Wednesday, November 17, 2010

BIBS

The following is a true story.  Anna Maravelas of TheraRising.com writes about in her book How to Reduce Workplace Conflict and Stress.

A man is late for a meeting and seems to be hitting every red light on his way to his appointment.  He gets to yet another red light and is behind a woman in a sedan.  While they are waiting for the light to change, she turns around and begins foraging in the back seat.  Perhaps she is looking for lipstick or a CD or who knows what.  But one thing is certain; she is oblivious to the light.  The light turns green.  The man taps his horn.  She ignores him and keeps searching the back seat.  He is now more aggressive on his horn.  She not only ignores him, she gets out of the car, walks to the back door, opens it, and continues foraging!  He is outraged.  He is now leaning on the horn, and has rolled down his window so he can tell her what he thinks of her lack of consideration.  Eventually, without any acknowledgement, she returns to her front seat and drives off.  Another self-absorbed, oblivious driver.

That night, the woman writes a letter to the local newspaper.  She wants to tell her side of the story.  Her story is this:  Today I was sitting at a red light when I sensed something was wrong.  I turned around and saw that my toddler son in the back seat was choking on something.  Frantically I turned to help but could not reach him.  I jumped out of the car, threw open the back door and – thank God – I was able to dislodge the thing he was choking on.  All of this took a minute or two.  I was fighting to save my baby’s life.  There was a man behind me honking his horn and shouting profanities at me.  He was indignant because I may cause him to sit through a two minute light again.  I could not believe how rude he was.

BIBS stands for Baby In the Back Seat.  It is an acronym to remember this story.  It is an acronym to remember that we have a strong tendency to attribute negative motivation when people behave in ways we do not like, or do not understand.  The stranger does not return our hello greeting because he is arrogant.  The supervisor is overly critical because she is petty and controlling.  The babysitter does not show up because she is a typical irresponsible teenager.  We don’t know why this behavior is happening.  But we tend to invent reasons, and the reasons do not show grace.  How strong is this tendency?  Even when you are aware of it you will still catch yourself doing it. I speak from experience.

Testers and developers have jobs that are converging, but their approaches still cause conflict.  The tester logged multiple low-priority defects because he is anal-retentive, or lacks judgment or is trying to make development look bad.  The developer  gave a demo of a new feature without inviting the tester because he does not think about testing, or does not think the tester adds any value.  This thinking makes a problem worse.  BIBS reminds us to deal with the problem and not the person.  Testers and developers don’t always understand each other well – the pressures, the thought processes, the motivation.  As leaders, BIBS is a tool we can use to remind ourselves and those we influence to show each other grace and focus on the why without vilifying the who.

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