of idea-meritocracy is important here. Everyone has a point of view, one better than the other, being able to discern and find the best solution to a problem is possible. Here you can see a great video that explain this in a more graphical way: