I’m beginning to get quite excited about speaking at CPHContext about ”Value Centered Dialogue in Context Driven Testing”. It’s not the first time I speak at a testing conference, but I am going to demonstrate a type of dialogue for which there is no firm recipie and I can therefore only plan for mentally. And that is of course a bit exciting 🙂
To settle my nerves, I’m writing this blog to reveal something about what I’m going to tell people.
Recently, a good friend asked me: “What is leadership is to you?”
My answer came quicker than I thought it would: “It is about setting people free to do their best,” I said.
We were talking about personal leadership values.
Heuristics and values
There are many ways to lead people – we could call them leadership heuristics – and while you and I can attend the same courses or read the same books and therefore learn the same leadership heuristics, our personal values shape our actions and therefore the way we apply these heuristics.
Everything I’m going to say in the session will be about basic human values and how I have found a special type of dialogue can bring new energy into context driven testing leadership.
I have my slides ready, and I hope it will be a good experience for everyone attending my session.
A protreptic dialogue
I’d like to give show something about how a protreptic dialogue between me (the guide) and you would start out. I might start with a question to you:
What does it mean to be context driven?
I’ll listen carefully to your answer and depending on what you answer (there is no right or wrong here as it is about you) I might tell you something about the origins of the word context. Words are important in protreptic dialogue.
The word context is orignally latin and comes from contextus which means joining together. The danish word for context is sammenhæng, which means the same, so context is something we are joined to, or maybe even woven into, as the latin origins actually indicate.
Then, what does it mean to be context driven: Can something that we are joined to or even woven into drive us? It might if there is motion in it, so if we want to understand something about how the context is driving us, we should look at the dynamics in it. But perhaps the driving could be reversed: Can our testing set the context in motion?
This question was for you, and again I’ll listen carefully to what you say. If it was me, I might answer myself like this:
Of course we can set the context in motion, and we do, as testers. After all, testers discover stuff other people have not yet discovered, we build trust, create business value, spoil illusions and other things that send motion back into the context.
This is interesting. As a guide, I’ll listen to your value laden words: discovery, trust, value, illusions. In a human value-perspective they have meanings related to the four basic human values: The Good, The Beautiful, The Just and The True.
In the ongoing protreptic dialogue, we will explore these values together, getting very close to what they really mean to you. We might talk about your work or other things in your life, but only if you want to and bring it up. This is not a therapy session.
Protreptic dialogue is meant to be a nice and respectful experience for both. There are no roles to play, we are both ”ourselves”, but we are taking a journey together to discover something about ourselves, in this case about context driven testing.
