I needed a network. A network that can understand me.
Who can understand a woman at the age of 40 who will suddenly pivot to an unknown world of data? There are many questions lingering in my head. Is this a wise decision? Will it bring joy and excitement to my career? Will it sustain me financially? But before I can answer those questions for myself I realised that attending courses will not suffice for me to be a Data Analyst. I needed someone to teach me and make me comfortable in every step that I need to take. With that, I looked for a community that has this culture who believes to the capacity of a late career shifter like me. Then, I found SHE LOVES DATA.
2021 I was assigned to be on a group under Singapore Chapter but Richa, Head of Global Operations, reached out and let me to be a part of her team. Inch by inch with guidance from Venetia and trust of Richa I am now managing some of She Loves Data Signature Program. I can know first hand the dates of trainings I can attend and somewhat a free brain picking from top notch instructors of She Loves Data.
Last Thursday (11 August 2022), it is a big in-person event for She Loves Data! The very first Singapore event for 2022. The vibe is wonderful! Quinn and Aimee removed my doubts and gave comfort to alleviate my anxiety. Ohhh.. I want to cry now. They have told me stuffs that makes me think and push away the imposter syndrome out of my head.
The event is CELEBRATE YOU and it clearly stands on its name. I know and I feel that every woman and man in that room have picked some nuggets of wisdom from each other. That we all felt the warmth of community and someone is behind our back to achieve not only our data career goals but also developing ourselves for betterment.
Thank you Jana for building this kind of network.. a network of women that can understand what a career shifter like me is going through. A camaraderie indeed! Thank you for the free workshops that enhances and challenges our skills. Thank you so much.
With all that, I can say that I am confident to join the data workforce and let’s crunch those data! *wink-wink*
May ALMIGHTY always bless SHE LOVES DATA and all the volunteers behind it! Onward Sisters!
Iam pleased to showcase one of my reports from my internship at Peak Resonance. I am truly grateful to Mr. Jovan Medrano for permitting me to feature this work in my Medium portfolio.
Introduction
Coaching industry was challenged by COVID-19. Face-to-face interaction that is the usual and primary way in delivering coaching services was restricted by most of the government. Thus, coaching hours declined that commonly will result in decrease of income for coaches.
Most coaching organizations lead their members for upskilling and promoting services offered. On that, coaches have pivoted, innovative ways and continue to lend their helping hands for those in need of guidance. This small report will identify coaching pre, during and beyond the crisis of COVID-19.
Coach and Coaching
Many people were confused with the differences of coaches between mentors, or coaches between counselors or psychologists and to begin this paper, we need to distinguish what a coach really is and what they provide.
Coach helps the client to achieve their personal best and to produce the results they want in their personal and professional lives (International Coaching Community). As per International Coaching Federation, coaches do provide objective assessment and observations that foster individual’s or team’s self-awareness and awareness of others, listen closely to fully understand the individual’s or team’s circumstances, act as a sounding board in exploring possibilities and implementing thoughtful planning and decision making, champion opportunities and potential, encouraging stretch and challenge commensurate with personal strengths and aspirations, foster shifts in thinking that reveal fresh perspectives, challenge blind spots to illuminate new possibilities and support the creation of alternative scenarios and maintain professional boundaries in the coaching relationship, including confidentiality, and adheres to the coaching profession’s code of ethics.
The word coaching has been used as a defined procedure only a few decades back (Wildflower, 2013). Coaching is a process focused on working with a person’s needs, wants, goals, or vision for where they want to go, and then designing steps for getting there (Stober & Grant, 2006). On that premise aroused different coaches in different areas of life with diverse approaches.
Coaching Pre-pandemic
Due to the steep expectations from boss, to partner, to health; coaching became popular not only because of recommendations but due to results and goals achieved by the coachee and companies.
Results indicate that individual coaching and group training were effective in reducing procrastination and facilitating goal attainment. Individual coaching created a high degree of satisfaction and was superior in helping participants attain their goals, whereas group training successfully promoted the acquisition of relevant knowledge (Traut-Mattausch, Mühlberger, Jonas, & Losch, 2016).
Thus the global growth and wide spread of coaching profession was evident in 2020 ICF Global Coaching Study:
The coaching continuum: Estimates by world region
Crisis Hit
Everyone was affected when COVID-19 hit and when countries were shut down one by one not only their international borders but also the strict implementation of face-to-face meetings; coaching career deeply felt the impact. Coach practitioners have adjusted their methods used to coach clients. Reflecting the nature of the pandemic, there has been a sharp decrease in coaching in person (80%). Mainly, coach practitioners have increased their use of audio-video platforms (74%) (International Coaching Federation, 2020) and even though digital pivoting was applied, the decrease of numbers of clients were not avoided.
Data Source: (International Coaching Federation, 2020)
In the chart above, 1 of 4 coaches in North America reported no impact neither on income nor employment but Eastern Europe has the greatest financial shock of 85%.
Unlike the 2008 Market Crash where coaching explores in driving financial leaders into transparency and social responsibility to rebuild the brand of their financial organizations (Davis, 2009), 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic is calling for Crisis Leaders in solving cash flow and liquidity, family and friends relationships, employees well-being, managing multiple changes and to prepare for uncertainty (Asia Pacific Alliances of Coaches, 2021).
With that demand, the 2020 survey of the International Coaching Federation gave a 41% average of coaches that has a somewhat positive outlook that their profession will bounce back in 6-months.
Future of Coaching
Blackbyrn blogged that coaching clients are becoming sophisticated and they are willing to pay for coaches with great coaching skills and profound results. In the latest study by Jarosz (2021), the participants of the experiment group noticed positive shifts occurring in their thinking patterns as well, especially in how they evaluate and think about themselves and suggest that the application of coaching in the workplace improves employee well-being and performance.
Data Source: (Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches, 2020)
Based on 5th Coaching Survey an Asia Coaching Benchmark 2019; Singapore has a relatively more mature coaching market yet some companies find coaching very expensive and not a ‘powerful tool’. Philippines’ growth of coaching services could be attributed to the deeper penetration in existing markets as well as expansion into new markets and industry sectors. In China, coaching is a relatively young concept. One out of three firms planned to use coaching services but the others hindered by lack of awareness, high cost and support from top management. Recent growth in Indonesia’s coaching market reflects expansion opportunities and 5% indicated to adopt coaching in the next 12 months.
Clearly, in every crisis coaches are ready to explore and build new resilient models/tools in helping their clients to face vulnerability, unsafe and uncertain paths. As forecasted, the coaching industry is setting a mark not only in companies but also in different aspects of life.
International Coaching Federation. (n.d.). FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS. Retrieved 07 23, 2021, from International Coaching Federation: https://coachingfederation.org/faqs
Wildflower, L. (2013). The Hidden History of Coaching. Great Britain: CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire .
Stober, D. R., & Grant, A. M. (2006). Evidence Based Coaching Handbook. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Traut-Mattausch, E., Mühlberger, M. D., Jonas, E., & Losch, S. (2016, May 03). Comparing the Effectiveness of Individual Coaching, Self-Coaching, and Group Training: How Leadership Makes the Difference.
International Coaching Federation. (2020). COVID-19 and the Coaching Industry. COVID-19 and the Coaching Industry .
Davis, A. A. (2009). Coaching: Navigating the Emerging Trends in Financial Services. IJCO The International Journal of Coaching Organizations .
Asia Pacific Alliances of Coaches. (2021, April). Newsletter. Retrieved Jul 28, 2021, from Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches — The Coaching Voice of Asia Pacific : http://www.apacoaches.org/news/newsletter/
Jarosz, J. (2021, February 01). The impact of coaching on well-being and performance of managers and their teams during pandemic. International Journal of Evidence Based Coaching and Mentoring .
Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches. (2020). 5th Coaching Survey an Asia Coaching Benchmark, 2019. Asia Pacific Alliance of Coaches.
There’s a lot of FREE webinars/training online and FREE tools to explore and that is the main reason why a huge number of people were lost and didn’t know where to begin their DATA journey. I am a bit picky now with training/webinars. Let us just say that there are numerous cr*p contents that will waste your time. Some free training is after your data, you are just a number to flaunt to their partners or sponsors.
Well, Power BI Essentials got me hooked! I am glued to our screen for more than three hours. Mr. Abraham Avila Jr was the trainer for that day and he taught us from installing Microsoft Power BI up to building a dashboard solution for the HR team.
After the training this is the dashboard created by Sir Abs:
DataSense Analytics Sample Dashboard
For us to receive a certificate we need to submit an enhanced dashboard to fulfil further the task and objectives given below:
Power BI Desktop Essentials
For Apple users like me, you can access the free Power BI tool through VMware.
or Apple users like me, you can access the free Power BI tool through VMware.
Power BI is intelligent enough to know the primary keys in each table you uploaded. Here the primary key for the Department Table that connects HR_Data is DepartmentID and Position to HR_Data is PositionID.
Just always double check those connections.
Power BI Data Modeling
Data Manipulation:
— Full Name: Added new column to merge LastName, FirstName, MiddleInitial and dropping the three separate columns
— Age and Employee RetentionAdded New column using age menu in the Power Query Editor
Data Analysis:
We use a high level dashboard that will identify employee segmentation required by the HR Manager.
Filters were created for users to drill down data as per their need.
— Hire Date
— Department
— Manager
— Employment Status
Power BI Dashboard that Summarises HR Records
We created a number of employees and marital status segmented by gender.
We used median age instead of average because of the widespread age in our data.
Created a ribbon chart that will show not only the trend of hiring but also the average salary for each position.
Table will magnify the best recruitment source for HR
Meters will give a color coded goal for employees average satisfaction and absences.
The Employee Table will give a high level overview for each person.
Mapping out the employees location will be useful in determining where to publish vacancies for a certain department/position.
Have I told you that this is my first Power BI dashboard? If you found this useful, kindly clap/like my post or you have some suggestions for me to enhance my data viz, please comment on this post.
I have read an online debate regarding free courses vs paid bootcamps. Some will definitely standstill in their opinion that you can’t be a data analyst by just staring at your screen and answering a few multiple choice exams. But I have seen SPARTA and Google Graduates who are now working full time in their dream jobs. Well, in the end, it is not the course, it is not your professors in your school… IT IS YOU who will determine your next step..your future in your OWN DATA JOURNEY!
