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EuroSTAR Conference

Europe's Largest Quality Engineering Conference

Track Talk

Asking for Help: How to ask the right questions

Veerle Verhagen

11:15-11:45 Wednesday 29th September

Asking for help should be about empowerment. So why does it often feel so diminishing? Since  I became a tester, I have struggled with this. In the words of Atul Gawande: ‘A professional is someone who is capable of managing their own improvement’. This is my story about becoming a professional. I learned to manage my own improvement. But it was a bumpy road.

A couple of years ago I was completely stuck on an assignment. I used to think I had to be the expert in my field and that asking for help was a sign of inexperience and mediocrity. When I started reflecting upon this assignment I learned a lot about reaching out and asking for help. In the end I found my most important stumbling blocks:

  • I was asking the wrong questions.
  • I was phrasing them badly.
  • I was asking the wrong people, and when they couldn’t help me I was too embarrassed to keep trying.

 
I took these lessons to heart and used them to improve as a professional question asker. This set me up for success on subsequent assignments. I am now on a mission to teach how to ask for help in a way that empowers you as a professional. In this talk I will give specific pointers on how to ask, what to say, whom to talk to and I will even go as far as telling you how to phrase your questions.

What you will learn

  1. How to avoid feeling ashamed when asking for help
  2. How asking for support can forge connections
  3. Phrasing! How to phrase your questions to get the answers you want

Session Details

  • Introductory
  • 30 Minutes
  • Live Q&A
  • People, teams and culture
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Check out this video from Veerle Verhagen to hear more about her talk on ‘Asking for help: how to ask the right questions’.

We look forward to welcoming you to EuroSTAR 2021, 28-30 Sept!

Session Speaker

Veerle Verhagen EuroSTAR Speaker

Veerle Verhagen

Tester – RisQIT, Netherlands

Veerle Verhagen is a software tester with RisQIT. She has a background in historical linguistics, but felt that dead languages weren’t a viable career choice so she turned to IT. She immediately felt at home in the software testing community, where almost everyone is even weirder than she is. Veerle is a social animal who cannot wait for the office to open again. Until that time she tries to connect and keep in touch with testers around the globe online, from the comfort of her own kitchen.

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