“Reading the room” is the ability to sense what is happening in a room and knowing how and when to react appropriately. To me it’s a key testing skill that could be reframed as: 1) understanding the customer needs and 2) reacting depending on the situation. Like the old poker song goes “know when to hold them – know when to fold them” (hence the image above). Working with Goal-aligned test strategies for years it’s is all about linking the business narrative to actual testing activities – spotting the true story of the stakeholders.
I have been working on materials for the new generation of test leads for a range of years now. And reading the room comes up again and again. Not for me to master – but for me to mentor to others. To interpret and narrate. To make the mental exercise to provide a pre and post commentary after key stakeholder meetings.
It’s not as simple as it seems.
When we are new to the testing activities it seems beneficial to overshare information about bugs and testing progress, or react forcefully when things do not live up to our own perceived level of quality. Many testers (I have been there myself back-in-the-day), are driven by a quest to “bring forth the truth“, being the “voice of the customer” and “stop the release I found a bug” etc. We can get so cross and indignant when things do not go the way it was supposed to.
Imagine there is an intermittent bug, the junior testers would consider how to report it. Mid-level testers would probably consider how to add tests for it. Senior testers are often the ones to consider the root causes – but the staff-level testers would consider the systemic issues
Staff-level testing roles
It’s a skill, not a personality trait
Many people in the testing space are neurodiverse and are often being told that they lack the skills to “read the room”. And I have surely struggled with it in the past – both to grasp organizational behavior and the bias that I can’t read a room. Yet I can indeed sense many explicit and implicit parameters in the corporate world. I often refer to it as “high level pattern matching“. I notice things and react to things in my environment. It’s a well-known fact that neurodiverse people in the workplace are like canaries in a cold mine (as mentioned in “The Canary Code” by Ludmila Praslova). If the situation worsens we will be the first to know – we absolutely sense what is happening and react to it. Often too much.
Reacting appropriately
Everyone notices stuff. I found my path with two supports – read and study organizations. Plus experience and practise.
As I bring forward in many of my blog posts I have read from “IT revolution books”, Wardley Mapping but also a significant deal from Charity Majors and other individuals. Along with various sources on organizational change management and organizational management theories. I probably judge people by their reading list. …
Secondly, reading the room is an experienced skill. You have to be in the game to achieve it and be in the game to maintain it. You need to be able to tune in to your organizations current melody. Unfortunately it’s for-ever changing, yet predictable. Over time novel ideas emerge, they form and eventually becomes utilities. As the old saying goes: History never repeats itself – but the stories do rhyme. Listing to the rhythm.