Do we have a mentoring, coaching, managing or leadership role towards others? Are we following or learning from others? Do we influence our colleagues and organizations in public or behind the scenes? Are these interactions built into a formal hierarchy in our group? Have we informally adopted an interaction role? Or have we even been forced into a particular interaction role?

In order that we work together as efficiently and effectively as possible, we need to understand the range of approaches or styles for leadership and management, what styles we feel most comfortable with, and how we react to both being leaders and being led.

It’s not just humans who work in groups. Other animals can tell us about how we interact with individuals, teams, and groups both as leaders and followers. Isabel discusses animal behavior, predators, animal groups, parasites and epiphytes, and the richness of symbiotic partnership.

We’ll use techniques such as influence diagramming to help us understand behavior during change, and we’ll look at leadership models to see which ones are appropriate for us.

Regardless of the project model/software life cycle model you use, you’ll need to understand these interactions, and when to adopt a leadership, mentoring, coaching, following, or learning attitude in order to help your group thrive.

Three key points to take away:
Gain an understanding of leadership styles and how you react to them;
Learn how the team organization and leadership style affects its effectiveness;
Understand when to use these approaches most effectively and efficiently.

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The trainer
Independent quality and testing consultant Isabel Evans has more than thirty years of IT experience in quality management and testing in the financial, communications, and software sectors. Her quality management work focuses on encouraging IT teams and customers to work together via flexible processes designed and tailored by the teams that use them. Isabel authored Achieving Software Quality Through Teamwork and chapters in Agile Testing: How to Succeed in an eXtreme Testing Environment; The Testing Practitioner; and Foundations of Software Testing. A popular speaker at software conferences worldwide, Isabel is a Chartered IT Professional and Fellow of the British Computer Society, and has been a member of software industry improvement working groups.