Behavioural Skills — Senior QA // Your QA rocks?

Behavioural skills are sometimes called personal and interpersonal skills or basic skills.

They can exist in a person because of aptitude, personality trait, culture or upbringing, but they can also be developed through training and practice.

#	Knowledge	Description
1	Conceptual Thinking	Acquiring understanding and insights regarding the underlying issues in complex problems or situations through the development of abstract representations, the identification of patterns and the analysis of hypotheses.
2	Information Acquisition	Identifying gaps in the available information required to understand a problem or situation and devising a means of resolving them.
3	Planning and Organisation	Determining a course of action by breaking it down into smaller steps and by planning and resourcing each of these, making allowance for potential problems and escalating if necessary.
4	Decision Making	Making decisions at the appropriate time, taking into account the needs of the situation, priorities, constraints, known risks, and the availability of necessary information and resources.
5	Goal Orientation	Maintaining focus on agreed objectives and deliverables.
6	Follow-up and Monitoring	Checking progress against targets, taking action to resolve exceptions/issues and reporting and escalating where necessary.
7	Ambiguity	Comfortable dealing with ambiguity and operating in environments that evolve and change.
8	Resilience	Demonstrates resilience when working under pressure, displaying a calm and rational approach to the task in hand.
9	Analytical Thinking	Acquiring a proper understanding of a problem or situation by breaking it down systematically into its component parts and identifying the relationships between these parts. Selecting the appropriate method/tool to resolve the problem and reflecting critically on the result, so that what is learnt is identified and assimilated.
10	Attention to Detail	Applying specific quality standards to all tasks undertaken to ensure that deliverables are accurate and complete.
11	Cross-Functional and Inter-Disciplinary Awareness	Understanding the needs, objectives and constraints of those in other disciplines and functions.
12	Interacting with People	Establishing relationships, contributing to an open culture and maintaining contacts with people from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines. Effective, approachable and sensitive communicator in different communities and cultures. Ability to adapt style and approach to meet the needs of different audiences.
13	Influence, Persuasion and Personal Impact	Conveying a level of confidence and professionalism when engaging with stakeholders, influencing positively and persuading others to take a specific course of action when not in a position of authority.
14	Critical Thinking	The ability to think clearly and rationally; review and evaluation of processes and outputs; the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking; reasoned thinking involving critique.
15	Persistence	Meeting targets, acting and/or fulfilling agreements even when adverse circumstances prevail.
16	Strategic Perspective	Keeping organisational objectives and strategies in mind, and ensuring courses of action are aligned with the strategic context.
17	Stakeholder Focus	Understanding the needs of internal or external stakeholders and keeping these in mind when taking actions or making decisions.
18	Customer Focus	Understanding the needs of the internal or external customer and keeping these in mind when taking actions or making decisions.
19	Teamwork	Working collaboratively with others to achieve a common goal.
20	Flexibility	Taking account of new information or changed circumstances and/or business requirements and modifying response to a problem or situation accordingly. Adapts to change with ease and has the ability to re-prioritise tasks effectively.
21	Creativity	Taking innovative approaches to problem solving and/or devising inventive and creative solutions.
22	Holistic Thinking	The ability to place problems in the context of the wider business landscape or area of interest. Understanding how different business functions work together to achieve shared goals.