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Anonymous
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Asked: 2023-02-07T13:18:25-05:00 In:

How to navigate with a team member telling other how to work

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Hey community,
Looking for some advice.
I have a very small team – one fullstack, one front end lead, one UX/UI, and one QA. And, of course me the SM and one PO
The front end lead and the fullstack are constantly bickering back and forth about the way work gets done. Specifically, the fullstack is always trying dictate the way the front end work is done. He’s even commented and said his quality of work is probably much different then everyone else.
Any suggests on what I can do as the SM to alleviate this? The arguments always happen during our daily.
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    1 Answer

    1. GuyM

      I’d suggest two things.

      – the surface issue is seldom the underlying problem
      – you have a team that lacks the skills to be collaborate effectively

      Technical skills only take a team so far. A high performance team has significant non-technical skills that allow creative conflict, effective communication and rapid decision making.

      What would you do if it was obvious your team was lacking technical skills?

      If their lack of non-technical skills are limiting their professional effectiveness as a team, what would you suggest?

      I general start teams off with a working agreement; as part of that we look at Amy Edmondson’s Ted talk on psychological safety (and refence Google’s Re:work blog on effective teams); it;s about 10 minutes.

      I’d also show “Locating Yourself” and “The Drama Triangle” from the Conscious Leadership group (both under 4 minutes)

      This starts to create a conversation about what behaviours are effective (and which ones are not) in a team setting. That can lead to a working agreement.

      Of course, that’s not all. The team needs better skills at “courageous conversations” , conflict resolution, effective communication, all of that stuff. Either provide that skill training and mentoring yourself, or bring in providers.

      If you are not convinced, look at Ron Westrum’s paper on organisational culture (which the DevOps movement references) and note that in a high performing organisation “messengers are trained”.

      TLDR; If the full stack developer wants to be a highly effective professional, then they’ll need to learn some non-technical skills. Raise the bar on behavior with the team, and coach into the gap.

      Links :

      Amy Edmondson Ted-X

      Conscious Leadership Group:

      Does the team want to be high performing? Then they need to

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