This week Michael Bolton wrote a nice story about a usual situation at work where the project manager asks a tester to come in for the weekend. As I just faced a similar situation with a colleague who was asked to stay in, I started to explain some of the mistakes I saw. Challenged by Phil Kirkham I also started to replace the testers behavior – placating – with another behavior – blaming. Today, I’m going to take a closer look on an improved conversation flow by using congruent communication. Just in case you’re interested in more about the Satir Interaction Model, I whole-heartedly suggest you to read through Weinberg’s Quality Software Management series, especially Volume 3 should be of interest.

Here is the list of prequels leading to this post:

• Management mistakes (Part 1) from Michael Bolton
• Testing and Management mistakes
• Testing and Management mistakes: Replacing placating with blaming