Leading, Following, or Managing? You Can Help Your Group Thrive

As testers or test managers, being effective mentors, coaches, and leaders is critical to our team’s success. Quite often we also play important roles in driving change, influencing others, and helping individuals, teams, and the business move from where they are to a higher level of excellence. We must interact with many people and work together in project teams made up of individuals with diverse perspectives. Join Isabel Evans as she reviews the range of interaction approaches of leadership and management, explores what styles we feel most comfortable with, discusses how we react to both being leaders and being led—and investigates and provides examples of what other animals can tell us about how we interact with others. Regardless of the software lifecycle model we use, as testers we need to understand these interactions, and when to adopt a leadership, mentoring, coaching, following, or learning attitude to help our group thrive. Leave with an understanding of leadership styles from authoritarian to collaborative—and how we react to them. Learn how you can use these approaches most effectively and efficiently to help your group thrive.