All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team Conflict

Welcome to another episode of All Things Agile. In this episode, we discuss the tough subject of team conflict. Whether your Agile or not, every organization is bound to encounter team conflict. We'll discuss how to resolve existing conflict as well as preventing it from even occurring.



I am also very excited to announce that the next episode will feature an interview with notable Agile author, Ken Rubin.  Ken is the great mind behind Essential Scrum. I hope you enjoy this episode and make sure you subscribe to catch the upcoming interview using this link: iTunes. Reviews on iTunes are also always appreciated. Do you have a question that you would like answered in an upcoming podcast? Please send your question to: [email protected].



All Things Agile - Episode 010 - Resolving Team Conflict



Transcript:

Welcome to the All Things Agile Podcast! Your destination
for tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget to
subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, and please check out our sponsor:
TeamXcelerator.com. And now, here’s your host: Ronnie Andrews Jr.

Hello everyone and welcome to the All Things Agile
Podcast! First off, I want to get started by issuing an apology for the delay
in getting a new episode out. The reason why is because I have an upcoming
guest and unfortunately, we are not able to get the scheduling worked out in
time for this episode. But, I am pleased to announce that Ken Ruben, author of
Essential Scrum, will be the honored guest in our next episode.

That said, I want to go ahead and issue another episode. I
don’t want to keep you waiting too long – and with that, I hope you accept my
apologies for the delay in getting this episode out to you. Now, before we
begin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes only
and accepts no legal liability. So the topic for today will be ‘Resolving Team
Conflict’. Virtually any team you will be working on is going to have some
degree of conflict. It’s just part of human nature. You can’t all agree 100%
of the time, even though Agile encourages more of a democratic approach to what
the team is working on and the approaches that they use, there’s bound to be
some degree of conflict on any team that you work on.

Now, before we dive into solutions to resolving team
conflict, let’s first identify the different types of conflict. One type I
think is just general healthy conflict and what really we’re referring to is debate. Using the word ‘conflict’ is probably inappropriate in this
particular case. An example of debate, you may have people that share different
ideas and solutions and what type of technologies should be used, or different
coding practices, whatever. That’s fine. Having those healthy debates,
discussing ideas, is actually a good thing. In this case, it allows you to have
differing points of opinion which can be discussed, evaluated and reach an
ultimate decision on. And that’s fine. That’s a healthy form of debate or
conflict, if you will. And, if you have a little bit of that on your team,
that’s fine and I wouldn’t worry about it.

What we’re really going to be focusing on in this
particular episode, is unhealthy debate. And I would describe unhealthy
conflict or debate as a case where it’s really impacting the team. Where it’s
creating what I like to call a toxic environment. You can definitely tell it
when you’re part of a team that’s having this because it just brings
everybody down. It brings the morale down, and it just feels like the team has been
poisoned, if you will. And you’re going to see evidence of that not only in the
morale, but the conversation, the level of communication and collaboration are
going to go down. You are going to see people that are going to be engaging in
using a lot of inappropriate language. You’re going to have a lot of people
getting into some sort of personal battles with each other or one-upmanship, and
it just really destroys the overall team morale and ultimately, the
productivity. And you’ll actually begin to see this long-term in the metrics where you’ll start to see a team that was doing really well, and then they
start to perhaps have their velocity dip down and more and more of
their stories are being accepted late, etc. So that definitely has an impact. I
would definitely classify unhealthy conflict as conflict which is really
bringing down the team. It may be disrespectful, and it’s simply just not in the
long-term viability of the team. So that’s kind of how I would probably
classify the two main types of conflict that I see, either healthy, just
discussion of topics and technologies versus some things more personal and
toxic. And so we’re going to talk about the latter and how do you resolve it?

Now, I have personally seen these cases come up numerous
times in my career, and if you are particularly in a situation – your team or teams
that you’re coaching or another team in your company that you’ve seen this kind
of just not quite right environment, just a little bit toxic, that’s not
uncommon. First off, it’s bound to occur on average. So that said, even
though it’s a common experience within a company, you certainly don’t want to
maintain that toxic environment. Because here is an interesting point that I
have seen personally which is if one team is currently experiencing a level of
poison, if you will – not only does that team’s morale drop and their
productivity drop – it can spread to the other teams. It’s true.

You can have a team that is doing really well, but if their
neighboring team is engaging in disrespectful behavior and yelling at each
other, cursing at each other, it’s going to impact the neighboring team. They
are not going to want to come in to work that day. Their morale starts to drop
and then their performance starts to drop. So another reason why you want to
deal with unhealthy teams head-on is because not only do you want to help that
team, but you also want to ensure that the degree of poison really doesn’t
spread to the other teams and disrupt them as well.

Alright, so let’s talk about some practical tips that I’ve
personally implemented in the past and found beneficial. Again, every company’s
unique, every team’s unique – you’re responsible for your own actions, but something that has worked well for me is to focus on the present and the future.
Often times when you’re trying to resolve team conflict or coaching the teams
through conflict situations, the team members may get too focused
on the past and the things that happened. And, what I mean by this is that I’ve
certainly seen cases where people get into paper trail battles. You know what I’m
talking about? Where you have someone who has an email that they sent 6 months
ago, and they bring it out. ‘Six months ago you said blah blah and now you’re
saying this!’



So you have these people that hold on to every little piece of
communication, every little email and their real honest reason why they do so
is so that they can spit it back out later. And candidly, that’s not healthy.
And when you really analyze it, those persons, those individuals are focusing
their attention on things that occurred in the past, right? ‘Two weeks ago you
said this; last year you did that’ and so they can get into a lot of negative
debate, a lot of disrespectful behavior sometimes because they’re so focused on
past hurt. And they’re not really learning to forgive and let it be water under
the bridge. And they’re just holding on to that pain, and they’re then letting
that disagreement, anger, and pain, poison the waters in the present and then going
forward towards the future. And you don’t want that.

One of the first things I like to focus on when trying to
coach a team is to – sort of phrase of the idea is: keep the water under the
bridge and keep it there. Okay? Don’t say ‘Oh well, yeah, okay we can move
forward’ and then the next week later ‘Again, I told you 4 months ago that this
is the way we’re supposed to do it’, etc. And again, that leads to that
negative behavior if you’re always bringing up the past. And so whenever I’m
sort of involved in trying to coach a team, I try to think about staying
present, right? Think about: never mind the past, whatever happened in the past
has already happened – we can’t get back into the DeLorean and go back in time
and try to fix it. So in that case, what can we do right here, right now? Stay focused and present. And if you’re speaking with them and
they start going ‘Well, what about that 3 months…?’ just say Stop! Stop. That
was in the past, we can’t change it – what we can change is the present, let’s
focus on that. And it’s not easy to do, but try to hold a hard line on that.
Just say ‘That’s in the past, let’s learn to forgive and put that behind us and
carry on for the present and the future.’

Now, if you can work on that and allow the team to avoid
getting into those negative conversations about the past, then I’d say the next
step is to focus on what actions or changes they can make here in the present
to avoid future pains. So, for example, if part of the past pain was say, for
example, some of the defect procedures were not being followed, as an example,
and people were complaining about it with each other about whose fault it was –
this person didn’t follow procedure and they should have, and someone has a
paper trail from 6 months ago. To avoid that situation, I would say: Identify
what changes could prevent that problem from happening again. So, for example,
you might do six sigma root cause analysis, if you will and say ‘Okay, what
really happened? Why was the process really not being followed?’ Well, maybe
one reason is because the tool being involved wasn’t adequate enough. Maybe you
just need to upgrade your toolset, maybe there’s some other procedures that can
be added. Maybe someone needs to go through some additional training or maybe
involvement with another team can be changed or improved. Or another team
member’s schedules can be altered to allow them greater flexibility in the work
schedule. Whatever the case may be, but the point is this: don’t dwell in the
past, it’s already happened, okay? And then, for being able to resolve the team
conflict, identify actions or steps that can be processed right here, right now
and able to prevent that future pain.

In terms of where it’s a little bit more
personal – that does happen sometimes, where you have teams that for whatever
reason, people harbor personal grudges towards each other, and even if all of
your policies and tools and procedures are all well and good, some people may,
simply put, just not like each other. It certainly can happen. Again, most of
the time, teams will be okay with just changes in their practices. But, there
will be cases where people just simply have personality clashes and where I’ve
seen that in the past – if it’s really that strong, I would say it can be
sometimes worthwhile to go ahead and switch some team members around. There can
be cases where, for whatever reason, those overlapping personalities just bump
up against each other just a little too strong, but you can take that
individual and perhaps shift him to another team, and he’ll work perfectly well
there! Because at the end of the day, all team members are not equal. We each
bring our own level of skill and personality and really, you don’t want
everybody on the team to have an exact mirror copy of each other, in terms of
skillset and personality. You need that diversity because it helps produce a
more well-rounded and ultimately balanced team.

If one person, for example, is a little bit more thorough
and another person is a little bit more sort of quick to act, actually having
them on a team together can sometimes help because the person who’s more
thorough will help balance the other individual out and ultimately, you can end
up with a sort of a middle ground which is actually pretty well and functional.
However, if you have those personality clashes where perhaps you have two
individuals that are for example overly thorough and they may be bumping heads
with each other, maybe that person belongs on another team and maybe there’s
another team out there who needs that type of personality and skillset and they
may actually be a welcome addition.

Now, it is kind of like a last resort to implement team
member changes to shift the morale, but it is certainly better to do that than
to let the team continue in unresolved conflict. And I know it takes a little
bit of guts to go ahead and to talk to people and say ‘You know, I think we
need to move you to another team' but you got to think about the overall team
and the overall organization with the other teams. And again, if you let this
team remain unhealthy or toxic, it’s going to spread to the other teams and you
certainly don’t want to do that and that’s not fair to the other teams, to have
that happen. So, again – I always start first by avoiding getting into the past
trauma state, focus on the present, evaluate what options can occur in the present,
changes and practices, etc; they can be implemented to prevent future pain and
if it is a situation where it’s kind of a deep personality clash more so than
the practices, there need to be team member changes. And that’s okay, and that
does happen – I have certainly seen it happen in other teams as well as my own
teams before. And that’s okay – in a larger organization, it’s bound to happen
sometime.

I would say, kind of like an ultra-last resort, I really
hate to see situations where a team member is removed from the company. That
has happened, I have seen it happen, but that is such a last resort action and
I would certainly encourage any Agile professional that’s trying to help a team
experiencing conflict, that they truly keep that as an absolute last effort
action. And the reason why it’s because it’s my belief that it’s easier to
coach and maintain than it is to replace. Whenever you replace a person in your
organization, you’re incurring cost not only with recruitment, but also with
the interview process – people have to take time out of their days just to
interview the guy or girl – but you also have to consume time with training and
getting them up to speed and having them learn the culture and the ins and outs
of the team, team practices or they may be new to Agile and you have to train
them with that. So all that process can easily take a couple of months. And in
doing so, the team’s velocity is already impacted. So I personally recommend,
whenever possible, try to coach through the situation and reach a solution,
rather than simply just throwing in new bodies. That’s my experience and that’s
my belief. So, again – this is sort of a fourth option there, kind of last
resort.

But those are the strategies that I’ve employed to try and
resolve team conflict and that’s a conflict once it’s already occurred. And I’d
actually like to take a moment and cover a different topic which I honestly
think many Agile professionals don't even consider, and I haven’t seen it mentioned
too much in articles or books, and that is preventing team conflicts. The
material I just covered a second ago is in relation to resolving team conflict once it’s already occurred. But, the old adage is that an ounce prevention is
worth a pound of cure. So you might ask yourself: how can we prevent team
conflict from ever even occurring?

I’ll offer, I’d say about 4 suggestions that I believe, if
you can implement them, they may help you. I’ve certainly seen them help teams
in the past. The first is co-location. When you’re able to bring the team
together physically, like they’re actually physically sitting next to each
other, it often times helps prevent team conflict. If you have teams that are
composed of a lot of full-time remote members, it can be difficult to maintain
a healthy team. And the reason why is because of the bandwidth of
communication. And the highest bandwidth of communication is face to face,
where the person can see the other person’s gestures, the tone of voice, etc.
And if they’re remote too much, then you’re doing a lot of email, a lot of IM
chats, etc. and it’s so easy for the words to get misinterpreted, to get lost
in translation. And so, in that case, it’s just bound to result in team
conflict eventually. So if you can co-locate the teams, and I mean physically co-locate, like in the same office area, that really helps with being able to reduce
the chances of team conflict ever occurring.

Second way I’d highly suggest is in how you treat the team
members. And what I mean by that is this: if you have a team of let’s say 7
members or whatever, and one or two of those members are always favored upon by management or leadership and always listens to those individuals and nobody else,
or those individuals get included in all the important discussions and meetings
and nobody else does; they’re the ones that always get promoted, that receive a
healthy salary and everyone else doesn't– that’s bound to create team conflict,
right? But if you can really look at the team as a team, and comprised of many
different people, each bringing their own value and contribution to the team,
that will significantly reduce the chances of team conflict from ever occurring.
Because you’re reducing the likelihood of people feeling disenfranchised or
left out. Or disrespected. So if you can prevent that – again, it’s a lot
easier to prevent team conflict than it is to fix it once it’s occurred,
right?

I would say that another way to help resolve team conflict
is through training. I’ve seen so many times where Agile teams are just thrown
together and the training aspects is never really fully delivered on. Even
though it costs a couple of thousand dollars, it’s far worth it to ensure that
your team gets off to the right start. You want to ensure that, for example,
all the Scrum Masters become, in my opinion, Certified Scrum Masters, Product
Owners become Certified Product Owners – again, these are my experiences; your
actions are your actions. But that’s my personal opinion – when you’re able to
have those individuals be formally trained, it really does help because they
learn the right practices, not just the way that the companies or organizations
are currently operating. And that’s important!

I also recommend having all of the team members receive some
sort of Agile training. Again, it enables them to have buy-in, and enables them
to better understand the changes being implemented and why, for them to really
see the benefits. If you simply throw people on an Agile team without adequate
training, I think you’re setting yourself and the team up for failure. Don’t do
it. Even though there may be some costs involved in training, it is absolutely
worth it to do so because the longer term cost of not giving them adequate
training and education will be ten times worse or even more than the cost that
could’ve just been handled up front through adequate training. So I definitely
recommend doing that. Don’t skimp on training and coaching and that’s not some
ad or something for my own benefit. I mean this sincerely that I have seen
teams and organizations that did not train adequately and I’ve seen others that
did. And it’s a night and day difference. And again, by doing that, you’ll help
prevent the team conflict from ever even occurring, and that’s certainly
something you want to do.

The fourth thing that I would like to throw out there, a
suggestion again to prevent the team conflict in the beginning, is how you form
the teams. Who’s on the teams and in what roles or capacity? So many times I have
seen team conflict occur because the team members are just thrown together.
Look at a spreadsheet, get some names, throw them on a team. That’s simply just not wise. You need to really examine the skillsets and the personalities.
Who’s got a strong personality? Who’s going to be the person who’s going to
challenge the status quo? Who’s the person who’s going to be a negotiator?
Who’s the person who’s going to help bridge different people together and help
people come to a consensus?

Finding out those personalities and the skillsets, including
development and maybe testing skillsets, finding out those individuals and then
seeing how to craft them into a functional and balanced team really pays
dividends because they are far less likely to have conflict. They are going to
be able to work with each other and compliment each other. If you just simply
throw people together in a team, you’re just asking for conflict. And not only
that – but if they’re not balanced properly, if you look at for example the
work each member’s contributing during a particular sprint or iteration, you’re
more likely to find that the workload isn’t very balanced and that’s
usually because the team’s not balanced. They’re not properly structured. So
prevent the conflict in the first place by investing time to ensure that from
all the people you have across the organization, that you’re really analyzing
their skillset and personalities and putting them together and positioning them
to win, right? If you’re just throwing the bodies together into a team, you’re
just asking for failure and conflict. If you invest the time – and really, how much time does it
take, folks? A couple of days, maybe, to really take a deep look at the team
members and really consider who would be great to partner up with who and if
you can spend that time to partner the team members up correctly, it really
will pay dividends. If you can do that, you’ll prevent a ton of team conflict
down the road. So that’s four suggestions for you, in relation to preventing
team conflict, on top of the other suggestions on resolving if it’s already
occurred.

Alright, well I think that wraps it up, regarding for how I
have personally tried to resolve and prevent team conflict. I certainly am open
to hearing your suggestions. If you have any, feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. And
don’t forget to check out the AgileInstructor.com website and
TeamXcelerator.com website. And as mentioned earlier, I do have a special guest
coming up in the next show, which is Ken Ruben, author of Essential Scrum and
I’m really looking forward to asking him some really great questions I think
you’ll enjoy and find insightful. Well, I think that wraps it up for this show
– thank you so much for your patience in waiting for a new episode, I apologize
for the delay and looking forward to releasing a new episode with that great
interview with Ken Ruben. Thank you very much! Goodbye!

Thank you for listening to All Things Agile. We look forward
to you subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and leaving a kind review. Thanks
and God bless!