Software Engineering :: Agile :: Courses :: Becoming an Agile Coach :: 3. Detect Problems and Mediate Conflict
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As coach, don't solve, instead facilitate the resolution. Share observations with teams individually. Present what has been observed and what is heard from stakeholders.
- Process: How Agile is being executed.
- Performance: How can the teams do better?
- Dynamics: How can teams be better teams?
share the problem statement with the team and ask the following questions:
- Why didn't the stakeholders understand the release schedule?
- Whose responsibility was it to ensure the stakeholders know the release plans?
- How will the team solve this problem?
NOTE: It is the team that is making the commitments; so, it is the team that must solve problems that get in the way of these commitments.
The coache's role here is to share observations and facilitate the team's resolution of the issue. The coach may also be asked to provide a refresher session on how to effectively run a specific event such as sprint or release planning.
...realize that conflict is not a bad thing, in fact, it can be a positive force on teams.
Your role as a coach is to help teams harness conflict for their benefit. As teams pursue excellence in their products, their skills, and their agility, conflict is inevitable.
There's a common framework to understand the levels of conflict. It was developed by Speed Leas many years ago and it's still relevant today.
You're not coaching to solve for anyone. You're coaching the teams to solve for themselves.
This is a good framework to share with the team. As a coach, you're not a referee who will decide who is right and who is wrong. When a team comes to you, their coach, asking for help to resolve a conflict, your first step is to listen to the language of the conflict. Only by doing this will you know what level of conflict the team is in. Once you've assessed the level of conflict you'll then spend some time reflecting on the core issue(s). You'll have to peel away all the additional conplaints that have been added on to the verbiage to find the core issue at hand. Once this identification is done, you'll need to empathize with the divergent viewpoints to understand the perspectives of the team members. Every perspective is valid, but no perspective is complete by itself.
Then you need to decide what you're going to do. As always, the team needs to solve issues themselves. But you can play a key role by helping deescalate the situation. Use your own language to help the team bring themselves closer to a level-one disagreement. Then, once the team is there, ground them back into the structure of agile and the work that needs to be done.
Sometimes conflicts arise because for example, agile's principle of continuous attention to technical excellence can be manifested in many different ways. Different approaches can trigger conflict. Regrounding the team in teh agile framework can help de-escalate the situation. When cooler heads prevail, more options for resolution become available to the team. As the team navigates these conflicts, they're improving their agility and their ability to perform. They're becoming agile. As you help your teams navigate conflict, you'll help them on their path to high performance.
The most effective part of this chart is that it maps the typical language used during conflicts to the level of divergence that exists.
Teams are a lot like families. Membership in each is often assigned rather than chosen. Just like families, we know that teams come into conflict. Some of these conflicts can be resolved, and honestly, some can't be.
Since team shave relationships like families, it helps to look at techniques that are used to help families. You can refer to the Gottman method to help as you work with teams.
Typical & Solvable
when one person talks over someone else in a meeting
When that behavior occurs every meeting.
Folling the same example, if the person who's never heard in the meetings and the person shutting them off don't address the conflict, the next type of conflict can arise.
These occur when perpetual problems aren't handled well and have become a source of ongoing discomfort. If perpetual conflict isn't addressed, it will result in passive aggressive behaviors, snide comments and more. As a coach, your goal is to help teams understand the type of conflict they're in and teach them strategies to continue moving forward with mutual respect.
- Perpetual Problems
- Ongoing Discomfort
- Passive Agressive Behavior
- Share The Types of Conflict with the Team
- Share your relationship building skills
for both families and teams that means the number of positive interactions with each other need to exceed negative interactions by a ratio of at least three to one.
For every negative interaction, it needs to be balanced against at least three positive interactions between the team members.
Positivity can be as simple as empathizing with each other. Thanking each other for picking up printouts and complimenting each other's ideas.
Some team members may have personal styles taht never mesh, but helping them add positivity can ease the gridlock for everyone's benefit. Another strategy you can apply is to remind them of their shared vision for their work. Usually the whole team is part of creating the vision for the product.
That means it's something that they all believed in when work began. Work with the team to make sure the vision is still appropriate for where they are today. If it's not, it's time to get it updated. If it still applies, help them explore whether the conflict really matters in light of the overall goal.
People, when focused on a shared vision, can rise above and out of gridlock.
Your goal as coach is to increase their number of positive interactions. At the same time, you'll be helping them use their own vision as a glue that keeps them bonded together with a sense of shared purpose. Sometimes, with families and teams, conflicts are unresolvable. No matter what, you'll face conflicts as an Agile coach.
- Process, Performance, Diagnostics
- Process, Progress, Performance
- Process, Performance, Dynamics
- Process, Performance, Demands
- Picking a side.
- Understand the language being used.
- Understand the perspective of the team members.
- Find the core issue.
- common conflict
- solvable conflict
- gridlocked conflict
- negotiated conflict
- 1:1
- 2:1
- 3:1
- 0:1