Today, my topic is actually transforming your uh Q A team with uh emotional intelligence. So a little bit about me. Um I'm a uh I'm in Q A domain for the last 15 years. Uh Currently, I'm leading uh Q A engineering team at Palo Alto Networks.Uh Previously, I worked uh with uh Microsoft Cisco and Hitachi. Uh And my background is basically, I have bachelor's degree in electrical Engineering from Institute of Technology. And my master's is in engineering management and leadership from Santa Clara University. I shared my linkedin profile but you can just uh search my name, the Luba Malik and I should be um uh reachable there. If you have any question after the presentation, if you want to get hold of the presentation, you can um get it from there. So I want to uh start from the very basic what, what is team, right? Uh The team is consist of group of people who work together or report under the same leader. Uh It's the generic definition of team or you can think of a team is a group of people who are uh complementary skill to achieve some uh common goal right? If you are in Q A, uh then you have uh Q A uh team goal and uh corporate goal. And as a team, you have to work toward that goal and make sure, achieve that uh purpose.

Um Now, I want to give a little bit uh of definition, kind uh of uh emotional intelligence, emotional intelligence is actually the ability to identify and understand um uh your own emotion, manage your own emotion in such a way in a positive way to revive stress, communicate effectively and empathize with others so that uh you can um overcome the challenge and also reduce conflict.

Few are the uh fewer attributes. Uh Few attributes of emotional intelligence is self-awareness, self management, social awareness and uh relationship management. I will uh I'll double click on each one of those. Uh self-awareness is basically you recognize your own emotion, you um how they affect your thought and behavior, how um how you can know your strength and weakness and have self control. So you have to know about that emotional aspect of your uh individual self. So self awareness, it's um just to give you that sense and self management is basically um you, you are in control of in impulsive um feelings or behavior, uh manage your emotion in positive way. You, you can take initiative or if you feel too stressed, then take a walk and make sure uh you can compose yourself, you uh can follow through your commitment and adopt changing circumstances. As you know, our corporate life is full of stress, full of uh commitment, deadline is going on. So we some have to decompose ourselves and we have to take um control of our self management so that we can uh continue our um day to day activity, social awareness. On the other hand, is basically, you understand the emotion um and the need and concern of other people. So you have to have control of your emotion and also you have to understand other people, emotion and pick up the cues.

And if someone feel um uncomfortable, socially, recognize that and help each other out. So this social illness is that side of the um spectrum relationship management is um basically how you can develop and maintain good relationship, whether it is for your colleague, whether it is uh how you are communicating clearly uh aspire and influence others, right? You work um you work well in a team environment and manage the conflict so that um the conflict is not there and uh why I'm talking about this, why this is important, why emotional intelligence matters? So emotional intelligence is very important. Uh And it's, it has a lot of impact our day to day life, right? How we work at um corporate world or how our physical health, mental health and how our relationships are based on every aspect of our life uh is evolved with emotional intelligence. So how, how this can be helpful to building a team or um um building a team to goal uh to have uh achieve that goal, right? So, establish, basically, we have to establish our own rule to um self regulate ourselves, our team interaction, how we want to communicate with our team. Um We have to set up uh some ground rule for communication.

Like somebody uh like to work in the morning time, somebody wants to um work at uh uh afternoon or uh you know, late evening. So based on that, you have to understand, you have to understand each team members uh emotion, how they work uh and how they are efficient, better at certain time frame. So you have to basically understand that um thought behind it and then set up a ground rule so that the entire team is um um acknowledged by that uh ground rule. So they uh there should be a common rule for communicating when the team will interact with each other when they will have long time, soul time to work, particular deliverable and uh given receiving feedback uh and also offer assistance. Um constantly, it's not uh only when you have one on one time. It's more of like um you should be available uh whenever the team needs you and you uh listen more, uh you provide opportunity for your team members to voice their problem without knowing the problem, you cannot provide solutions. So understand that side of it.

Uh apologize and appreciate publicly and make sure whenever uh something doesn't work out, you criticize privately and take ownership of the entire team cadence. That's how um you understand other people, emotion, sorry. So how, how uh we can achieve all this uh to transform your team to an efficient team, we have to follow some process. Uh So few of the items I think from my personal experience is very, very important, which is empathy ownership, career growth, clarity, um communication and connection. So um what I mean by empathy is show that you uh generally care for your team and each team members, you can be compassionate with your team, uh your people and you put yourself in the role and think about their positive, negative and how you can help them. You listen to what uh they are saying uh is a blocking issue and what they are not even saying, read uh in between the line and see what they are trying to accomplish and how you can be proactively helping them, guide and mentor them, coach them. If uh there is anything um needed for their uh their growth or uh their particular uh project ownership is another aspect that I feel is very, very important, provides support.

Like uh if one team member need to execute some Q A activity, you have to uh make sure uh that particular person is accountable and take ownership for that particular project or something. And uh as a leader, you have to make sure you uh seek uh check in with them uh frequently and see every milestone has been achieved and empower them uh to take initiative and take decision and make mistake. Do not um um you know, if someone make mistake, they learn by uh doing that. So do not penalize people when they are um trying to do or innovate cer certain things and make mistakes and celebrate their success. Uh And as a leader, you should own their failure. So uh I feel from my personal experience, this is very, very important aspect of it. Uh Providing clarity is another um building is very important uh when um we are planning for the quarter or the sprint or even long term uh like uh um for the year, right? You have to provide the clear vision for your team to achieve. So uh so that they understand why this is important in the bigger pic picture, w how uh holistically their work actually uh fit into that overall scenario. So setting that ground rule, establishing that milestone together with them so that they can um reach out to that mission and build the culture of transparency so that they are not afraid of um any uh anything to speak up to the leader and they uh deliver the value uh what really matters to the company and uh communication, as I mentioned, this is another building block which is uh you have as a leader, you should listen.

Um And then what you are communicating to them, what they need to achieve as a team. Uh Make sure if there is any action item from you uh for yourself, you follow up, you make sure you uh trust uh your team members and inspire them to um work on more and unblock them uh from any obstacle they have and definitely guide them if there is anything needed. And um and lastly, but not least that uh connection matters, right? So how you connect with your team member. So when you are having your one on one, it should not be just about work progress, how uh the project is progressing. There are so many other way of tracking that you can have a dashboard, you can have uh Jira Confluence uh to check track the status, right? So when you have one on one time, uh definitely bring up the work progress, how things are going if there is any blocker talk about that. But then more than that one on one should be more about understanding the team member need what they are working on, how they are contributing, how that is important.

I tell them that they are doing a good job or if they need to improve, um be upfront and tell them and definitely bring the career growth in every one on one conversation so that you know what you are expecting and what the employees um expectation is that match and definitely motivate them for giving them long term, short term um uh goal as well as uh check back if they are meeting that and always uh see how they're doing uh physically and mentally.

Because during this pandemic, we uh everybody is trying to cope up with the situation, everybody's situation is different. So you have to basically connect with them uh in personal level so that you understand where they stand. And I feel by um prioritizing our schedule, by setting the expectations, setting the uh ground rule using the technology, um we can create uh such uh such uh workplace that we can uh foster our team and make our team more efficient. And um what we can do better is basically create more viral events, um social events. So you are meeting them one on one and you have some meeting that overlap. But in uh you need to basically connect with them in a group setting so that you also see uh you can hear each other, what they are talking about how they are connecting with each other and celebrate all the um you know, uh cultural uh event uh together to um you know, f foster with your team basically uh and try to have a day where you don't have any meeting, just uh consolidate that uh day with all concentrated work, how you can reach your deadline and everything and you can encourage and support each other.

So um with that, I want to um uh give some takeaways that um using your emotional intelligence, basically, understanding your team members and uh understanding their need, understanding how you can help them is more important than uh just uh talking about the work progress. Definitely work progress is important for each and every project. And uh you have to track that with your Q A metrics, work, each Q A team members are going to deliver, hold them accountable for whatever they need to deliver and make sure everything is on the deadline and empower them. Um If they need to learn some new techniques, they need to uh understand the um agile process or Q A process, how they are uh communicating with the developer. If there is anything needed from um from the leader as a leader, you should empower them to go through that and be the champion for your team members. So um what they are working on, you are the uh front face. So you should be campaigning for them. You should be um champion for your team members, put your team members achievement in front of the other leaders and uh upper management, celebrate the team's success and own the team's failure.

If there is something that uh need to be work on, uh definitely you can take it in private and make sure you identify why this uh did not happen. And you do a postmortem on and figure out what we learned from that mistake or failure and then go from there and uh definitely lead your team, not uh try to micromanage. I think with that, that's uh that's what um my presentation is. I know uh I saw the comment that you guys did my presentation. So uh if you want to reach out to me, I can uh share um my linkedin here so that um I can share my um presentation with you guys. Do you have any question? The main purpose of this uh presentation is basically we are human as well. We are working together for a common goal. Definitely, we need to have um achieve our goal. We have to uh comply with the corporate uh deliverable and all that. But as a human, we also have to be uh connected with each other. We have to use our emotion to make sure that uh we are um doing a good job as a team and help each other out. Yeah. Uh I, I see a question from Andy. Thank you, Andy for the question. It's a very good question, how you are keeping the EQ connected with uh remote work. So I think as a leader, we have to do a little bit extra.

Uh you have to um schedule 101 for anyone you want to um connect to. So definitely you for your direct report, you are having regular one on one, right? So uh make sure you turn on your video. I know uh it's not easy to um always have one on one with, turn on your video because there are so many things going on in the uh house as well, right? We are working remotely so it become a little difficult but make sure you maybe you can have the uh background board. So if your kids are running around behind, you still um uh your opponent is seeing your face, right? So you can connect with uh uh you know, not face to face, but virtually, you can see each other. So you understand if someone is going through a pain, uh if you just have the voice, you will not see it. But when you see the video, you can from, from the facial expression, you will know that that person is going through a bad day or something. So you can at least have a conversation with that. So that is that human touch is needed uh during this um hard time. And um yeah, as you know, during this pandemic, the uh India uh hard heated. So most of the uh direct report for me was from India and uh my colleagues are from India.

So when we are uh hearing the voice, we didn't see, but when we have the um video turned on, when we talk to them, then we see that how much pain they are going through and we can discuss comfort them and make sure provide emotional and moral support so that um you know, uh i it we can help each other out to make sure we uh hold each other uh during this uh hard time.

So that's the of the session if any. And I see another. Um Yeah, sure. Uh Another question I can get from Heather is how if you have any example to celebrate the success. Definitely, for example, if you have a small deliverable for the big one, big one, we celebrate a corporate level. But the small one, like for example, if I have a test automation backlog and uh one of the member of mine have completed certain and that added a value to our team, right? So we have to celebrate this small uh uh achievement. We have to make sure we'll uh have a team gathering or uh if we have it all hand or if we have anything, we have to mention that, that, you know, XYZ person did some automation and this has this value to my team. I'm not talking about every single individual task we have to celebrate, but what have most value to our team, we should celebrate. So that that person also have a um uh a sense of accomplishment that oh my task has been uh you know, celebrated in front of public and they really feel good. Like that's, that sense is important for us. Yeah. Any, any other question?

If not, I think that's all and definitely don't forget to reach out to me in linkedin. Uh uh I will uh love to meet with you guys and if you have any question, I, I'm always open and uh we'll definitely connect and um talk to you guys through linkedin or any other. And uh I can share my uh presentation with the linkedin as well if you reach out to me. Yeah. Thank you so much. Take care, have a great conference.