 This video is part of the Public Health to Data Science rebrand program. OK, good evening, everyone, and welcome to our meetup today. Today's topic is, thank you for coming. Today's topic is managing from the bottom. So what managing from the bottom actually is, it sounds bad, but it's not bad. And I can guarantee that it's not bad because I'm a manager. What managing from the bottom is doing things in your job to make your manager's job easier. And probably you're already doing a lot of those things, but there's some maybe that you hadn't thought of. Or sometimes when I'm coaching people, I tell them stuff, and they're like, you're kidding. The manager's going to like that. But I explain what it's like to be a manager. And then they realize, oh, yeah, they might actually like that. So I just wanted this to be kind of like a panel discussion where we all sort of share tips and tricks. And what I was going to do is just sort of write it down. Let me share my screen here. So I was just going to write down different strategies. And you guys can say whatever you want. I have the first question I was going to ask everybody. Do you have any strategies you use when you write to your manager in email to make it easy to get permission to do something? And if so, what are they? And oh, and I preface this with most of the time, people like us are doing really technical data intensive jobs. And whoever we're reporting to or even when I'm working with customers, oftentimes they don't really understand exactly what I'm doing. So it becomes kind of difficult to like communicate. So the first question here, do you have any strategies you use when you write to your manager in email to make it easy to get permission to do something or just to clarify what you're doing and get approval? And if so, what are they? Can you think of any? Do you avoid writing to your manager in email? Or do you like to write to your manager in email? I don't know, to be honest, so. Well, what do you normally say if you write to your manager? Like we were talking about the manager you work with most of the time, and she's pretty nice. Do you ever have to write to her to get permission? Like even to take a day off or something like that? Oh, so those are the things that I like to take PTO because blah, blah, blah, but that's it. OK, well, do you use any strategies when you word that email to make it easier on the manager? No. So there, I know, shorter is better. OK, so you try to make it short. You do if you're taking time off because you have a complicated family matter, do you explain the whole thing? So I don't even, if that's a family matter, I don't say that I have a time conflict or something like this. OK, so one thing is keep email to managers short and just summarize personal matters, right? Yeah. OK, well, when you're asking for time off or anything like that, what do you think the manager needs to know in that email? What do you have to include? So there's click reasoning and how many dates or how long. OK, so you need to be clear about dates if you are asking for a time off or date related things and times. OK, and you said reason. Why would you have to give a reason exactly? Do you know why? I just customily do. Well, I'll tell you why. Because payroll, time off on payroll gets classified. Like there's vacation, sick time, part time, earned part time. There's all these classifications, some time off. And if you're like emailing me in the middle of the day and you're like, I feel sick, I'm going home, I automatically can guess that you're taking sick time. But if you email me and you say, I have a personal matter, I'm taking tomorrow off, I don't know if you're taking vacation or part time or you know what I mean. So when you say reason, that's what the manager really wants to know is how do I process your payroll for this time? Actually, in my company, so there is already the time off request web-based thing available. And if that's a planned PTO, so that just I select it. And once that I submitted or not, so they're online, that's automatically go to that manager, notify her or him, she's going to take a PTO. I see. So you filed that form electronically, like synchronized with emailing her and explaining. Right. So I see. So she already kind of knows. But of course, if you say I'm taking the case, if you say I'm taking sick time for two weeks to go on vacation, that's not going to work, right? Well, it's not. So there is a sick day. So there are all kinds of selections. I know that's what I was saying. And so part of part of what. So I guess you're actually answering it totally right, Mika, is when you're emailing the manager, what she's kind of doing is looking at that data entry in making sure they match, right? And let's say you even made a mistake because there was only a million choices, right? And I, as a manager, made a mistake on those like weird ones, like going to the funeral or whatever. Then you can just, she can just fix it if you made the mistake. And so that's good. So it's when taking time off, the manager has to, oh, I'll do class by the time off. Okay, that's very good. Mika, this is actually very good. Beth, you were going to say something. Do you want to say something? Is there something, you try to include an email when emailing your supervisors or bosses? I think everything that Mika said, I agree, but I do have the hardest time. Like I feel like sometimes I over communicate or like, you know, organize about what to, like, you know, if I need to give all my personal reason for if I'm taking some time off. I don't know. I think I over communicate. Oh, okay. It's hard to choose what exactly to say over communicate or under communicate. And I think I also heard what you said is that it's hard to organize the ideas in the email. Is that like the priority? Is that what you said? Yeah, I think so. You know, we were just taking about the simple case of trying to ask her time off. Sometimes we actually have to ask something pretty complicated in email just because we're forced to, like there's no meaning available when we have to ask this. One of the things I wanted to show you is this thing I learned and I even cannot find it on the internet. I learned it a long time ago and it has really helped me choose how to communicate when I have a message, regardless of whether it's for my boss or somebody equal or someone below me. And that is this concept of, so first of all, right now what's happening is synchronous communication between us because we're having a meeting. So if we're ever talking on the phone or having a meeting, it's called synchronous. If we're like texting each other or we're emailing each other or leaving message on the discussion board, you can see that that's asynchronous, okay? Now, when we have a synchronous communication, think of all of the emotion we can communicate. Just think of all the nuance. Like I can say something, you can interrupt me, we can make jokes, you know, something that wouldn't look the same in asynchronous, right? Like imagine I text you something and you're like, maybe that's a joke but I don't think it's funny. I mean, it's hard to tell in asynchronous. So one of the things is this thing here and I'll give you these links, this is this triangle, this rhetorical triangle of ethos, logos and pathos. And the only reason I'm showing you this is because somebody taught me this communication thing. I don't remember who they are, but it's like really useful, okay? So logos communication are facts, statistics, case studies, scientific evidence. You guys don't know what that is, right? Just kidding. But you know how we were just talking about, like if you're asking for a day off or you're asking, you need to do something, that's kind of logos. That's like what day, when or how many hours, you know, and I'll tell you, logo stuff works really well in asynchronous. Like if I'm coming over to your place and I'm talking on the phone, I'll say text me your address, right? Because that's logos is text, is the address. I can put it in the GPS and I won't screw it up. But if you've ever been on an email chain, especially at work, where somebody's like, okay, here's when our meeting is and that's a bunch of logos. And what you get back is a bunch of pathos, which is emotional stuff that says, how come we're having this meeting when you know I'm gonna be gone? So that's a bunch of emotions. So what I've learned is if ever you're having asynchronous communication about logos and it turns pathos, stop the asynchronous communication. So if I'm texting you guys and saying, okay, let's meet up at the restaurant and somebody texts back and says, I hate that restaurant, why are you picking on me? Well, then I'm gonna call you. And that's sort of the way it would used to work. I'd be at the army and we'd be emailing. And then somebody'd be upset and I'd go call them because it just doesn't get better. If somebody starts getting upset and email on the text gets a pathos there, it's not gonna get any better. You're up to talk to them. And ethos, this in communication, like I haven't even mentioned it, this trustworthiness that that generally has to do with public speaking, like going up and being trustworthy. But I don't have a problem with that. I only have a, the logos and the pathos. All right, that was just a little thing I wanted to give you guys. All right, well, we've talked a little about communicating asynchronously and email. Let's talk about this other communication that we might have with managers when they're stressed out. Because remember, we work in environments where there's data and we have access to the data and we understand it. But a lot of times our supervisors, either they understand it, I mean, they're smart enough to understand it, but they're just too busy to have their fingers in it. So they really rely on us to just communicate to them how their projects are doing and you can feel really stressed out if you don't really understand what people are saying. So let's think of a time, try to think of a time, a time when a manager appeared mad or stressed about a project you were working on when nothing was actually wrong. The manager simply didn't understand and was stressed about it. Did anybody successfully explain it to them? And if so, what strategies work the best for like calming them down or unconfusing them? And you might have to just think of a time when you observed this, it might not have been you who were participating. Can you think of a time when your manager was stressed about something? Like how did they act? Wow, you guys have awesome jobs. My managers were stressed all the time. So yeah, that's the situation manager is stressed out because of that project I am working on or in general. Just where a manager is stressed out. Like for instance, let's say that you're working on a project and you're gonna get it done in time. Like you're probably even gonna get it done ahead of time. But it's just not done yet. And so the managers all stressed out because they're worried you won't get it done in time even though you know you will. I mean, I've been in that situation a lot in my life because the manager just doesn't really understand what I'm doing. So they're like, I'll freak out. But I always just tell them, don't worry about it. I'll get it done a day early. Like I'm almost done now, but they just don't freak out. In that case, so there, I just kind of give her usually. Okay. So there, I don't know if my manager is stressed out or not because we have all the remote. I don't see her. I don't hear her. But what I do usually do is I just have, I just give her sort of like a status report. Just a quick status report. What I am doing, where it is and just casual. And you do that by email? Well, sometimes email, but most of the time I just kind of a drop chat. That's all. Oh, I see you have a chat thing at work. Okay. So you can do short status reports, keep managers apprised. How does she respond when you give her a status report? Does she say thank you? Or does she start talking to you or? Answer them. Usually no response. But if she started talking about something, that's a bad news usually. Because usually those are the times she wants me to hurry up or she, the priority switched to something else and I have to switch to a different project. Usually that kind of thing. If she doesn't respond, no news, it's a good news. That's it. So it sounds to me like she is. So usually when I'm a manager, I don't just wait around for people to give me progress reports. I mean, that's pretty passive, you know what I'm saying? But I guess that's her style. It's not a bad idea to give people progress reports. But you identified the problem with it, Mika, is if you're kind of like a passive manager, you're not active, you're not like on top of things, like trying to get ahead of stuff. What happens is if someone talks to you, emails you, you go, oh, I got to do something and you just start talking to them randomly about whatever you want to talk about. You know what I mean? Like, for example, imagine I emailed you guys and I said, look, I published a new course for you guys. And here I gave you a new video and you guys just didn't respond. Like, what does that mean? You don't even care? You know what I mean? And so one of the problems can, so because you're communicating asynchronously, I mean, whatever your system works, right? But because you're communicating asynchronously, it's hard to learn emotions, right? Like, I mean, it sounds fine, but like let's say just imagine you called your boss every day and said, here's what I'm doing. You could hear your emotions, like you would learn a lot more emotionally about what's going on, but maybe it's better that you don't. One of the things is sometimes you're sort of trapped interacting with a manager who is in a stressed state. And sometimes my employees have been trapped with me in a stressed state, which is probably not good. And I actually, I once had an employee who was being abused at work by unfortunately my boss. And one day a really bad thing happened and she started screaming at me because she was so over the top. I mean, she wasn't really mad at me, but she just started screaming at me. So it's really hard to deal with sometimes when you have that kind of emotion, but I wanted to share something with you that I learned along the way and I found it really useful, but it's a skill and you have to practice it, okay? You can't just like, you know, like this thing I just showed you logos, like you can apply that right away. This is something you have to practice and it's not that easy, but you can practice with anybody. It's a way of interacting with people and it's called active listening. If either of you have heard about it, just let me know that you've heard about it. I want to hear about it from you. To be honest, I don't even know where I learned about active listening. I could have learned about it in like a psychology class or a communication class or a management class. Like I don't even remember, but I've learned that it's taught like you see here, this is by a social worker. It's taught in therapy. It's like to help people communicate better, but I really use it in management a lot. So what active listening is, is it's the set of skills or techniques for interacting, talking, but it's not a set of skills I would use just in day to day conversation. It's a set of skills I use when the conversations get heated, like when that employee was screaming at me because she had just been verbally attacked by someone else. And so one of the ways, so you can see these are the choices. So first, be fully present. So she came into my office and she was saying, she was screaming. She was saying, I had it with this place. Everybody's bullying me, you know. And one of the things I did was I repeated back to her. I reflected what I heard. Like I said, you know, and I also gave her compassion. I said, I'm sorry you're going through this. You can give people compassion without validating what happened. Like if somebody says, somebody stole my car, like you may not know whether they stole the car, but you can say, I'm sorry you're going through this. And I also said to her, I hear you've been attacked again by my boss or you've been insulted again. And it's not fair to be insulted. You know, saying statements that are factual and supportive are helpful. When people are not so heated, like she was there, like sometimes people have come to me and said, I think you're treating me unfairly. And I'll say, okay, well, tell me about that. How do you think I'm treating you unfairly? Or in what way do you think I'm treating you unfairly? And then I try to listen to what they're saying. But when you're active listening, you really listen to what they're saying, not for the purpose of figuring out what you're gonna say, but to just make sure that you can kind of repeat back to them what they just said, so you understand it. And so like these questions here, can you tell me more about that? Or like, I always say like, well, how did that make you feel? Or why did you choose to do that? And I'm really open-minded. And usually what I've found is when I've been in really horrible situations, like I'm presenting on a database and some random person starts yelling at me, which is shocking, but happens. I would start doing this. I'd start listening to them yell and I'd hear what they were yelling and I'd say, okay, I hear you're saying this and that. You know, you seem upset. Why are you so upset? You know what I mean? It would really take the temperature down. I mean, I'm glad you guys don't have all of that, but I'll give you this link to this active listening. And what's nice about it is it feels weird, but if you start doing it with people who are feeling emotional, like if somebody's, you know, somebody you love came home from work and they're like, I had a really bad day, just practice this active listening and they'll feel really good. They'll feel really heard by you. Like they'll feel like, wow, this was a great conversation. So it's not a bad set of skills. Alrighty, any questions so far? No, I'm just gonna say it is one of the areas even for parenting that, where I work. That's a good one. Well, I continue to work on. I mean, it's definitely. You know, it's interesting you brought that up. I don't have any kids, but there was a few different periods of my life where for whatever reason, I was taking care of a lot of like teenage boys, not teenage girls, teenage boys. And I'd already learned all these sort of management skills and stuff and I do a lot of yoga. I realized that a lot of the stuff does come naturally to me because I've been like practicing it so much. And it really does like teenagers can really be like very emotional, like very hair trigger emotional. It's just teenage years. And it's weird because they act sort of adult when they're being emotional, but they like, I can't even tell you how many times one of them being emotional. And I'd just be like, are you feeling okay? You know, they'd be like, no. In fact, this brings up a good other thing I wanted to show you, which is you're gonna laugh at how simple this is, but it works so well for me. And actually I learned it from, like I'm not in recovery, but I learned a lot about alcoholics, anonymous. And I learned it from that, and it's the HALT technique. So if you ever feel like, if you've ever feel like you're in a mood where you're just snapping at people or you're just anything is sort of pushing you over the edge or you're working with someone, you know, either your kid or your friend or somebody at work and you feel like they're feeling like that, especially if it's somebody you know pretty well, right? Try this HALT principle. So HALT, you know, means stop, right? But you just stop and then you look at this. So here's what HALT stands for. Hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. And I'll tell you, when I'm in a bad mood, like a really bad mood, like, and I don't know why, you know, it's not caused by anything. I really do sit and ask myself this. Like I have blood pressure problems, so sometimes it is hungry. Sometimes I'm feeling angry about something and I didn't really realize it. So I look at that. Lonely is a little hard. You know, if you're feeling lonely, you're feeling lonely. But at least you can know it and you can try to seek out something to make you feel less lonely. Like, you know, if you're just feeling sad about something that happened, you can look for something that'll make you, you know, put you in a better mood. And feeling tired, that's one, if you can identify it, if you can take a short nap, it really, really, really helps. Like, even if you're exhausted because you're working on a project, if you can find a way to take, even less a half hour nap and wake up again, it really will help your mood. But anyway, that's the HALT principles. And when I would use that with those, like sometimes these teenagers would be screaming and I'd just stop and they'd say, let me just ask you, are you feeling hungry? Are you feeling angry and lonely? And I was surprised, sometimes they'd be screaming, I'd say, are you hungry? And then they'd just say, yeah, if we'd eat and everything was over, so that's kind of funny. But anyway, so you're learning all my management tricks. All right, let's look at, let me see. Here is one that I wanted to share with you because I think this might have probably has happened to all three of us at one point. And here it is. Think of a time you were given an assignment to do with data, but you could not do it because of a problem with the data that was not caused by you. How did you explain the problem to whoever gave you the data? And what did you two do to resolve the problem? Like in my previous roles, most of the tasks that I have to do were very limited in the way and I know what I need to do and what I need to get. So I didn't have a lot of responsibilities. And a bit at the same time, like the managers, at least the last one or two were really nice, very approachable. Like, you know, just you could just use teams or whatever question you have, they were like, you know, there's no, you know, stupid question. So come to me, whatever you have. So then there happened to be mostly women too and they were in moms. And so they were like, motherly. Motherly. They were like, oh, sweetie, we'll fix it. But were there, even though they were nice and motherly and stuff, did you ever have to come to them and say, well, you assigned me to do this, but the data aren't really like that. And you had to explain to them that whatever they told you to do it just can't really happen that way. Yes. I mean, a slightly different case. Like when I done some of the, I just did some correlation analysis that was done. And then my manager had to give a presentation. She wanted to include some of my, some of the work that I've done and I presented to her and liked it. But then she had like, but she wanted to include it in her upcoming presentation. But then she didn't quite understand or like didn't know the right terms in which to present it. She had trouble presenting the statistics because she's not a statistician, huh? Right. So she was a little bit stressed about it, but she, so, and then I felt because I was still in the process and it wasn't completed. It's a work progress. So you didn't even feel very comfortable with the results yet. Like you weren't like feeling like, okay, this is official results yet. Right. Or I haven't like written a proper report to provide. So I've just given her what I have. She wanted to include it. And so like the morning before she was very stressed about it. And so I was just trying to find ways and, you know, to just like, you know, make her feel less stressed and just, you know, I just wrote a little summary of what the test is and Did you write it in such a way that she could just kind of read it like this and say, this is a correlation. It's a Pearson with a loopy value. Yeah, so I did it. I did it. I did a short paragraph about that. And that helped. And she was grateful for that. And she also apologized that, like, you know, that she stressed me out. But like, I, so, I mean, it was very stressed leading out to produce something. It wasn't quite ready and I explained, but she also was like, this isn't like, this is a very like preliminary report. So it didn't really, and she was presenting as such. And so, yeah, and, you know, I think you did a really good job. So, so first of all, let me just validate that it's really hard if you're a non-statistician to present statistics, like that aren't super obvious, like it means, you know what I mean? Like correlations a little difficult for non-statisticians. And unfortunately, Beth, you're kind of in this role where you're like, okay, am I supposed to be the statistics professor? Like, I don't even know how to teach statistics. And now I suddenly have to give a lesson. So I think you did a really wonderful job that you, I'm sorry, I've got this new kitty here running around. I think you did a really smart thing where you wrote that paragraph to help her. And it was good that you sat down and tried to explain it to her. And I am happy that she apologized to you for being stressed, but you can kind of understand if you're somebody who doesn't get statistics and you're presenting them and you're afraid somebody's gonna ask you a question, just how nerve-wracking that is. One thing I learned from being in that position, because I was in this position a lot with a friend of mine who was a surgeon and he didn't understand statistics, is one thing I learned that I told him is that if people ask you, if you're presenting and you're not Beth, you're not the statistician, you're the project lead or whatever, and somebody in the audience asks that person who's not a statistician to go deeply into the stats, it's totally cool for the PI to say, oh, you know, I'm not the statistician, here's her email, just contact her and you can talk to her. And you can tell all your PIs that when you do stuff. And that's what I do now, is I let them know, like if they don't know, I just say, in case you didn't know, if you get, like, I'll teach you how to present this, but if they start getting in the weeds, just tell them, I'm sorry, I'm not the statistician, Monica's statistician, she'll talk to you directly. And that's just a way of getting out from under those questions, because that's one of the things that scares them the most, all right? So that's one thing I learned. Another thing I do is I, when I would tell Steve, he's a surgeon, when he was gonna present some stats and I wasn't gonna be there, I tried to be there, like just to be supportive if you can. Like if they're presenting at a meeting, and the meeting's like internal, like it's on Zoom or something, and you can just sit there and just be there for support, just do that. Like if they want you to, if they're cool with it, just do that, I always would do that, just, and then they can call on you and talk about it and they feel super supported. But when Steve would go alone and he'd go present, I'd just remind him, Steve, nobody understands this stuff. Like I understand it, but there's probably nobody in the audience, you could probably say it totally wrong and they wouldn't even know. So go ahead and tell them that too, all right? But yeah, Mika, have you ever had a problem like that where you made like some huge regression equation or something like that, and you had to prep someone to understand it? It was a non-sadistician. Not really, not because I haven't done regression, but because, well, so they in an industry setting, we even hardly run regression. All the way it's mean percent. If there is a standard deviation, it's already scares people off. Yes, it is, it is. So you're counting people at work? Well, so it's always like this. So that's why, so I don't even use those things. Even behind the scene, I am using it. And so they are all, all the things I present, it's a percent mean frequency. So you sneak around and do logistic regression when they're not looking? Yeah, so that's what I presented. And then so people are happy about it. So those are the things, majority of the people understand it, comfortable about it. They can deal with Excel, great. But I mean, are you ever assigned to do something complicated that nobody can understand and then somehow deliver or not? And so they are not the statistical analysis, though. The thing that is always difficult, but at my end, it's, why it takes so much time to clean data? That's the problem with the grid. So how do you answer the question of, why does it take so much time to clean the data? You know, Steve did that to me once, Mika. Steve, the surgeon I was talking about, he did this survey with his surgeon friends. I'm sorry, this everything's knocked over. And he, it was a Likert scale survey and it had like 50 questions. And he did this thing where he sat down and he said, Monica, you know, clean this data and analyze the survey. And I said, Steve, I don't have time. And it happened to be a day when he was coming to my building because there was an event at my building where it was working. So I said, Steve, come to this event and then we'll leave the event and go up to my office and I'll show you why it's gonna take me so long. So I brought up the Excel and in the Likert scale, he had not always written like one through five. Like on one of them he put like 2.5. On one of them he put like, it was like empty. And I went through every single one with him and I was like, see how I, like we sat there for like an hour and we cleaned the data by hand. Like there was maybe a hundred surveys. And I'm like, see, Steve, this is the kind of stuff you do to me. Like I'm gonna have to, he just laughed. I remember he was laughing so hard. He goes, okay, I'll never ask you that question again. And he literally did never ask me that again. When I said it was taking a long time for Dataprep for our other things, he literally like that ended it. But that's kind of funny, but the real answer is when people are asking what is taking so long about like Dataprep or like ETL, one answer is to actually educate them. And one way to do that is with like a lot of things you probably learn in this program, which is where you document visually what you're doing. And if you document visually what you're doing, you do two things. One is you help people gain an appreciation for how complicated what you're doing is. Secondly, you make them feel very like this certain kind of misery. It's this misery of like where they're sort of bored, but they're also feel like there's this tedium and they also feel like the fear like you'll go away and they'll have to do your job. So it's like this feeling after a while, like at first they're like, oh, I see what's going on. And then it's this feeling like, please don't tell them anymore. I understand this is awful and I'll give you another week. Like that's usually what I can get out of these people because I would run a data warehouse and they'd bring some data to me and they'd say put it in the warehouse today. So I have to build an ETL routine and I've never seen the data before. And I'd be like, oh, you expect this tonight? Oh, you wanna analyze this data and get something out of it? You don't even know what's in it, you know what I mean? And so that's, I used to just deal with the fact that people were saying, where's the database? Where's the database? Where's the analysis? Where's the analysis? And I never really knew how to solve that. And that's when I started making all this documentation and showing them examples. And, you know, cause nobody could log into SAS like literally nobody's gonna see what I'm seeing. So I started making like diagrams and showing them snippets of examples of data, you know, just going to meetings and presenting all that all the time. And what ended up happening is people started being like having, you know, doing less meetings with me because, you know, they just, they were just like, just don't waste your time in the meeting. Just hurry up and get all that work done so we can get our data. Like that's ended up what happened. And it was also nice because I had all this diagrams. I had everything documented. And so when people were saying, well, what have you been doing to the last three months? I had an answer, you know, but, but yeah, that's a difficult one. When you're building a database or you're preparing an analytic dataset or you're trying to do a bunch of reports or, and everybody's asking like, what's taking so long for data prep? That's kind of a big one. Let me see if I've got, oh, here's a good one. I wanted to show you this. I don't like to read books a lot. The peer reviewed literature has ruined me, but I can't believe that I'm recommending a book by two guys, but this book is really good. It's not a very long book. Like if you buy this book, it's called Getting to Yes. And it's not a very long book. And it's about negotiation, but I'll be honest with you, it really changed how I interact with people. Like especially in the workplace because one of the main lessons in the book is that people don't really have something that they're trying to get specifically, but they have more interests. Like if you're negotiating, like if I'm selling my car and you're trying to buy it, I have different interests than maybe the next person selling their car. Like maybe my interest, like I remember when I was moving to Boston, my interest in selling my car was to hurry up and sell it. I didn't really care how much money I got because I was in a hurry. A different person selling a car might have their interest speed that they get more money. And so interest, when you negotiate on the basis of interest is where you basically figure out what each side actually wants, what their priorities in the negotiation. And then it's a lot easier to sort of come up with the terms. And I found that in like negotiating like data use agreements or data transfers because sometimes like my people would want some data and the place, giving out the data, I'd be like, well, what are you worried about? Well, they were always worried about different things. Like we're worried about our data being hacked or we're not worried about it being hacked. We're worried about you analyzing it and not understanding it properly. They would have different interests and that would help me in my negotiation because I'd be like, okay, well, why don't we analyze it and show it to you? Why don't we write that into our agreement? And then that way you can approve it. So I really strongly recommend that you just read this book like when you have a chance. And I think that it'll affect you in such, it's such a simple book that you'll just think differently about negotiations. You'll probably do like a better job. And especially like Beth mentioned kids, it actually is kind of good because you can teach kids about like to think this way when they're negotiating with you and then it's a little easier to get along with them. Like smart ones will learn that this is a good way to get their way. All right, so let me see here. So that was a good discussion. Let me see if I've got another. So I'm gonna just throw a scenario out there because I think we all experienced a scenario like this at least once, okay? Imagine there's a manager you dislike meeting with in person because he acts intimidating. He doesn't look you in the eye and often puts down what you say. What are strategies? What strategies do you recommend to make meetings like this go easier? I don't know, like, you know, prep beforehand or like, you know, jot down the main ideas that you need to discuss with that person or with that real manager. That sounds very, let's see here. Okay, I'm going to say a meeting that found ideas. Well, it's always kind of a good idea. Like, even when I've been close to my manager, I've always had, like, I would have a posted note of the things I want to talk to when I run it. He'd call it a drive-by. I'd be doing a drive-by and asking him about five things and leaving. But yeah, it's not bad to be prepared. And you're right, if you feel confident in what you're gonna say, it makes it better. One of the things that I had a really bad thing happen to me once where I was meeting alone with two guys. One of them I'd met before and he was just a really nice guy. But the other one started acting up. And so at the point when he started acting up, I was sitting down and the other nice guy was sitting down and the apparently acting up guy was standing up. And he was writing on the whiteboard. I don't know, we were just discussing something. And I asked him a question, like a totally innocent question about what he was writing. And he just snapped. He like got in my face and he was using this marker and he was saying, you, your problem is you don't know anything about you. And he was like in my face, right? And I'm like sitting down. And this is, we were alone at MIT on a Saturday. Like it was bad. So here's what I did. I'll tell you what I did to solve this, is I use, I statements. So here is what I did, which is kind of hilarious, but I was so scared. So, I mean, the guy wasn't that big but he was kind of like looking cuckoo, okay? And so he came to me and he's going, you, you. And what I did was I put up my hand and I said, can we use I statements? And he's kept saying, you are. And I said, please, can we please use I statements? I can't understand what you're saying when you say you, you, you. That's what I said. And the reason I said that is because it's true. If somebody saying, you know, you're always late, you're not, your ideas are not that good. You, you, you feel attacked. And I realized that, that even if people come to me and say, you're the only reason I'm working here or whatever, you know, like I would feel a kind of attack. And so I started trying to find a way to not make you statements and instead make I statements. And it's actually not that easy. You have to practice it. But I found that when I make I statements, everything comes off better. Like rather than saying to like a customer, you're not making any progress. I can say, I'm worried that you're not making the progress I was expecting. You know, that way I'm owning it. I'm owning that whoever isn't making progress. It's not like I'm accusing that. And so these, these, there's this five step formula, you know, for an I statement. And I statements are like really good if you're trying to communicate to somebody that they're doing something problematic to you. Like, like, like I was talking to someone today. And I just said to them, I said, you know, whenever I meet with you, I observe that you seem really desperate. And I observe you seem really stressed out. And I feel like I wanna do something to help that and not exacerbate it. You know what I'm saying? And so notice how if I had said, you know, whenever I see you, you look really stressed out and overwhelmed and, you know, do you, is there something you want me to do about it? You know, like that sounds sort of like a tacky. Whereas the way I said it, it's a little easier. And so sometimes when you're with these tough guys, you know, they're very intimidating. They're like, I don't know. Your ideas are not that important. You're not, you know, the one in charge, blah, blah, blah. You know, they do that. Part of the reason they're doing that is they feel intimidated by you, which is weird. Like, I know it's hard to believe. Like I always be like, I'm so small and short and ineffectual, but somehow they're intimidated by me. So I just remember that they're intimidated by me. So if I just say, I, oh, I'm sorry if I didn't, you know, explain this well enough or if you're confused, it's probably my fault or I can reword this or I can put it this way or I can sit and listen to what you have to say. You know, I makes people feel less, more at ease. You know, than you, you, you. So, and I didn't even really think about that but then I changed how I did things and it made it easier. All right, well, we're coming to the end of our hour. Is there anything, any last sort of advice or any last sort of comments anybody wants to make? I think you guys have figured out ways of working in the workplace around all of your data complexity without, you know, just by being excellent by just doing your job really well, you don't really have to communicate much, right? All right, well, what I'll do is I'll save this in our folder and I'll also add the links to the bottom of this that I was showing you. I had a few more, but I'll put all the links there and you can take a look at them if you want, all right? And so thank you for showing up tonight. Thank you for watching this video, which is part of the Public Health to Data Science rebrand program. If you are interested in joining the program, please sign up for a 30 minute Zoom interview using the link in the description.