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 destinationfor tips and interviews with the leaders in the world of Agile. Don’t forget tosubscribe 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 AgilePodcast! First off, I want to get started by issuing an apology for the delayin getting a new episode out. The reason why is because I have an upcomingguest and unfortunately, we are not able to get the scheduling worked out intime for this episode. But, I am pleased to announce that Ken Ruben, author ofEssential Scrum, will be the honored guest in our next episode.

That said, I want to go ahead and issue another episode. Idon’t want to keep you waiting too long – and with that, I hope you accept myapologies for the delay in getting this episode out to you. Now, before webegin, a quick reminder that this podcast is for informational purposes onlyand accepts no legal liability. So the topic for today will be ‘Resolving TeamConflict’. Virtually any team you will be working on is going to have somedegree 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 whatthe team is working on and the approaches that they use, there’s bound to besome degree of conflict on any team that you work on.

Now, before we dive into solutions to resolving teamconflict, let’s first identify the different types of conflict. One type Ithink is just general healthy conflict and what really we’re referring to is debate. Using the word ‘conflict’ is probably inappropriate in thisparticular case. An example of debate, you may have people that share differentideas and solutions and what type of technologies should be used, or differentcoding practices, whatever. That’s fine. Having those healthy debates,discussing ideas, is actually a good thing. In this case, it allows you to havediffering points of opinion which can be discussed, evaluated and reach anultimate decision on. And that’s fine. That’s a healthy form of debate orconflict, 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 thisparticular episode, is unhealthy debate. And I would describe unhealthyconflict or debate as a case where it’s really impacting the team. Where it’screating what I like to call a toxic environment. You can definitely tell itwhen you’re part of a team that’s having this because it just bringseverybody down. It brings the morale down, and it just feels like the team has beenpoisoned, if you will. And you’re going to see evidence of that not only in themorale, but the conversation, the level of communication and collaboration aregoing to go down. You are going to see people that are going to be engaging inusing a lot of inappropriate language. You’re going to have a lot of peoplegetting into some sort of personal battles with each other or one-upmanship, andit just really destroys the overall team morale and ultimately, theproductivity. 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 theystart to perhaps have their velocity dip down and more and more oftheir stories are being accepted late, etc. So that definitely has an impact. Iwould definitely classify unhealthy conflict as conflict which is reallybringing down the team. It may be disrespectful, and it’s simply just not in thelong-term viability of the team. So that’s kind of how I would probablyclassify the two main types of conflict that I see, either healthy, justdiscussion of topics and technologies versus some things more personal andtoxic. 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 numeroustimes in my career, and if you are particularly in a situation – your team or teamsthat you’re coaching or another team in your company that you’ve seen this kindof just not quite right environment, just a little bit toxic, that’s notuncommon. First off, it’s bound to occur on average. So that said, eventhough it’s a common experience within a company, you certainly don’t want tomaintain that toxic environment. Because here is an interesting point that Ihave seen personally which is if one team is currently experiencing a level ofpoison, if you will – not only does that team’s morale drop and theirproductivity drop – it can spread to the other teams. It’s true.

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

Alright, so let’s talk about some practical tips that I’vepersonally implemented in the past and found beneficial. Again, every company’sunique, 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 teamsthrough conflict situations, the team members may get too focusedon the past and the things that happened. And, what I mean by this is that I’vecertainly seen cases where people get into paper trail battles. You know what I’mtalking about? Where you have someone who has an email that they sent 6 monthsago, and they bring it out. ‘Six months ago you said blah blah and now you’resaying this!’

So you have these people that hold on to every little piece ofcommunication, every little email and their real honest reason why they do sois 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 focusingtheir attention on things that occurred in the past, right? ‘Two weeks ago yousaid this; last year you did that’ and so they can get into a lot of negativedebate, a lot of disrespectful behavior sometimes because they’re so focused onpast hurt. And they’re not really learning to forgive and let it be water underthe bridge. And they’re just holding on to that pain, and they’re then lettingthat disagreement, anger, and pain, poison the waters in the present and then goingforward towards the future. And you don’t want that.

One of the first things I like to focus on when trying tocoach a team is to – sort of phrase of the idea is: keep the water under thebridge and keep it there. Okay? Don’t say ‘Oh well, yeah, okay we can moveforward’ and then the next week later ‘Again, I told you 4 months ago that thisis the way we’re supposed to do it’, etc. And again, that leads to thatnegative behavior if you’re always bringing up the past. And so whenever I’msort of involved in trying to coach a team, I try to think about stayingpresent, right? Think about: never mind the past, whatever happened in the pasthas already happened – we can’t get back into the DeLorean and go back in timeand 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 andthey start going ‘Well, what about that 3 months…?’ just say Stop! Stop. Thatwas in the past, we can’t change it – what we can change is the present, let’sfocus 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 andcarry on for the present and the future.’

Now, if you can work on that and allow the team to avoidgetting into those negative conversations about the past, then I’d say the nextstep is to focus on what actions or changes they can make here in the presentto avoid future pains. So, for example, if part of the past pain was say, forexample, 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 apaper trail from 6 months ago. To avoid that situation, I would say: Identifywhat 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, whatreally happened? Why was the process really not being followed?’ Well, maybeone reason is because the tool being involved wasn’t adequate enough. Maybe youjust need to upgrade your toolset, maybe there’s some other procedures that canbe added. Maybe someone needs to go through some additional training or maybeinvolvement with another team can be changed or improved. Or another teammember’s schedules can be altered to allow them greater flexibility in the workschedule. Whatever the case may be, but the point is this: don’t dwell in thepast, it’s already happened, okay? And then, for being able to resolve the teamconflict, identify actions or steps that can be processed right here, right nowand able to prevent that future pain.

In terms of where it’s a little bit morepersonal – that does happen sometimes, where you have teams that for whateverreason, people harbor personal grudges towards each other, and even if all ofyour 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 ofthe time, teams will be okay with just changes in their practices. But, therewill be cases where people just simply have personality clashes and where I’veseen that in the past – if it’s really that strong, I would say it can besometimes worthwhile to go ahead and switch some team members around. There canbe cases where, for whatever reason, those overlapping personalities just bumpup against each other just a little too strong, but you can take thatindividual and perhaps shift him to another team, and he’ll work perfectly wellthere! Because at the end of the day, all team members are not equal. We eachbring our own level of skill and personality and really, you don’t wanteverybody on the team to have an exact mirror copy of each other, in terms ofskillset and personality. You need that diversity because it helps produce amore well-rounded and ultimately balanced team.

If one person, for example, is a little bit more thoroughand another person is a little bit more sort of quick to act, actually havingthem on a team together can sometimes help because the person who’s morethorough will help balance the other individual out and ultimately, you can endup 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 twoindividuals that are for example overly thorough and they may be bumping headswith each other, maybe that person belongs on another team and maybe there’sanother team out there who needs that type of personality and skillset and theymay actually be a welcome addition.

Now, it is kind of like a last resort to implement teammember changes to shift the morale, but it is certainly better to do that thanto let the team continue in unresolved conflict. And I know it takes a littlebit of guts to go ahead and to talk to people and say ‘You know, I think weneed to move you to another team' but you got to think about the overall teamand the overall organization with the other teams. And again, if you let thisteam remain unhealthy or toxic, it’s going to spread to the other teams and youcertainly don’t want to do that and that’s not fair to the other teams, to havethat happen. So, again – I always start first by avoiding getting into the pasttrauma 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 andif it is a situation where it’s kind of a deep personality clash more so thanthe practices, there need to be team member changes. And that’s okay, and thatdoes happen – I have certainly seen it happen in other teams as well as my ownteams before. And that’s okay – in a larger organization, it’s bound to happensometime.

I would say, kind of like an ultra-last resort, I reallyhate to see situations where a team member is removed from the company. Thathas happened, I have seen it happen, but that is such a last resort action andI would certainly encourage any Agile professional that’s trying to help a teamexperiencing conflict, that they truly keep that as an absolute last effortaction. And the reason why it’s because it’s my belief that it’s easier tocoach and maintain than it is to replace. Whenever you replace a person in yourorganization, you’re incurring cost not only with recruitment, but also withthe interview process – people have to take time out of their days just tointerview the guy or girl – but you also have to consume time with training andgetting them up to speed and having them learn the culture and the ins and outsof the team, team practices or they may be new to Agile and you have to trainthem with that. So all that process can easily take a couple of months. And indoing 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’smy belief. So, again – this is sort of a fourth option there, kind of lastresort.

But those are the strategies that I’ve employed to try andresolve team conflict and that’s a conflict once it’s already occurred. And I’dactually like to take a moment and cover a different topic which I honestlythink many Agile professionals don't even consider, and I haven’t seen it mentionedtoo much in articles or books, and that is preventing team conflicts. Thematerial 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 isworth a pound of cure. So you might ask yourself: how can we prevent teamconflict from ever even occurring?

I’ll offer, I’d say about 4 suggestions that I believe, ifyou can implement them, they may help you. I’ve certainly seen them help teamsin the past. The first is co-location. When you’re able to bring the teamtogether physically, like they’re actually physically sitting next to eachother, it often times helps prevent team conflict. If you have teams that arecomposed of a lot of full-time remote members, it can be difficult to maintaina healthy team. And the reason why is because of the bandwidth ofcommunication. 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 IMchats, etc. and it’s so easy for the words to get misinterpreted, to get lostin translation. And so, in that case, it’s just bound to result in teamconflict 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 reducethe chances of team conflict ever occurring.

Second way I’d highly suggest is in how you treat the teammembers. And what I mean by that is this: if you have a team of let’s say 7members 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 meetingsand nobody else does; they’re the ones that always get promoted, that receive ahealthy 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 manydifferent 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 orleft out. Or disrespected. So if you can prevent that – again, it’s a loteasier 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 conflictis through training. I’ve seen so many times where Agile teams are just throwntogether and the training aspects is never really fully delivered on. Eventhough it costs a couple of thousand dollars, it’s far worth it to ensure thatyour 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, ProductOwners become Certified Product Owners – again, these are my experiences; youractions are your actions. But that’s my personal opinion – when you’re able tohave those individuals be formally trained, it really does help because theylearn the right practices, not just the way that the companies or organizationsare currently operating. And that’s important!

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

The fourth thing that I would like to throw out there, asuggestion again to prevent the team conflict in the beginning, is how you formthe teams. Who’s on the teams and in what roles or capacity? So many times I haveseen 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 tochallenge 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 helppeople come to a consensus?

Finding out those personalities and the skillsets, includingdevelopment and maybe testing skillsets, finding out those individuals and thenseeing how to craft them into a functional and balanced team really paysdividends because they are far less likely to have conflict. They are going tobe able to work with each other and compliment each other. If you just simplythrow people together in a team, you’re just asking for conflict. And not onlythat – but if they’re not balanced properly, if you look at for example thework each member’s contributing during a particular sprint or iteration, you’remore likely to find that the workload isn’t very balanced and that’susually because the team’s not balanced. They’re not properly structured. Soprevent the conflict in the first place by investing time to ensure that fromall the people you have across the organization, that you’re really analyzingtheir skillset and personalities and putting them together and positioning themto win, right? If you’re just throwing the bodies together into a team, you’rejust asking for failure and conflict. If you invest the time – and really, how much time does ittake, folks? A couple of days, maybe, to really take a deep look at the teammembers and really consider who would be great to partner up with who and ifyou can spend that time to partner the team members up correctly, it reallywill pay dividends. If you can do that, you’ll prevent a ton of team conflictdown the road. So that’s four suggestions for you, in relation to preventingteam conflict, on top of the other suggestions on resolving if it’s alreadyoccurred.

Alright, well I think that wraps it up, regarding for how Ihave personally tried to resolve and prevent team conflict. I certainly am opento hearing your suggestions. If you have any, feel free to send me an email at [email protected]. Anddon’t forget to check out the AgileInstructor.com website andTeamXcelerator.com website. And as mentioned earlier, I do have a special guestcoming up in the next show, which is Ken Ruben, author of Essential Scrum andI’m really looking forward to asking him some really great questions I thinkyou’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 apologizefor the delay and looking forward to releasing a new episode with that greatinterview with Ken Ruben. Thank you very much! Goodbye!

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