Sarah (00:09)
Welcome back to unDUBBED the podcast where we're unscripted, uncensored and undeniably data. I'm Sarah.
Fiona (00:15)
And I'm Fi and today we're diving into what it really takes to future-proof your data career, not just with tools, but with confidence, clarity, and meaningful growth.
Sarah (00:26)
To help us do that, we're joined by two absolute legends, Eva Murray and Andy Kriebel If you've ever opened Tableau Public, followed Makeover Monday, or Googled how to make your chart suck less, odds are you've already been impacted by their work.
Fiona (00:41)
Andy is the founder of Next Level Tableau, a training platform with over 130 on-demand videos and more than 150 hours of live instruction. He's helped thousands of people upscale through his blog, YouTube channel, LinkedIn, and more. And eight of his trainees have actually gone on to become Tableau visionaries themselves. Eva is a career coach working with data and tech professionals all over the world.
She helps people take back control of their development, reconnect with their strengths, and build careers that are actually energizing, not just impressive on paper.
Sarah (01:20)
I first met Andy and Eva at Tableau Conference 2017 in Las Vegas. I stumbled into a plan your conference session and someone said, you have to check out this Makeover Monday thing. I had no idea what it was, but I walked into that session and saw a big room of people completely engrossed in remaking a pretty awful chart. Look, amazing. I was hooked.
Fiona (01:44)
Actually remember that, you were buzzing. Didn't you build your first tableau viz that day?
Sarah (01:50)
Yep, I published it onto Tableau Public and a great tip from Andy, never take down your old vizs so it's still up there. I got obsessed, flew home from Singapore, made my whole team do Makeover Monday. One of the ones first up was on Singapore. I submitted a viz, I made my whole team watch it all. Right at the end, they said they had one more to show and that was mine. I got some really great feedback from both Andy and Eva.
I submitted and I did the feedback and I got chosen as favorite and I was hooked after that and I even did every single Makeover Monday in 2018. And this eventually led me to Fi and eventually onto Dub Dub Data.
Fiona (02:30)
And now look at us, full circle. We're here with you both. Honestly, I was thinking to myself earlier just how many thousands of careers you've influenced and how each person probably has their own version of a story like that. So I'll leave mine there, because I'm sure that everyone's really excited to hear today how you guys think that people can future-proof their career. Eva, Andy, welcome to unDUBBED We're so thrilled to have you with us.
Andy (02:59)
It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Eva Murray (03:01)
Yeah, I'm really excited. It's great to see both of you lovely faces. And I know we've been talking quite a lot in the last few months. So really looking forward to this conversation.
Sarah (03:11)
Awesome.
Andy (03:11)
Can I start
with a question for Sarah?
Fiona (03:14)
Yeah, sure.
Sarah (03:14)
Of course.
Andy (03:15)
So she said she made her team watch the first Viz review that she published too. Do you think that she would have had her team watch it if we slaughtered her Viz when we reviewed it? β OK.
Sarah (03:27)
It was live. I didn't know if you were going to slaughter it or not. And I was sitting on the edge of my seat going,
yes, I hope Andy is nice to me. Eva's always lovely, but Andy?
Andy (03:43)
I've heard that before.
Fiona (03:44)
Yeah. I would say that's common knowledge.
Sarah (03:52)
β Now both of you have had careers where you've taken bold steps and changed direction, trying new things and really evolving your focus over the time. I'd even say you've redefined yourselves at different points. How have you approached future-proofing your career through all of that? Eva, why don't you kick us off?
Eva Murray (04:10)
Yeah, I had a major wobble in the pandemic when I was looking for my next role. And I was at the time in a technology evangelist role. And I realized, Oh, shit. What do do from here? Like, what is actually my skill set? And what can I apply myself to? Because at the time, it felt like you either become
very much a practitioner and you go down the consulting route or you're an in-house analyst with really strong technical skills. And I felt like I hadn't kept up with those because it just wasn't necessary in my job at the time to that extent. But equally, I was working a lot with marketing. I'm not a marketing expert either. I don't have a specialization here. So I genuinely freaked out. And I think what it taught me was the value of, well, really understanding.
what you bring to a job and how that transfers to another job. Because if you don't tick all the boxes and that job description doesn't mean can't do it. If you really dig around, I in your history, what you've done before, and how do those communication skills help me do this other job and making it obvious for myself, but also for hiring managers. So I think that was the more, more recent example of how do I future proof myself? It's making those skills.
well, growing them continuously, but also making them relevant in a job. the other element that I always have to highlight is building my network, always building my network.
Sarah (05:35)
Yeah, nice one. And Andy?
Andy (05:38)
So as far as future proofing my career, that is an excellent question. I don't think I've ever been asked that before, because I've been doing pretty much the same thing since I started using Tableau back in 2007. But I think one of the ways that I future proof my career, and I still do it, is to publish lots of content. Continue to build your portfolio. Let people see the work that you're doing, how you're continuing to improve, even this many years later.
show how I'm helping people improve their careers, all those kind of things to, like Eva mentioned, also building your network. All these things kind of add up to future-proofing your career. So I left the Information Lab a year and a half ago. And to start Next Level Tableau, which is something I've never done before. So that was a pretty monumental switch in my career. But I know that because of what I've done over
these 15, 17 years, however long it's been, I've been future-proofing my career the whole way. So if my business fails, I'm pretty confident I'll find a job.
Sarah (06:46)
And I think Andy, you've always said as well, learning and teaching has been a real passion of yours and you've really found that kind of way to combine both of them and continue to elevate what you do.
Andy (07:00)
Yeah, and you you hear it all the time, the teacher is the one that learns the most. But what I really, I get a lot of satisfaction, not only out of learning, but I just love seeing people get better and improving their careers. And that's what gives me so much satisfaction on what I do.
Fiona (07:17)
Amazing. It's really interesting because when I think of your career, I think that there's definite stages or I would even say slight pivots going across, of what I have seen at least. in particular, this last shift into running your own business, it's so different to having someone pay a salary and you know everything's coming through and all you need to concentrate on then is delivering a great
job within the corporate environment. really, really cool to kind of hear your perspective on it. Tell me what shifts are you seeing right now in the world of data roles, especially with AI making its mark?
Andy (08:04)
I think from my perspective, because I focus so much on the training side, there's kind of two parts to your question. The first part is the big shift I now is companies really don't invest in their people anymore, which is really, really sad. About 75 % of the members of Next Level Tableau have to pay their own way. A lot of them, their bosses know that they're paying their own way. They're having a huge impact on the organization and yet they still don't pay for it for them.
and they're gonna wonder why these people leave. I mean, it's an absolute no brainer, right? But it's also, I think these people have feel a bit of freedom now as well, like, I've taken control of my career development and it's very different than in the past. It was always your company that was in control of your development. As far as kind of the second part of your question about AI and you know, I'm not really concerned about it. It's going to be something everybody needs to learn and if you're not using it now, I think you're really missing out on.
particularly on efficiencies. But I also think that the way it's pitched is to executives that don't know any better. And they're like, AI, we have to do AI. And they don't really know what that means. So when we see pitches at conferences or demos, there are always these really shiny things like the executive is going to be typing on their phone. β tell me the answer to this. And that's a bunch of bullshit. No executive is ever going to type on their phone. Tell me why I have my sales dropped here. They're going to.
tell somebody else to do that work. It's such a load of crap.
Sarah (09:32)
I agree, Fi and I have this conversation all the time.
Fiona (09:36)
Spot on, still think there's gonna be this role of having someone who's that go to like, you go find out why this is happening and then come back in and tell me. It doesn't matter how easy it is, even if it is at their fingertips, there's so many other things that they need to be doing. And they're not necessarily going to be digging all the way down as well. We all know how prompt engineering can go wrong, right? We've seen it.
Andy (10:04)
Yeah, exactly. And it's those people that are getting asked those questions and people that need to do the research, they're the ones that need to know AI. They need to know how to best leverage that. also, people need to understand that AI isn't the answer. It's a direction for you. You still need to verify everything as what an analyst should do anyway. They should be verifying the results that they're seeing. And I'm afraid that
too many analysts, and I'm sure it's happening a lot more than we're aware of, are just sticking an answer, a question into whatever AI tool they're using or whatever they have built internally and assuming that's the answer without actually doing any verification. And that's a bit scary.
Sarah (10:46)
And I feel like, some AI prompts when they get responses, they say it with conviction, right? There's no waffle. And if you go off topic, you can really go off topic if you don't know what you're talking about. And I think there's a massive danger in that. And it's interesting that we're not hearing a lot of stories from within corporates when it is going really wrong, because I'm sure there's some big ones out there.
Fiona (11:09)
And Eva, tell us in your coaching business, are you seeing people come through with AI anxiety?
Eva Murray (11:17)
Yes, definitely. I think there's anxiety, but there's also that uncertainty. how anxious should I be about this? is it going to take my job? Because that's what the media tells you, right? It's AI, the robots are coming for jobs. So in my coaching, I typically focus quite a lot on soft skills because the people I work with typically bring quite a lot of technical expertise already. And yes, we might be able to identify something they can add in terms of technical skills.
a lot of the time is we focus on the soft skills that will help them go further. some people are looking for job externally, but also quite a lot of people want to grow internally and they want help on navigating that. just like Andy has said with his with the people in this program, companies don't pay for this. I mean, I understand if a company doesn't want to pay for coaching that makes somebody find another job somewhere else. But in terms of the development and helping them with topics like
confidence and you know, public speaking and just managing office politics and growing further. typically people pay for it themselves, they invest in themselves. in terms of that AI anxiety, yeah, there's definitely some of that. And when people say, how can I future proof myself? And I focus on what makes us uniquely human and what are we adding as value? Andy mentioned efficiencies. And I'm a huge fan of doing that. I'm actually
getting better myself and using AI to gain some of those efficiencies. For example, I've got a bullet point process. I want to have a flow chart. AI can do that for me. There's not a lot of value added by me doing that manually, but having AI write your cover letter doesn't sound great because it doesn't sound like you. It loses its soul. that's why I'm trying to provide a bit of guidance on, here's a great thing you can do. Maybe try this kind of prompt, but you really use it as a research assistant, use it to help you.
save a bit of time, come up with some ideas, but you take it further. the other thing I'm seeing around AI is that people come in, say, I want to work in AI. And to me, that just is so broad. Like, do you want to develop new algorithms? Do you want to build the next LLM?
Do you want to work in AI ethics, even communications and marketing? what is it? I think helping people even just see, what is actually your question or what is your goal? And how do you define that a bit further? I'm also seeing that what Andy mentioned around people not really questioning enough and that kind of critical thinking, I mean, we need to not lose that in analysts for them to challenge the results and just say,
Does that look about right? Do I need to dig further? How did these numbers come about? And then the other big trend is people saying, I've got a bunch of skills that I'm not using in my job that might go stale, but could I do a side business? Like the uncertainty in the market that we've seen at the very latest since the COVID pandemic, I think has really spurred people on to think, maybe I need more than a single income source.
in an employed job. And what I find so fascinating in this conversation is we all met each other when we were all working in corporate safe jobs. Now we are all self employed slash entrepreneurs. And it's a very different world out there. But I think there's going to be more more like that. And I suspect more people from our network who will do that as well.
Fiona (14:32)
Absolutely. Well, there's so much to unpack there. Okay, quick fire one. First off, I was so surprised that 75 % of people are self funding to be on Next Level Tableau. How many people self fund their career coaching with you?
Eva Murray (14:52)
more than that. I think there's probably two out of over 30 current clients who have some or all funding from the company. Yeah.
Andy (15:05)
There was a really good thing. don't remember if it was from Tom Brown at the information lab or if it was when I was at Coca-Cola. One of the things that was always really interesting when we were talking about companies investing in their people was, and I'm pretty sure it was Tom, he would say, yes, if you invest in your people, they might leave, which is something you had mentioned or Eva had mentioned. But the flip side of it is what if you don't train them and they stay?
You get more value out of somebody you train that leaves than you do if somebody you don't train that stays. So I don't think companies think about it that way. They assume it's okay, I've invested in this person they've left. Well, what did you get out of them after you invested in them?
Fiona (15:47)
true. mean, in my last role, my last corporate role, my whole role was based around enablement and strategy, bringing that together. So I strongly believe in organizations investing in their people. I've seen people go from zero to hero with that investment. And it doesn't have to be huge investment. In fact, it's less than, it's much less than
retention bonuses or upping people's pay. And sometimes that's all you can afford as well as a leader. So I highly recommend looking at the benefits and also the payback that you can possibly get and doing a little bit of investment in this enablement space as well.
Sarah (16:32)
Yeah, and I agree, like, you don't see a lot of people that go, β it really sucks at my job because they make me do all this training. You know it particularly if it's something that they're passionate about.
Eva Murray (16:43)
I worked for Tridant in Sydney and I think that's probably when Fi and I met they knew they were only going to get 12 months out of me because I had already committed to move to Germany they gave me Tableau, train the trainer for desktop, for server, they sent me on conferences. Like they invested because they're like, we can max this out over the 12 months if we also give her all the skills and connections that she needs to make this work, which was, build their Tableau practice from the ground up. So.
That was an amazing example. And I still have such fond memories of that time. like Andy said, you're investing in people and chances are they will stick around. it doesn't have to be massive. If somebody said to me at a time when I wasn't all that excited about a job, we don't have a lot of budget right now, but here's 200 bucks, see what you want to do with it. I would have felt like, that's great. It's a gesture. It's what they can do right now. It doesn't have to be thousands every year.
every little bit helps.
Fiona (17:39)
It so does. It so helps.
Sarah (17:43)
for sure. And sometimes if you've got no budget, we've been in positions where it's like, okay, we're going to do a half day workshop together and we're all going to learn together. That's something that's been a value as well.
Fiona (17:54)
coming back to your point, Sarah, around who says no to training.
think sometimes people say no to training when they're like, I'm too busy. I can't do this because my plate's too full. And again, I think that's a space where leaders can step in and provide that guidance. This is an investment in you. This will help you to build your career. This will help you to learn something. Taking one hour out of your week is not going to break the bank in terms of what we're doing or our delivery cycle.
Sarah (18:27)
Exactly.
Andy (18:27)
But shouldn't a good manager
be proactive about that and say, you know what, want you to take this training. What can I take off your plate for you?
Fiona (18:36)
I like that too.
Sarah (18:37)
Great suggestion Andy.
Andy (18:39)
But how many actually
do that? Pretty much none.
Fiona (18:44)
No, I don't think many would at all. And I think also that comes from top down pressures, from external pressures as well, and trying to juggle those old stakeholder requirements and needs as well. But you're right, some good tightened up grooming of that backlog and putting forward in what's in the next sprint. It's a good idea to cut a few things out.
Sarah (19:07)
think it's not just necessarily the leader, but the culture of the organization as well.
Fiona (19:11)
Mm-hmm.
Sarah (19:16)
Okay, switching gears a little bit. Andy, you've taught thousands of people Tableau. What do you think separates a good Tableau user from a great one?
Andy (19:29)
I get asked that question a lot. think there's a few things that I see in people that are the most successful. One is they're really, really passionate about it. They're like the super addicts to it because they know that, β God, the more I practice, the better I'm going to get at this. They have this real ambition and drive in themselves to get better.
I think that's by far the number one thing is your personal drive for what you do. β
Fiona (19:57)
And do you think that there's any indications of what might someone with a great personal drive might have?
Andy (20:04)
I mean, I'm meeting a lot of the people that I trained for the first time, but usually it's pretty quickly after you work with them, you'll know whether they have it or not. You know, it's based on the questions, the questions they ask, do they show up? Are they attentive? Are they putting in the extra work? Are they completing the homework? are they asking for additional things to work on to kind of continue to improve those skills? Those are signals you can look out for, but I don't think it's
necessarily something you could probably find through a CV or even a portfolio. Maybe even an interview, that kind of stuff might be hard to tease out in an interview. But I think it's pretty easy to see in people once you start working with them.
Eva Murray (20:48)
I think what's also a big success factor is if people know how to learn, like if they have some skills on how do I actually learn new things?
I think people who either know how to learn or are open to learning how to learn and who are like, hey, I need help to figure out how to best use my time. And they're just very proactive about that rather than expecting learning to be a
you lecture me and I will just absorb it by magic.
Fiona (21:21)
Spot on.
It seems like to me that people having a growth mindset and being open to that learning and thinking about not, how am going to climb the hill, but going, there's the hill, I'm going to climb it and then here's what I'm going to do next is what we're really looking for.
Sarah (21:41)
Mm.
Andy (21:41)
Yeah, and I
speak to people a lot about the plateau of learning. You know, there's the Dunning-Kruger effect. I don't know if you've heard of that or not, but that's it's really interesting going back to the people that become the best, they're the ones that kind of recognize, all right, I've hit this plateau. I don't know where to go next, but I know that I need help getting there, right? Those are the people that.
invest in themselves or the best companies invest in their people and they're the ones that then can take what they learn and get that huge acceleration after that.
Fiona (22:16)
Mmmm Eva, on your website, you talk about reigniting passion. Tell us, how can someone rediscover their energy when data work starts to feel a bit dry?
Eva Murray (22:31)
Very good question. And I'm a huge fan of asking questions. It's tip I actually got from somebody we all know, Francois Ajenstat who used to be the Chief Product Officer at Tableau. He for a while was a bit of a mentor for me. And he said, even you need to ask more questions. I'm like, how? Like, how do you ask more questions? so I read a book that he recommended and found it just really helpful to just even want to ask more questions because it made me ask more questions. And I think that's the same.
When you feel a bit stuck in your job and you're like, β this used to be fun, like what's happened? The first thing I would do is go kind of back to the beginning and ask questions around, why did I take this job? What lights you up? What do you enjoy on a Friday night? Like I'm quite happy to work on a Friday night. I don't love working on a Monday, but Friday night, I'm okay. But what are those tasks that I'm sure you have them as well where you're like, my God, I'm in the zone. I'm just gonna keep going. my God, it's midnight. I'm just gonna finish this because.
I'm just having a good time. What does that look like for that person? And learning or observing a bit how they do good work. You might have times in the day where like, oh my God, just, I'm super unproductive. I've been staring at a screen for two hours and nothing has happened. Maybe that's the time to have meetings instead. Like for me, afternoons are great for collaboration. Mornings, late evenings, maybe better for some sort of focused work. So observing that. And then finally,
One really fun exercise could be write your own job description to make, like if you could create your dream job, what would that look like? Or if you don't want to start from scratch, take your existing job description and just see like, is that still what I'm doing? What do I want to add? And what do want to take out? And kind of how can I have that conversation with my manager and say, actually, I would love to take on responsibility for those tasks or for that project. But equally other things you could delegate that maybe somebody else
would enjoy more, would be better at doing, or that just aren't really good use of your own time. And that to me, I've had a couple of clients who've gone through that exercise and said, that was really fun to do, like write my own dream job description, and then see, is there enough room in your job right now to grow into that? Because in my opinion, jobs are never fixed, right? That the job description is a starting point, but you can
massage it a bit from there, know, nudge your way into the little other areas, take on more responsibilities, come up with ideas, propose them and see how far can you grow your current job in terms of new learning, new projects, new responsibilities and see if that ignites a spark. Because I think before cutting all ties and leaving, it's important to give it a good try. And so that if you do end up leaving, you can say, you know what, I've given them my best shot.
tricks can be a way to test that out.
Sarah (25:25)
I really love that. I'm thinking back to jobs in my past and there was big chunks that I loved, big chunks that I didn't love. And if I could have really articulated that well and effectively writing my dream job description and that role that I was in, maybe I could have had those conversations with my manager or at least change my own mindset and started to ignite my passion again.
Fiona (25:48)
I've just got a question for Sarah. Can you take on the legals and the finances of dub dub? Because I really don't like it. Okay.
Sarah (25:59)
but it's a big no from me.
Andy, you once said that your goal is to make people so good they don't need you anymore. Do want to elaborate on that a little bit?
Andy (26:14)
Yeah, what I mean by that is I want people to first off get the skills, right? I want them to take my 17 years of experience and use that to get as good as they want, as fast as they want, right? I can't control that. That's up to them to decide how quickly they want to do it. But I want them to get to the point where they feel like, you know what? I think I can do this on my own now.
Right. I'm ready to do this on my own. know, like Eva mentioned, I know how to learn now. I know the resources I need, but maybe they'll stick around for the network that we're going to be building in the community that we're building in next level Tableau. But ideally I want them to feel like, you know what? I got the value. I thought I was going to get out of this. And they feel comfortable that they're ready for that next step.
Sarah (27:02)
Nice.
Fiona (27:02)
Okay, Eva, so earlier on you mentioned a little bit about soft skills. Soft skills versus tech skills. What do you think the right balance is in 2025?
Eva Murray (27:15)
It's a very good question. And the answer is a little bit, it depends because it depends a bit what people want to do. If you want to be a senior data scientist who is very hands-on, then those technical skills need to be there and they need to continuously be sharpened and improved. At the same time, I think there's a lot of exciting opportunities outside of the day-to-day for example,
talking about your work publicly at conferences, presenting your work that comes with a skill set around communication, presentation, confidence, having presence. And to me, while I know a lot of people who are very hands-on, very technical, also love doing that and don't necessarily want to step into the spotlight or into management,
I just want to encourage them to not discount the options because I think a lot opens up, if you maybe haven't even considered, when you start embracing some of those opportunities. for me, was becoming visible created the option of being an evangelist that I never entertained in the past, never even knew it existed. And when I became one, I'm like, holy shit, this is fun. And this is exactly the right thing for me to do because I get to talk about data.
I get to help people do great things with data, but I don't have to do all the coding myself because that's not what I'm good at. And I think just testing some of those things gives you visibility of, β what are other people doing? For example, I think a great area that most people don't explore if they are technical is product marketing, which gives you a balance of technical, but also communication, marketing, events, stuff like this.
so much to it. And I know a lot of people shudder when they hear marketing, but it's actually quite a fun thing to work in. And I think it would be a great home for a lot of technical folks who maybe love demos and love talking data tech and all of those things.
Fiona (29:15)
their internet
I have a core memory that's been unlocked about a dinner that we had with Andy Cotgreave and it was for a...
conference when we were here in Sydney for Tableau Conference and Andy had come over I have this memory of you asking him what does it take to become an evangelist?
Eva Murray (29:41)
Did I ask him not remember.
I met the folks from Exasol who then talked to me about you know evangelism and stuff and and this role they would create for me they literally did create a role for me
Yeah, becoming an evangelist is such a random thing. what I love seeing is more and more people having their title now in their role, you know, could be internal, could be external. But also what I love seeing at Snowflake is how many different flavors of evangelism there are. Because there is what I did, which is probably a bit similar to what Andy Cotgreave did. But also, we had lead developer advocates, which were much more aiming at a developer audience.
and different vibe, right? Not necessarily a marketing-favored keynote, but much more technical demos. Let's get like super deep into it, almost like a hackathon style session but also achieve data strategists who also acted very much like evangelists, but much more with the strategic executive audience, maybe more in a,
dinner setting, panel discussions, not so much the marketing element. So I loved seeing that. And I think, I think we all could be a bit more like evangelists in our roles, we now have to be as business owners, because you have to pitch yourself and advocate for what you do. But I think when, people being really passionate about what they do and making a lot of strides in their, in their
professional development because they are proactive and they really put a lot into it. I think those are often the ones who evangelize and who kind of have this infectious enthusiasm that they spread in their organizations that get other people on board. And if we can all think of it more like that and say, I'm really passionate about this and I love it. And I want you to at least listen to why I do, because maybe there's something in it for you as well. That to me is like the essence of evangelism. It's like,
I'm not here to sell you something. I just want to show you something that I think is amazing. And maybe you would enjoy this too.
Fiona (31:47)
think so. And I think also the fact that you can be an evangelist within a corporate organization as well, really, we so often when we're developing products, deliver a product and move on to the next one, the next build, the next build. But it's really important to pause.
and celebrate the product that's going out there and promote that product as well and help people to understand how do they use that product? Why is it useful for them? Why should they adopt it? And then sharing the stories of the wins of using that data product as well and the value that it's creating. I think evangelism is definitely a winner.
Eva Murray (32:30)
It is, if somebody is keen to go down that path, my recommendation is to have a really solid niche because otherwise you'll face that same career. Well, I had, it was like, β I feel like I'm good about good at talking about these things, but do I have a really substantial thing I offer that's independent of whatever company I work for? And, you know, in the end, for me, that was a lot around like community building and the way I.
maybe explain complex technical things to an audience of business people. But you know, what is your niche? Something you can take wherever you go, and whether you have an evangelist job or not, because otherwise it starts to get a bit thin very quickly and feel a bit scary in the market.
Sarah (33:13)
So both of you have mentored others. What's the most surprising thing you've learned about yourself by helping others grow? And I'll pass it over to you, Andy.
Andy (33:23)
Gosh, all these really hard questions. You're making me think too much. If I'd known that, I wouldn't have signed up for this, right? So what have I learned as a mentor? I've definitely learned lots of different ways to communicate with people and to get a message across. teaching is a form of mentoring as well, but...
You know, I need to know how to explain the same concept five, 10 different ways, because every person is going to understand it differently. And that's been a really huge benefit with communication skills.
Fiona (33:55)
Mmm. I love that. I think that's amazing. How do you go about understanding how to break it down in different ways? What's your process?
Andy (34:05)
Try one way and if it doesn't work, come up with a new way on the fly.
Fiona (34:09)
You don't grab them by the shirt?
Andy (34:15)
β It's quite hard to do that through Zoom as well.
Fiona (34:15)
What do you mean you can't understand? Yeah, that's true.
How about you Eva? What's your biggest learning been about mentoring others?
Eva Murray (34:30)
think that level of empathy you need and trying to put myself really in their shoes and, and I think listening more than speaking. I think really listening and observing to see what else is true, what else is going on for them. And I'm not even talking about like, counseling therapy type work, because that's not what I do. But
At the surface, there might be a challenge or a question they have or a situation at work. And I only ever then get to hear the one side, typically. So how can I put myself into the position of the other person or understand more of the situation to help them see the full picture and also a bit like Andy to come up with what could be some ways to tackle this? And I think in our industry, I'm sure you've noticed this, there are quite a few introverts.
And I'm not an introvert myself. I'm an extrovert, but quite sensitive. So I can feel a bit overwhelmed with lots of people. So I think I can emphasize there. And this is a challenge I've really enjoyed with ways of, for example, building your personal brands that work for an extrovert, that work for an introvert. Like I don't want to just tell everyone, just go on podcasts or go on YouTube or like, there needs to be nuance and
doing that, I challenge myself to find things where I'm like, this person might feel like, no, that's not quite stimulating enough, but for another person, might be too much. So what can I find for them? What other way can I think of that they can show up, build their brand, get visibility for their skills, for their experience that feels good for them? Because if it doesn't feel good, they're not gonna do it. They're not gonna have that success. And I want them to have the success.
I always at the end of a session ask my clients what they're taking away from that one call because sometimes I'm like, they must have loved the framework. And they say something where I'm like, my God, that was a side note. Like that was so impactful, but it's really helpful feedback for me.
So yeah, listening, observing has been a big one.
Fiona (36:32)
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I wanted to come back to that one actually. Because you mentioned before that Francois suggested a book that you read. Do you happen to have the name of that book so we can share with people listening?
Sarah (36:32)
Yeah, and asking more questions.
Eva Murray (36:48)
Yes, it's called the book of beautiful questions. And full disclosure, I didn't read the whole book, but I felt I didn't need to because there's like, and I gave myself permission to pause. But I read a bunch of chapters. And what I love about this book is that I don't know if it's every page or every few pages, but there's like sets of questions where it's just like, you could ask these questions. And it made me think, how can I just ask more questions? Because the more I ask, the better they will probably become or the more I can refine them. And
one practice that came out of it is that before a meeting with stakeholders, rather than going into it thinking, my God, I hope there's no difficult of questions, I would think, what could they fire at me that I could prepare ahead of time? And I would just come up with a list of questions they might ask, or a list of questions I want to ask, depending on what the meeting was about. And maybe I wouldn't pick any of the ones I listed, but maybe I would combine them into something fresh when like, this one fits the situation.
And β it made me look so much more prepared. And all it took was maybe 10, 15 minutes of thinking ahead of time, but of homework. What questions can I ask? What questions can I bring to this meeting that I can think of ahead of time? Because I know I'm not somebody who is super quick on the spot thinking of this amazing question, but I want to ask some good ones. So I just did it ahead of time and that went really well.
Sarah (38:09)
Thanks.
Fiona (38:09)
Andy, over to you. If someone listening is feeling a bit stuck, what's the first thing they should do tomorrow to start future proofing their data career?
Andy (38:25)
If they're stuck, I would try to, and this is what I do, I try to find somebody that's already been or that's already at where I want to go. So that might be five steps, 10 steps, 20 steps ahead of me and see what they've done to get from where I am to where they are. Reach out to them, ask them if they can be a mentor. Can they coach you? Whatever it might be. So yeah, I try to find people that are
where I am, that we're in the similar position and try to use them as a guide.
Fiona (39:00)
Yeah, that's awesome. Eva, do you have a trick that you use?
Eva Murray (39:04)
Yeah, I think asking for specific advice. So this might be a bit complementary to what Andy suggested. I've had people reach out to me who say, I'm looking to get into data. Do you have any advice? And I'm like, oh, where do I even start? Like it would take me so much effort to find what the actual question is that I just don't go there. just, sorry, I just don't respond. you know, a months ago, this woman wrote to me and she's a student and she writes me this like super specific question. like,
Sarah (39:17)
You
Eva Murray (39:29)
Oh, let's jump on a call. Because I'm like, she has thought about the value or the you know, how much time she's taking up by asking me a question. She made it so specific that it's very easy for me to answer. And I think people love helping. But if you make it as easy as possible for them to help, then that's the best way to go about it. So you know, if you're reaching out to somebody rather than saying, you can I can we jump on a call for 30 minutes? Can I pick your brain? No, I don't know. Don't pick my brain. Like, what is the actual question? Because
maybe I can just write the answer or maybe I'm not even the right person and we would both waste our time. So I think coming up with a specific one or two questions doesn't look greedy. That would really help you figure out the next step and then approaching people can be a great way to start those conversations, especially if you don't know them yet, but if you want to start connecting β and using that and even asking for like 15 minutes, I want to cover this one question. And if they're like, yeah, happy to do that. Great. Go ahead.
or they might just respond in writing. So I've found, yeah, we come back to questions, but being super specific about what you actually want to know rather than like everything.
Sarah (40:38)
Mmm, some really great advice there. Love it.
Fiona (40:42)
Spot on!
Sarah (40:45)
Would you guys like to add any catchphrases? β
Andy (40:51)
That's Sophie (So, Fi!!).
Eva Murray (40:52)
That's the thing.
Sarah (40:53)
Hahaha
Eva Murray (40:56)
The truth is...
Andy (41:01)
We could do, Eva, could do the, what's the show called? The Suits, yeah. Do you ever watch Suits? Do you two ever watch Suits? So they say, to tell you the truth or truth be told. So there's like drinking games people have made now out of the phrases that they use all the time in that show.
Eva Murray (41:07)
Suits. Suits, yeah.
Fiona (41:10)
Yeah, I have watched it.
Sarah (41:10)
Yeah.
Fiona (41:22)
I love it.
Sarah (41:24)
Funny, funny.
Fiona (41:26)
So Andy, tell me what it's like for someone to come along and join Next Level Tableau and how much time are they spending? What would it mean in terms of commitment if they came to you and said,
I wanna be your ninth visionary. Take me there. Tell me what that looks like.
Andy (41:47)
Actually, nobody's ever asked me for that, which is surprising. So, well, there's a couple of things. So, Eva and I brainstormed about this a while ago, and she created something that we call the Next Level Tableau Skill Building Blueprint. And it's based on how much time do you have each week to focus on your learning and development. It's split up into one to three hours, three to eight, eight plus. And depending on those things, there's different ways that people should develop. what I recommend as far as
taking advantage of Next Level Tableau is first come to whatever live classes you can make. Ignore what level they are. So there's a beginner, intermediate, advanced. Ignore the level of the class and actually ignore what the class is about. If you can get it on your calendar, come because you will learn something. After that, it's engaging with the community. So we've built a community inside of Next Level Tableau.
That's actually now a big selling point of next level Tableau because if you think about the greater Tableau community, data community, it's huge. And it's really hard to connect with people. And then doing the homework that I give out in class. So we don't tend to finish all of the exercises. We might not do some formatting and different things. So I ask everybody to publish or to finish up what we did.
publish it up to the Tableau Public, put it on LinkedIn and tag me so I can engage with it and try to help them build their networks. And I mean, there's people that have built 200 businesses already.
Fiona (43:18)
That's amazing. Sarah?
Sarah (43:18)
Wow.
Andy (43:20)
Now that's the exception, of
course, but it's all kind of, you it's all what you want to make of it. You know, what's your end goal for next level Tableau?
Fiona (43:29)
Do think that you would be open to sharing the blueprint for the show notes and we can add that in so people can take a look or is that something?
Andy (43:34)
Sure. Yeah, yeah, because
it's not necessarily even unique to next level Tableau. That same blueprint could be used for tool XYZ, or it doesn't even have to be tech related. I would say it's more of a learning process.
Fiona (43:49)
Awesome.
Eva So over to you, if someone was looking to get coaching or really wanted to take their career to the next level, how would you approach it?
Eva Murray (44:06)
Yeah, so we start off with a call for me to understand better what situation they're in right now and what they want to achieve in the next year or so. And then based on that, you know, I tell them a bit about my coaching and what they can expect so they can make an informed decision because it only really works if we vibe, right? As the cool kids say, they have to like the way I work and I have to be confident I can really help them. Because I'm also somebody who's very open when
it's not a good fit, because I can't provide the value that they would expect. And then what we do is, so we have one-to-one sessions, and we follow a framework that I've developed for my coaching clients that takes them from the beginning, getting super clear on, who are you actually as a person, as a professional? And what is all the stuff you bring? Like skills, knowledge, experience, ideas, how you approach things, what's your philosophy?
And we take that and make all of that clear, because to me, that's the foundation for everything. That's the foundation for how you talk about yourself in an interview and at a conference and networking situation anywhere. And we make sure they have an updated CV. If they're looking for a new job, for example, their LinkedIn reflects everything they bring. We look in their portfolio and we just get all that clarity. We talk about jobs.
they might be interested in. It might be very straightforward where they say, I'm an analyst, I want to be a senior analyst. But maybe there's things they haven't considered. So I bring them some suggestions once I've been understand their skill set and where they are today, and help them just see what other roles are out there that you could actually do with the skills you have, or that you could aim for. And that could give you a different trajectory for your career. And then we work towards them. So I support them in interview preparation, in negotiation, you know, once they get offers.
And also what are the first 90 days in your job look like and how can you optimally prepare so you hit the ground running you feel like you're having an impact straight away. But equally because I also work with people who don't want to leave they want to grow in their existing role. Topics like executive presence, presentation skills. We focus on that navigating difficult stakeholder conversations and the feedback from clients like that has been. It's helpful to have somebody who understands their situation because
I've worked in data, I've worked in tech. Like if a data scientist tells me about their work, I know what they talk about. I understand it. But I'm also this unbiased person on the outside. Because quite often people say, I don't have anyone to talk to about this. My family don't understand my work and my colleagues maybe don't care enough, like as a person, or they're in tricky situation, or maybe they're competing for the same promotion. So I can be that person on the outside who also
something I love doing is giving them a different perspective β on the great things they already bring and that they're already doing, that maybe to them is like, that's just how I do it. I'm like, this is amazing stuff and somebody will really value it. So I want to uncover those golden nuggets and bring them to light. And then we progress through that over the course of a few sessions. And what they can expect is that they get themselves into the best position possible for whatever the next step looks like.
Because one thing I can't promise is I can't promise the job or the promotion because that's not my say. But I can promise to help them optimally prepare for whatever is next. And along the way, I will introduce them to my network. And I've also now just recently in the middle of May, I launched a select community for existing coaching clients where people, there's a lot of people who are like, β they should be talking to each other. So I would facilitate that in any way I can.
Fiona (47:48)
Mmm.
Eva Murray (47:49)
but also sharing job listings from my network that come up that would be great for the people that are in it. So yeah, that's how I approach coaching.
Sarah (47:58)
Awesome, very comprehensive there Eva, thank you for that.
Fiona (48:02)
feel like I need some coaching.
Sarah (48:08)
You're looking for your next job?
Eva Murray (48:08)
Any day.
Fiona (48:09)
β
Do I need to? β
Are you saying something?
Sarah (48:16)
Of course
not, of course not.
Eva and Andy, thank you so much for being here. It's been such a joy. You've given us and our listeners so much to reflect on from building meaningful careers to staying sharp in a changing data world.
Fiona (48:34)
We've loved this conversation. the stories, the honesty, and the challenge to all of us to grow beyond the dashboard and the data. It's the kind of energy that we all look for.
Sarah (48:44)
We've dropped all the links in the show notes. So if you wanna dive into Eva's coaching or explore Andy's brilliant training and vizzes go check them out.
Fiona (48:55)
Oh yeah, I saw actually on LinkedIn that you're advertising a really amazing deal at the moment. So we'll put that in as well. Is it 80 charts, 10 bucks, how to learn how to put them all together? Amazing, such good value. And hey everyone, if this episode sparked something for you, make sure that you share it with someone, like, subscribe and leave us a review. It helps more people to find us and it means the world to us.
Andy (49:06)
That's right. Yep. That's right.
Sarah (49:23)
Thanks for tuning in to unDUBBED. We'll see you next time. See you, Eva. See you, Andy.
