Emotional Intelligence in Software Testing
Emotional intelligence has risen to a high level of prominence in corporate and cultural conversations. Quality professionals have a unique opportunity to benefit their teams by refining their nontechnical skills in the categories of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. Honing these skills can mitigate real-world challenges in the QA workplace, such as schedule pressures and rapidly changing priorities; feeling unheard or silenced; facing blame, disrespect, or lack of trust; or feeling left out of the loop on information critical to your job. You'll learn how to spot trigger issues and channel negative emotions into productive behaviors, refine communication to your audience and stakeholders, overcome areas of imbalances in professional respect, give help and earn loyalty, and deliver tough messages with good data and a dash of humor—ultimately, helping your teams go faster.
Laurie Sirois has over 25 years of experience in QA leadership roles (as director, manager, architect, and lead), as well as in product owner and producer roles at small to midsized companies. She specializes in building and evolving QA teams, processes, and automation initiatives that help to close the gap between business and customer needs. Laurie most recently joined a company in the industrial IoT space. She holds an active CMSQ (Certified Manager of Software Quality—QAI) as the top-scoring participant globally (as of 2015). She has also earned her CPCU (Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter—The Institutes), and holds active CSPO and CSM designations from the Scrum Alliance. Laurie champions quality as a core component of enterprise risk management and enjoys sharing her passion for this.