← Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile storytelling from the trenches
BONUS: How To Build Trust and Manage Conflict | Maria Arpa
00:37:14
BONUS: How To Build Trust and Manage Conflict, With Maria Arpa In this BONUS episode, we dive deep into the art of building trust and managing conflict in the workplace with Maria Arpa, an expert mediator and creator of . Maria shares powerful...
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- [00:02]
Pasco Duarte
Hi there. Pasco Duarte here, your host. I wanted to share a story with you. You know how sometimes Agile just feels like following another checklist when like processes and frameworks feel more important than what we are trying to achieve and sometimes even like handcuffs. I was talking to a customer of the Global Agile Summit and he used a term that kind of stuck in my he said, I have Agile fatigue. And I've heard that a lot from people since then. But here's the thing, it doesn't have to be this way. So we started thinking and at the Global Agile Summit, which is happening this May, we're bringing together practitioners who've actually done that, who've broken free from this, you know, install the framework kind of mindset. We want to focus the summit on real life, first person stories of Agile all succeeding that inspire you to action. We're talking real experiences, practical solutions, and of course, amazing insights from leaders like Gojkoacic, who will be one of the keynote speakers, and Jurgen Apelo, who will be one of the keynote speakers as well. If you're ready to leave the Agile fatigue behind, just join us in Dalit. The early birth tickets are now available@the globalagilesummit.com and mark your calendar. We will have workshops on May 18th, that's a Sunday. And then the conference itself will happen on May 19th and 20th of 2025 in Tallinn, Estonia. So let's make Agile exciting again. And remember, go to agile globalagilesummit.com that is, and get your early birth ticket. Now. It will only be available until early March, so grab it now. And now onto the episode. Hello everybody. Welcome to a very special bonus episode. And for this bonus episode on how to build trust and collaboration, we have joining us, Maria Arpa. Hey Maria. Welcome to the show.
- [02:20]
Maria Arpa
Well, hi Vasco. Really lovely to meet you.
- [02:23]
Pasco Duarte
Likewise. Likewise. So Maria is an expert mediator, counselor and advocate for meaningful workplace change. She's also the creator of the Dialogue Roadmap, a communications tool that moves away from accusative and blaming ways of communicating to a much more compassionate and collaborative way of working. In her book, Mindfulness at Work, Maria offers powerful strategies to transform stressful, conflict ridden workplaces into environments of harmony and collaboration. And Maria, today we're going to talk about how to build trust, how to help collaboration emerge. What specific advice do you have for us who work within these organizations and struggle to maintain a collaborative and productive level of communication, especially during periods of uncertainty and organizational change?
- [03:22]
Maria Arpa
Great question. Thank you. And what comes to mind immediately that you talk about, you know, maintain, building and maintaining is for people working with teams is always to remember that in workplaces there are power imbalances, and we cannot ignore those power imbalances. So for me, what's really important is to expose the power imbalances, be real about them, have a clear understanding of where the power lies and how we're using it.
- [04:01]
Pasco Duarte
So let's dive into that a little bit more. So let's take a specific example. Luke, our faithful Scrum master out there fighting the evil forces of conflict and lack of productive productivity is probably dealing with this kind of communication. Maybe there's a stressful situation at work and the communication is kind of sliding into more like conflict and blaming. When you talk about power imbalances, what should look, look for and what would be the ways to productively mention those, bring them up to the level of consciousness of the people involved.
- [04:42]
Maria Arpa
So for me, when I want to deal with the power imbalances, the first thing is to get really transparent about what is the contract between us all. So starting for me, one of the things. And when I talk about contracts, I don't mean the contract that we wrote and signed when we took the job or when we engaged with the business, the contracts that we made that are often unspoken about courses of dealing, about how I'm connecting with you, what assumptions have you built up about me? What do you tell yourself about your power to fire me or to make my life a misery and my power to do less work and to be resentful? And so for me, what's really important is that we don't talk about these things openly. So what happens is most people are acting them out. So when we're acting things out and we're trying to do that within the time pressure, within a productivity, within a delivery, we're going to get very, very unhappy, very messy, and lots of conflict is going to escalate. So one of the things that I found, and I've got a really good example that I can share with you, is to create spaces for these conversations. You can't have these conversations while you're trying to do the work and meet a deadline. But you can regularly pull people out into a safe space that's properly mediated and have these honest conversations. And the example I have is a team that had got on with each other really, really well. Lots of collaboration, very creative team, lots of creativity, suddenly becoming hostile towards each other, snappy, criticizing each other. And what I did was I pulled them out and we, we brought the head of the department in and we had a three hour facilitated conversation. And what we discovered is that everybody in the business knows that cuts are going to be made. And so because they're a creative team, what they did was they started competing with each other to shine better than the other person in order not to get be the person that's going to be, you know, fired, yes, fired or terminated in the process. But they didn't, they hadn't stitched together that that's what they were doing. It was unconscious. People often don't do things consciously. They don't wake up and say, how can I make life more miserable for me and other people. We act things out because we haven't found the dialogue or the quality of conversation. So what we were able to do was understand the fears, how a previously secure team were now feeling insecure and how that had played out in the day to day and able to then bring it back to competing with each other. And actually the quality of work going down all around is actually not going to make any difference in the restructuring of the business.
- [08:26]
Pasco Duarte
One of the things that I'm curious about is like, what was it that you kind of organized? What was the strategy? What is the space, physical or otherwise, that you created for that to come up? Because that sounds like something that is extremely vulnerable and exposing for someone to willingly admit in front of their colleagues.
- [08:50]
Maria Arpa
So I use a communications tool that I created called the Dialogue Roadmap. And the dialogue Roadmap is a way of us having an authentic conversation only going as far as we're prepared to go. So I don't put anybody into any states of vulnerability that they're not choosing, but it stops us having a debate. Because the model of conversation that we use all over in mainstream society is a debate model. And the debate model is preparing your answer while somebody is talking, trying to be right, having one argument prevail over all others. Attack and defense, competition. You know, I mean, don't forget we give children prizes for debating societies. We don't give children prizes for collaborative behavior. We put children in competition with each other to get stars or certificates or grades. But where do we ever say, actually, let's have a look at how so and so helped so and so have prizes for that. So we take those. I mean, I've got a lot to say about this, about how we replicate all of our traumas from school in the workplace, and we create the worst.
- [10:15]
Pasco Duarte
Kind of childish melting pot and sometimes even involuntarily, right? Like we're not on purpose trying to do that.
- [10:24]
Maria Arpa
Yeah, all of this is unconscious. So I create spaces where people can come along and you know, I've got methodology. Everybody's allowed to speak and nobody interrupts. We go around in the circle. We, you know, I repeat back what I hear. I use what I hear to get to the true feelings and needs, not the superficial conversation. And what happens, and you know, obviously I've been doing this for years and years in all kinds of settings, not just workplaces, is there's a place in which people can come to our common humanity where we realize that actually, actually, you know, without putting too fine a point on it, whether you are the boss or whether you have the power to find. We all still need to go to the bathroom, we all still need to eat, we all still need to rest. We all want and crave respect, we all want recognition. So we don't go into the personal, your personal life and your personal traumas. We get to these common human needs and values and we work around what are the strategies that we can use to build that kind of harmonious background. And what happens is this moment where people sigh and their shoulders go down and there's a sense of, oh, we got to humanity.
- [11:54]
Pasco Duarte
Wow, there's so many questions I would like to ask next. It's hard for me to decide. Okay, so before we go too far. So the tool is called the Dialogue Roadmap. And for everybody listening, the link is in the show notes so that you can check it out and learn more about it, but give us a little bit more insight. Like let's say there's a conflict, right, and you're bringing people together. Let's say you're a leader, you're mediating a conflict between team members. Like, what are some concrete, easy tips you could give us based on that dialogue Roadmap for leaders that may be tackling that kind of conflict right now?
- [12:30]
Maria Arpa
Well, I mean, it would, you know, without turning this into a training, there are some very, very simple things. The first thing is you never bring people together in any kind of conversation unless you've done a confidential one to one with them. And during that one to one, the worst thing you could possibly do is ask somebody how they think the other person's feeling. Then this is such a common mistake, such a common mistake. So I would always have a one to one with somebody and I would literally just listen to them, just hear where they're coming from, what's upsetting them, what's ailing them. You know, I've got, as I said, the Dialogue Roadmap. Takes people through a journey and always leaves people in the driving seat of what they want to say and where they want to go. But I can usually then get to the needs and the point of building them, having confidence in me to take them into that room comes from empathic connection. One of the things that I've learned is that empathy drives change. It drives change from the inside out. You see, you can get change from the outside in. You know, you can make it look like things have changed. And that's at the individual or at the group level. You know, I can say, oh, my life's, you know, out of control or chaotic or, or I'm unhappy. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to join a gym and I'm going to work less or work more or I'm going to. But that's all external. You're changing the scenery. Hoping that by changing the scenery something will change inside. And the way I work is change comes from the inside out.
- [14:27]
Pasco Duarte
So let's focus on that because one of the things that I very often talk to the Scrum Masters that I coach and consult is that before we want to change anything outside ourselves, we first need to understand what we need to change in ourselves. Right. Like, we very often talk about modeling specific behaviors and you've mentioned, mentioned a few already. What do you think are the behaviors that we as Scrum masters, agile coaches can lead. Sorry, can model that lead to that kind of result of creating empathy and creating openness in the people we talk about solving problems together and recognizing our humanity.
- [15:09]
Maria Arpa
Oh, well, that's really simple. That's a really simple first space and that is how am I taking care of myself? How am I walking into anywhere? Because you see, I, I say that a lot of the, the care and a lot of the connection that I make comes because I do my work, you know, I get my supervision, I take care of myself and I have quite a calm nervous system system because most of us don't realize that we, what we've done is we've wound ourselves up. Our nervous systems are on hyperactive mode even when we're polite and slow and you know, just because we can put something on display superficially and so, and so the, the most important thing is, have I done the work to calm my own nervous system down? Because people are very drawn to people with calm nervous systems. That's the first place. And for me to do that, you know, I've been, in my life, I've been out of control. I've, you know, whatever. And it's been a journey, you know, it's been a journey over 30 years. I never stop asking myself, where, where am I getting support? How am I talking to myself? What wounds are coming up to the surface? You know, there's a whole nother thing about the trauma that we live under in our mainstream society, which is only.
- [16:44]
Pasco Duarte
Increasing, especially with the speed and reach of social media. I mean, anyone looking at social media these days will find very easily extremely aggressive conflict debates. Rather than coming together, learning together, and building a better future together.
- [17:02]
Maria Arpa
Absolutely. Well, one of the things was that when, when computers kind of were made available to everybody, we were my generation, you know, I'm a boomer, you know, we were promised that if we learned this technology, we were going to have all this free time. What a con.
- [17:22]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah, Free work so hard in my life. I mean, free time is not coming, that's for sure, you know? Yeah. So one of the things that we want to do with this approach to solving conflict is of course to create more collaborative work environments, especially in knowledge work, where value is created through collaboration. And collaborative decision making is exactly one of your key focus areas. So when you think about the role of leaders and creating this inclusive decision making processes that at the same time still remain quite agile. Right. That they're not slow and cumbersome. Like what kind of tools and approaches do you have that leaders could take on?
- [18:07]
Maria Arpa
So I think that for me, I use this word plumbing. Okay. So there's something about places where people gather and workplaces are a community. And then you've got all, as I said, the power imbalances and the contracting to deal with. But what we don't do in our society. So think about this. We have a place to make our tea and coffee, right? We have a place to have boardroom meetings. There's a place, you know, at home. We have places to sleep. We have places to wash ourselves. There are specific designated spaces what we don't have and we don't create our specific space spaces to manage our conflicts. So we're always trying to do it while we're doing other things and we need to make space for it. Because conflict, when approached compassionately, when approached from a completely different mindset to the competitive mindset, is our biggest free resource.
- [19:19]
Pasco Duarte
What do you mean by that? Open that up a little bit more for our listeners. You said conflict is our biggest resource. What do you mean by that?
- [19:28]
Maria Arpa
There's no end of conflict, is there? There's no end of disagreement, no end of tension. Put a group of people together, there will be tension. What I'm suggesting is that because we have not been taught to notice that tension really early and see it as a positive change process, to go, ah, isn't that amazing? I can feel some tension here. I wonder what journey that will take me on, Right? What we do is we go, oh, I feel some tension. That means someone's out to get me, or I better protect myself, or, you know, I better watch out. And so we build it into a dispute. And so for me, there's so much conflict around. It's a fantastic resource to provide a doorway into our most creative selves, because when a conflict has started, change has already taken place. What we need to do is grow into that change.
- [20:35]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah. When the conflict has started, change has already taken place.
- [20:40]
Maria Arpa
It's already begun.
- [20:42]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah. That's an amazing thought. Very often in our groups of practitioners, we talk about how change resistance is actually a resource pretty much the same way you talk about conflict. But of course, we need to learn how to channel it. Right. And let's take a specific example. Let's say an organizational transformation, and we see that there's conflict about what are the next steps that we should take? And perhaps that are some expectations and status or power imbalances involved in that kind of decision. What are some things that we can do to try to reframe that change, resistance or conflict into something more productive, something that perhaps gets us to that point where we understand each other's concerns.
- [21:32]
Maria Arpa
So I think that's where I was going with my talk about the word plumbing, because often when I'm going into workplaces, you might have something that looks really glossy, but the conflict has nowhere to drain, so there's no plumbing. So actually, even if the sink and the lavatory all look beautiful and you've got fantastic gold taps, it's actually not going anywhere. So by the time I called in, it's all coming up through the floorboards. And so what I do is I go in and put a retrofit in to manage the plumbing. Because, you see, you will never be able to change things. As incidents are happening, you have to the incident and the system. All the incidents do is they inform you of where your systems are not working. So in an incident, all you can do is try and bring people back to safety and to emotional intelligence. That's the best you're going to do. If all you ever do is wait for incidents and tell people off and give them warnings and shout at them, you're actually, actually damaging. You're Actually creating damage. But when I take a more global view and I go, okay, so what I notice is that in these moments or at these times or when these people are together, I get incidents. What is it in my system that I need to look at now? We can go through a change process.
- [23:11]
Pasco Duarte
And bringing people back to safety, of course, is part of what you call restorative practices. Right. Like, what are some of the things that maybe we can start building in slowly into the way we work with teams before the incident? Right. Like, what are those practices that we could maybe take into account and kind of build slowly into what we do on a regular basis?
- [23:33]
Maria Arpa
Well, I think, you know, one of my trainings is called Words can be windows or walls. And, you know, language is the software in our brains that we use to tell us what to do. So if we are replicating school or all these detective shows that we see on telly, where actually we're in the enforcement mentality, then if you're using an enforcement mentality, expect people to lie, expect people to cover up. Expect people to do the minimum that they need to do to stay out of trouble. So for me, the words that we use, if I'm using language from the heart, not from the head, then I'm in a different space. You will know immediately that the relationship between us is as important as what we are about to deliver. And the interesting thing for me, I work a lot in prisons, for example, schools, prisons. And the enforcement mentality, where all it does is it just creates a them and us who's holding the power and who can punish me today and what do I need to do to look good enough to either stay out of trouble or to take my revenge in some way that can't be seen? If we want people to deliver, then I need to feel relaxed, I need to feel content. I need to feel that I matter in some way, that my content, that my contribution actually has some meaning. And we use words. Words are the first way in which I can find acceptance or find some kind of relationship with you.
- [25:42]
Pasco Duarte
Well, when you talk about enforcement language or enforcement mentality, rather, this is really a powerful concept. So if I can try to translate that into our context as practitioners in the software world, enforcement mentality is. Here's the process I want you to follow, and I will be surveying that you are following these rules. This would be enforcement mentality, right?
- [26:09]
Maria Arpa
Yeah. It's the idea that underlying, you see, it could be really polite. It's got nothing to do when I talk about language. It's got nothing to do with whether you're polite or quiet or hostile or aggressive. It means that invisible ink in brackets after every instruction or contract is or else.
- [26:34]
Pasco Duarte
Or else.
- [26:36]
Maria Arpa
Oh, please, would you get this done for me by 5:00 today? Or else. And so we don't necessarily need to say or else out loud.
- [26:48]
Pasco Duarte
Well, I mean, it's already implicit, right? It's already implicit because the person that comes to you might be a project manager or a Scrum master or a product owner. Like, all of those words are already telling us something. I remember we had an interesting episode a few months ago with Michel Pok about Foucault's Discipline and Punish book, where he talks exactly about that. How language builds these prisons that we then actually voluntarily enter. Right, Absolutely. And of course, for us, what's really important is to step out of those. Right. Like, understand that we are really trying to build something collaboratively. So without going through the philosophy of language and culture, like, what are some concrete things we can help our listeners to take on as a way to step out of that enforcement mentality?
- [27:43]
Maria Arpa
So, yeah, so I think there are a few things that we can do. Number one is slow things down. So when I'm delivering training, I bring a metronome, and what I do is, you know, the metronome is a timing thing for people, for musicians, and we see how our heart rate increases when the metronome's going really, really quickly and we start bringing it down and down and down until we can kind of find a place. It's a really good way of understanding, like, where. Where can we have this conversation that we're not stressed? So the first thing is slowing conversations down. It's really, really important. Good phrases that I can use are if I understand you, what you really want me to hear right now is that's a great thing to say to someone, if I've understood what you really want me to hear is this. Another great phrase is, oh, I love this. I was going to write a book with this title called this Isn't the Conversation I Meant to have. Can I start again, please?
- [28:57]
Pasco Duarte
Wow, that's powerful.
- [28:59]
Maria Arpa
And other phrases that will get us out of trouble. Quick.
- [29:04]
Pasco Duarte
Wow, Are you already starting to write that book? Because I want to read it.
- [29:11]
Maria Arpa
Yeah, it's in the soup of ideas, but, yeah, that's a great way. I'm going to fall over and make mistakes and I'm going to come out with things and you're going to catch me in a bad moment and I can say, this isn't the Conversation I meant to have. Please, can I start again?
- [29:29]
Pasco Duarte
Okay. But we do need to tackle one aspect that I think may be, perhaps mistakenly, let's see, included in that enforcement mentality, and that is that idea of accountability. Now, in collaborative environments, we still need to keep ourselves accountable. So what strategies can leaders use to keep the accountability without dropping into the enforcement mentality or that or else type of approach?
- [30:03]
Maria Arpa
So the number one thing, and I think I've mentioned this several times, is being really aware of the contracts that we have created and if we're not aware of them, are discussing them. So that if we're all aware of the. So that could be an agreement in the moment about who's doing what and by when and making sure that everybody's understood that and also having contingency, what happens when it goes wrong? Because whenever you put people together, there's going to be messiness. So there's a, A duty on leaders, that's the job of the leader, is to make sure everyone can show up as the best version of themselves with complete clarity. Now, when things go wrong or when somebody isn't being, you know, isn't accountable, or they're avoiding or they're not delivering, there's a way to have that conversation. And the way to have that conversation is, so my role is to uphold certain standards. My role is to uphold certain productivity. And I love doing that. That's, you know, that's a job that I do. And if you don't love doing that, why are you in the job as a leader? Okay, because if you're just in the job and it's too much for you, where are you getting help? So, you know, that's a whole other thing. But I should be saying, you know, I love doing this and I like taking pride in my work. So when I see that on five occasions you haven't been able to meet the deadline, and here's the thing. What conversation should I be having with you? Ask the person.
- [31:54]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah, invite them to take accountability. Right, Invite them.
- [32:00]
Maria Arpa
Yes. Because how the person answers that question tells you everything you need to know.
- [32:08]
Pasco Duarte
This is a very powerful insight. So accountability is definitely a topic that is very important when we are collaboratively working. Right. Because there are those contracts, as you said, unfortunately, not always explicit, but they are always there, even when they are not mentioned. And when somebody is not living up to what we expect of them, then of course we feel like, oh, we are being robbed of something, at least my own deliverable or achievement or whatever, maybe something else. And what you just said about inviting them to take accountability is actually very powerful because someone who doesn't want to take accountability for whatever reason, we don't even need to go there, is not a good team person.
- [32:52]
Maria Arpa
Exactly. There's a number of things, isn't there? Because somebody may be going through something personally and they may, you know, they may burst into tears and, you know, and then tell you that they're going through a divorce or, you know, whatever it is. And then I can make the decision of whether I want to invest and whether we want to help someone through that. Because actually, overall, when we look at it, it's a, you know, it's a good choice. But somebody who doesn't want to take accountability won't give you a straight answer. Well, now you can think, you know, how much more do I want to invest in this? And I can say that I can say so when I don't get a straight answer because I'm finding it hard to understand how you're responding to this question. So I don't know where we go next. What would you do? You know, where would, where, where do you think? What do you think we should be doing next?
- [33:52]
Pasco Duarte
And this also. Sorry, go ahead.
- [33:55]
Maria Arpa
Well, because, you see, if it's me telling you, then we've replicated school and, and I'm going to start from the assumption that everybody in this workplace came in as an adult. That's my assumption. We're all adults here, and you knew, and we discussed it. Now if the person says, well, I never knew, let's say, well, I never knew I had to do this. Now I do have to look at me and say, well, let's think to how we had that conversation. Did I check that you even heard me? Did I bark an order at you in the middle of 10 other things? Because most people can only hear, I think, 5 to 10% of what's actually said.
- [34:42]
Pasco Duarte
And understand even less.
- [34:44]
Maria Arpa
Yeah. And understand even less. Yeah, you're doing well. If they get 20%, you know, so, so for me, it's like then if person says, well, I never knew. Now we're going to do, we're going to do a study. I'm going to study me. I'm going to study what I. How I instruct you. I'm going to ask you to say back to me what you've understood. Because telling people what to do and then not speaking the words themselves has very little chance of actually succeeding.
- [35:16]
Pasco Duarte
Yeah. Inviting people to repeat what they understood is as effective as also us saying, here's what I Understood, right? Yes, absolutely. Maria, this has been a wonderful conversation. I mean, I could go on for hours. There's so much material here and very concrete tips. So thank you for sharing all of those. Now, if people want to know more about you and the work that you're doing, where should they go?
- [35:45]
Maria Arpa
So there's a couple of websites, I mean specifically to workplaces is workplacehuddle.com. but actually, if you want to get in touch with me, just Google my name. Fortunately, there are not many Maria Arpas in the world. There are a few, but we're in the minority. And if you Google Maria Arpa, I will show up. And if you email me from the websites, then it will come straight to me.
- [36:13]
Pasco Duarte
Absolutely. So we'll put the link to Maria's website, workplacehuddle.com also to the Dialogue Roadmap and to Mindfulness at Work, the book for you to find and get in touch with Maria. And why not reach out and ask a few follow up questions?
- [36:30]
Maria Arpa
Yeah, I would love that. Thank you so much, Maria.
- [36:32]
Pasco Duarte
It's been a pleasure. Thank you very much for your generosity with your time and your knowledge.
- [36:37]
Maria Arpa
Thank you. This has been fantastic. Thank you.
- [36:44]
Pasco Duarte
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