one-on-ones Archives - Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast

Joshua McDonald: When Your Agile Enthusiasm Creates Resistance, Start With Trust

“Don’t assume they’re as enthusiastic about Agile and Scrum as you are.” – Joshua McDonald

Joshua McDonald starts the week with a failure story many Scrum Masters will recognize: stepping into a team and assuming the role, the expectations, and the Agile conversation were already understood.

The team had worked with a hands-off Scrum Master before, so Joshua’s attempts to facilitate events, talk about metrics, and bring more structure were received as interference. The pushback grew so strong he sensed people were talking to his manager about removing him. The turning point came when Joshua stopped leading with Scrum language and started rebuilding social equity through one-on-ones.

He asked what he could have done differently, acted on the feedback, and reminded himself and the team to assume positive intent. His lesson is direct: when we join a new team, trust is the work before the work. Go slow, understand how people operate, and bring suggestions through relationships before bringing them to the whole room.

Self-reflection Question: When you join a new team, what do you do first to understand their relationship with Scrum before you suggest changes?

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About Joshua McDonald

Joshua is endlessly curious about better ways of working. He helps teams grow by blending experimentation, creativity, and AI with practical coaching. When a meeting feels routine, he’s already testing a new approach to make it more valuable. Energetic and inventive, he turns everyday collaboration into opportunities for team growth.

You can link with Joshua McDonald on LinkedIn.

Maria Skvortsova: If Your People Feel Safe, You Succeed — Measuring What Matters as a Scrum Master

“If your people feel safe and comfortable in the environment you built, then you succeed. If not, that’s something you should change in your ways of working.” — Maria Skvortsova

For Maria, success as a Scrum Master has nothing to do with green reports or velocity charts. She’s seen green dashboards masking miserable teams and sky-high velocity hiding terrible quality. Instead, her definition of success centers on one thing: can a developer honestly tell the product owner that a story isn’t ready — and not be punished for it? That’s psychological safety in action.

Maria measures this through healthy conflict — the team’s ability to disagree constructively, to challenge each other without fear. She uses the Vacation, Shopper, Prisoner, Explorer retrospective as a gauge: are people showing up as engaged shoppers and explorers, or as reluctant prisoners?

She also emphasizes a practice that many Scrum Masters overlook — having regular one-on-ones with every team member. Not just for task alignment, but to understand their cultural background and personal context. Maria works with people from many different cultures and has learned that what feels like disengagement in one culture might be deep respect in another.

Her tip: before assuming you understand someone’s behavior, invest in learning where they come from. The cultural awareness you build through those conversations will make you a better Scrum Master than any framework ever could.

Self-reflection Question: How do you know whether the people on your team feel safe enough to say “no” or “this isn’t ready”? When was the last time you checked?

Featured Retrospective Format for the Week: Stinky Fish

Maria’s favorite retrospective format is the Stinky Fish. The metaphor is simple and vivid: a stinky fish represents the things a team is trying to hide, the elephants in the room that everyone avoids. The longer you hide the fish, the worse it stinks. The exercise asks team members to put their “stinky fish” on the table and admit that something smells.

Maria doesn’t use this format every sprint — she saves it for when she senses there’s something the team is avoiding. She also structures all her retrospectives using the Derby-Larsen model: opening, objective data (burn-downs, defect counts), subjective data, insights, decisions, and closing with a ROTI (Return on Time Invested) vote. For large teams, she uses breakout rooms in pairs — because when you’re in a pair, it’s impossible not to talk. She also uses Mentimeter for interactive slides, letting people grab their phones, relax, and contribute without the pressure of speaking up in front of 17 people.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Maria Skvortsova

Maria is a Delivery Manager and Agile Coach who thrives in complexity, bringing clarity to chaotic environments. With a decade in C++ development and a background in professional opera, she blends technical precision with human empathy, helping enterprise teams move beyond task execution to collaborate seamlessly and perform like a synchronized, high-impact orchestra.

You can link with Maria Skvortsova on LinkedIn.

Mukhtar Kadiri: When the Smartest Person on the Team Becomes the Biggest Bottleneck — And Explodes in a Meeting

“A lot of times, the problem is not necessarily technical. It’s a human problem. Just figuring out the human dynamics removes the obstacles and makes the project flow.” – Mukhtar Kadiri

Mukhtar was brought into a healthcare software project where the team couldn’t hit any of their milestones. The product manager, engineering team, and head of engineering were supposed to be self-sustaining, but chaos reigned. What Mukhtar found through his one-on-ones was a pattern of finger-pointing — product blaming engineering, engineering blaming product.

Then, in one meeting, the head of engineering exploded. He burst out yelling in front of the entire team. In a private conversation afterward, Mukhtar discovered the root cause: this brilliant architect was a bottleneck. Everyone depended on him, he was stretched across multiple projects, and the frustration had been building with no outlet.

Mukhtar’s approach was direct — “Your name is on this project. Yelling is not going to help.” But the real insight came from what happened next. Once the head of engineering started controlling his outbursts, team morale improved almost immediately.

Combined with basic structure — regular meetings, low-hanging-fruit milestones — the team built momentum and eventually became self-sufficient. The lesson? No matter how technical the challenge looks, it’s always a people problem. And one-on-ones aren’t just status updates — they’re pressure valves that prevent public explosions that can cause irreparable damage to team morale.

Self-reflection Question: Is there someone on your team who’s carrying too much load in silence — and what would it take for you to create a safe space where they can express that frustration before it boils over?

Featured Book of the Week: HBR Project Management Handbook by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez

Mukhtar recommends the HBR Project Management Handbook because, as he puts it, “A lot of project management books, I can read them and it’s almost like I’m not really learning anything new. But this one had substance.” After stumbling into project management and leading projects for seven years before even pursuing his PMP, Mukhtar found that most PM books simply codified what he already knew from experience.

The HBR handbook was different — it offered breadth, depth, and fresh approaches to common project management challenges. He also recommends the Rita Mulcahy PMP Exam Prep for those preparing for PMP certification, noting that studying for the exam crystallized frameworks around things he had been doing instinctively.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Mukhtar Kadiri

Mukhtar Kadiri is a PM career coach with 15+ years in project management. He specializes in helping project and program managers land $100–300K roles. He’s been named the #1 PM in Canada. He also has a LinkedIn following of 67K+ professionals. He shares practical insights for FREE on LinkedIn, where he talks about job search, career growth, and thriving as a PM.

You can link with Mukhtar Kadiri on LinkedIn.

Mukhtar Kadiri: The Invisible Stakeholder Who Almost Derailed His First Big Project

“Nobody really told me, okay, this is what success looks like. And that’s a very dangerous thing, because you can just go in there and be busy and be executing.” – Mukhtar Kadiri

Early in his career, Mukhtar was sitting on the bench with nothing to do — and his days felt numbered. When a low-priority project came along, he jumped at it, eager to prove himself. He met the contract holder, understood the terrain, laid out a plan, and started executing. Then a stakeholder he hadn’t even mapped called him into her office and blasted him.

The project wasn’t aligned with her vision — and it turned out she was more powerful than the contract holder, even though she appeared nowhere on the org chart. That moment forced Mukhtar to rethink everything. He started scheduling one-on-ones with every stakeholder he could find, asking each one what success looked like from their perspective, and then asking them to point him to the next person he should talk to.

What emerged was a comprehensive success criteria that no single person had articulated before — because even the leaders hadn’t sat down to define it. Mukhtar learned that in complex, ambiguous environments, success isn’t handed to you. It’s your job to surface it, articulate it, and get everyone aligned. As he puts it, don’t be fooled by org charts — the real stakeholder map is one you have to build yourself through one-on-one conversations.

Self-reflection Question: When was the last time you validated your stakeholder map beyond the org chart — and could there be an invisible stakeholder whose definition of success you haven’t yet discovered?

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Mukhtar Kadiri

You can link with Mukhtar Kadiri on LinkedIn.

Prabhleen Kaur: When Lack of Trust Turns Teams Into Isolated Individuals

“Teams self-destruct despite best efforts when they lack trust.” – Prabhleen Kaur

Prabhleen observed a troubling pattern while shadowing a team: stand-ups had become a register activity where people reported individual status without any connection to the sprint goal. There was no “we” in the conversation—only “I.”

The team had experienced a missed deadline due to a PR conflict that wasn’t merged in time, but instead of addressing it openly, everyone focused on fixing the immediate problem while avoiding the deeper conversation. The discomfort was never voiced, and resentment accumulated silently.

Prabhleen explains that team destruction is never about one action—it’s about the accumulation of unspoken concerns that eventually explode at the worst possible moment. To rebuild trust, she recommends starting with peer reviews that encourage natural collaboration and conversation.

Scrum Masters must be vocal about challenges in front of the entire team, modeling the openness they want to see. For teams that have completely withdrawn, anonymous feedback and scheduled one-on-ones can create safe spaces for honest communication. The key insight? Trust is rebuilt when people realize they will be heard and understood, not judged.

In this segment, we talk about how trust is the foundation of effective teams and how its absence leads to working in silos.

Self-reflection Question: When your team experiences a failure or missed deadline, do you create space for open conversation about what happened, or does everyone quietly move on while resentment builds?

Featured Book of the Week: Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland

Prabhleen recommends Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time by Jeff Sutherland as a foundational read for understanding the spirit behind the framework. “When I actually read the book and understood the nuances of rugby and how the team should be, everything started making sense. I grew beyond the Scrum guide, beyond following rules—it’s about how the team operates around you as a collective,” she explains. Prabhleen also highly recommends Turn the Ship Around by David Marquet, summarizing its core message as “leaders lead leaders.” Both books shaped her understanding that frameworks exist to enable collaboration, not to create compliance. Check out the David Marquet episodes on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast for more insights on intent-based leadership.

Transform Your Agile Teams with Hard-Earned Lessons from Super-Experienced Scrum Masters

About Prabhleen Kaur

Prabhleen is a Certified Scrum Master with 7+ years of experience helping teams succeed with SAFe, Scrum and Kanban. Passionate about clean backlogs, powerful metrics, and dashboards that actually mean something. She is also known for making JIRA behave, driving Agile transformations, and helping teams ship value consistently and confidently.

You can link with Prabhleen Kaur on LinkedIn.