The Anti-Pattern Bingo Team—When Success Is a Zero-Sum Game | Gunnar Fischer

Summary

Podcast Summary

Overview

Episode Title: The Anti-Pattern Bingo Team—When Success Is a Zero-Sum Game
Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Gunnar Fischer, Agile Coach/Scrum Master
Date: June 30, 2026

This episode explores destructive team anti-patterns, focusing on Gunnar Fischer’s vivid story of a dysfunctional "anti-pattern bingo team" he encountered early in his international career. Together with host Vasco Duarte, they dissect how management dysfunction, lack of clear goals, absence of psychological safety, and the misuse of labels can doom teams—offering lessons on building healthier, more resilient Agile teams.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Book That Shaped Gunnar’s Scrum Mastery

Recommended Book: Scrum Mastery (2nd Edition) by Geoff Watts

• Gunnar describes it as the “noble knight of Scrum books,” invaluable through each stage of his growth as a Scrum Master.
• Notable Quote:
  “A good Scrum master is indispensable. A great Scrum master is dispensable and wanted.” (Gunnar, [02:40])

2. Story of the 'Anti-Pattern Bingo Team'

• Gunnar recounts joining a notoriously dysfunctional team in a new country and company ([04:15]).
• The team failed at every level: poor reputation, leadership uncertainty, disengaged members, and total breakdown of Scrum practice.
• He observes, “It was neither Scrum nor a team... failure on every single level that you can imagine. This includes me as well.” ([04:48])
• Common symptoms:
  • Missed goals and deadlines
  • Decisions made outside official meetings
  • Toxic, unconstructive communication
  • Lack of collaboration and mutual respect

3. Root Causes of Dysfunction ([06:16])

• Absent or unclear team purpose (“reason of existence”)
• Team assembled around technology, not goals or business outcomes
• No clarity around what success looks like
• Chaotic, reactive management with competing stakeholder demands

4. When Success Is a Zero-Sum Game

• Gunnar highlights the danger when team members see success as a competition, not a collaboration:

  “If you have the impression that success is a zero sum game—where if you win, I lose, and vice versa—then it will be really hard [to be a team].” ([08:41])

5. Harmful Management and Leadership Patterns

• Sandcastle Planning:
  Sprint plans regularly overthrown by management, undermining team trust ([09:44]).
• Burnout and Escalation:
  Culture of overwork became the norm; managers responded to minor issues with severe escalation.
• Management by Stereotype:
  Gunnar faced prejudice as a foreign professional, assigned negative traits based on his nationality.

  “Because you are from Germany, so you must be very authoritarian…” ([10:56])

• Result: Psychological safety destroyed, open conversation impossible.

6. Dangers of Labeling and Dehumanization

• Vasco discusses (and Gunnar agrees) how treating people as mere labels—immigrant, backend, Java, etc.—undermines empathy and safety ([11:18]).
• Vasco:

  “Labels narrow our thinking and sometimes trigger even fear reactions… and we need to be so careful when using those labels these days.” ([12:15])

7. Building Cultural Awareness and Agreements

• Gunnar’s approach to intercultural dynamics:
  • Explicitly discusses work preferences and personal quirks as part of building team agreements.
  • “If I'm more emotionally expressive... we should find structures that inhibit me from talking too much...” ([14:08])
• Encourages making working agreements explicit, revisiting them, and orienting new members to avoid missteps ([15:41]).

8. Foundations for a Healthy Team

• Curiosity about team members’ individual cultures—beyond national or technical lines ([15:04]).
• Frequent, explicit agreements on team interactions and standards ([15:41]).
• Willingness to revisit and adapt team norms as membership or context changes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Scrum Master excellence:

  “A good Scrum master is indispensable. A great Scrum master is dispensable and wanted.”
  — Gunnar Fischer ([02:40])

• On team anti-patterns:

  “It was more like the anti pattern bingo team.”
  — Gunnar Fischer ([04:20])

• On management interference:

  “You build a sandcastle, somebody tramples over the castle, you don’t build it again. You don’t put in the effort again because you know... you will be overruled anyway.”
  — Gunnar Fischer ([10:00])

• On zero-sum thinking:

  “If you have the impression that the success is a zero sum game... then it will be really hard.”
  — Gunnar Fischer ([08:41])

• On labeling and empathy:

  “Labels kind of narrow our thinking and sometimes trigger even fear reactions because of the foreigner in your case, literally.”
  — Vasco Duarte ([12:15])

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Important Timestamps

• 01:39 – Gunnar introduces his most influential book (Scrum Mastery)
• 04:15 – Gunnar begins story of the dysfunctional team
• 06:16 – Discussing root causes: no clear purpose or vision
• 08:25 – Success as zero-sum; impact on collaboration
• 09:44 – Management patterns: “sandcastle planning,” overwork, escalation
• 10:56 – Gunnar shares personal experience of being stereotyped
• 11:18–12:15 – Vasco: Dangers of labeling people in teams
• 13:08–15:41 – Intercultural awareness and explicit team agreements

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Takeaways for Scrum Masters & Coaches

• Clear, purpose-driven team structure is essential—avoid teams formed solely by technical affinity.
• Management must support, not undermine, team autonomy and safety.
• Beware zero-sum mindsets; foster environments where team and individual success are interconnected.
• Recognize and challenge labeling, stereotypes, and othering to maintain psychological safety.
• Create explicit working agreements; make room for ongoing, open conversations about culture, behavior, and team standards.

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Listener Tip:
For more foundational resources and past interviews, check out the show notes or revisit episodes with Scrum Mastery author Geoff Watts.

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End of Summary.

Transcript

[A]

Hey there, agile adventurer, just a quick question. What if, for the price of a fancy coffee or half a pizza, you could unlock over 700 hours of the best agile content on the planet? That's audio, video, E courses, books, presentations, all that you can think of. But you can also join live calls with world class practitioners and hang out in a flame warfree and AI slop clean slack with the sharpest minds in the game. Oh, and yes, you get direct access to me, Vasko, your Scrum Master Toolbox podcast. No, this is not a drill. It's the Scrum Master Toolbox membership. And it's your unfair advantage in the agile world. So if you want to know more, go check out scrummastertoolbox.org membership. That's scrummastertoolbox.org Membership. And check out all the goodies we have for you. Do it now. But if you're not doing it now, let's listen to the podcast. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the team. Tuesday, this week on the Scrum Master Toolbox podcast, we have with us Gunnar Fischer. Hey, Gunnar, welcome back.

[B]

Hello.

[A]

So, Gunnar, we're going to talk about teams in a second, but before we dive into that, do share with us. And I hesitate as I ask this, the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master.

[B]

Yeah, it's always cruel choosing one when you have read so many. And I'm usually recommending a lot of books in my everyday life, but if I had to pick one, it's Jeff Watts, Scrum Mastery 2nd Edition. It's of course a classic for Scrum Masters. Why was it so important? For me, it influenced me years before I actually read it and I'm still using it. This book has a lot of phrases about a good Scrum Master does this and a great Scrum Master does that. And when I read it the very first time, just after having a Scrum course, I thought, oh my God, this kind of wisdom, what should I do with it? Years later, I read them those phrases again and I said, oh my God, I understand them, I understand them. And then when I was a Scrum Master with a few years of experience, I said, yeah, of course it's like this, why would it be different? And then suddenly I became modest and said, yes, we know these are truth, these are truth phrases. But it's about making them true and living them and watching out for when they are not true. And now I'm more like childish with a curiosity. Oh, let's look into this book. And just a couple of months ago, I was asked, can you explain what a Scrum Master is in a couple of phrases? Very shortly and I went through this book, looked up a phrase like a good scru Scrum Master is indispensable. A great Scrum Master is dispensable and wanted. And for me, this is such a good summary. This book is for me the noble knight of Scrum books. And in times when everybody is challenged and people are making fun of agile practitioners, this brings back all of the ideals of what a Scrum Master is really about.

[A]

Absolutely. Okay, we'll put the link on the show notes as well as a link to the episodes we have with Jeff Watts, the author of the book. So it's always great to be able to listen to the author and understand their thinking and then read the book. Because the book has that thinking somewhat crystallized. Of course, not all of it, but some of it crystallized. So definitely put the link in the show notes for everybody to go and read it. Amazing recommendation. But Gunnar, now we turn our attention to the themes and how sometimes they can become their own worst enemies. Often, despite our help and sometimes even because of it, they enter the self destructing patterns. So, Gunnar, share with us that story. We'll dive into the takeaways and the conclusion later. But tell us the story first.

[B]

Yeah, my worst team. It's. Luckily it's a very easy pick. I was not this team Scrum Master, but it was supposed to be a Scrum team, but it was neither Scrum nor a team. So it was more like the anti pattern bingo team. So this was my first job abroad. I had just cut all ties to my country of origin, moved abroad and I was coming on this specific team and I soon realized that we were in trouble. The manager changed. There was a big minus, let's say. And I learned over a couple of months. So first in the company, there was something going wrong. The team within the company had a bad reputation. Was used as a punch back. The manager of manager was treating it more like a stepchild. The new manager, how to explain. I think the new manager was not sure what he had signed up for or what he should do with the team or what his job was. And then the individuals on the team also didn't. At least some of them, I don't think they wanted to work in this team or like a team. So it was like failure on every single level that you can imagine. This includes me of course as well. I mean it was also this team and me not looking through this and me also not taking the right steps that I should have taken back at the time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

So, yeah, the team continuously missed its goals, didn't find agreement, didn't work together, didn't have the right tone, that the people on the team didn't find the right tone. There was a lot of decisions made behind closed doors outside of the official meetings and whatever dimension you could bring up as think that team showed how not to do it.

[A]

And of course that was the end result. But what led the team to that? Like what, what were. I don't know, some signs or behaviors, external or internal, that led to the team reaching that. That state.

[B]

Yeah. And I think again, you could go on, on basically every level. I think the overall company situation at the time was not very good. And this politics and backstabbing and everybody being afraid was. Was already the so nice. But then also I think especially on the level of the team members and the manager, what is often said is, oh, a team needs to have a clear goal or reason of existence. And it sounds a bit ridiculous or like a theoretical exercise, but in this case you could see, okay, this team didn't have a reason of existence. Why do we exist over using the same technology? That's actually not a good reason for a team to exist. It should be more like, okay, how do we look? What is a behavior? How do we look like if you are successful? And this was never answered was just, oh, you need to follow this, you need to serve this person, you need to work with this stakeholder. But of course you can never fulfill all of the requests and then there will always be somebody being annoyed. And then you need a manager who says, well, first you should have a manager who says, we're going to do this, but not this. If you're not working on the scrum team and if you're working on a scrum team, you should have a P.O. who says, oh, we're going to do this and for this in the next month, or Sprint, whatever it is, we're going to say first, no, not now, to all of the other things and we're showing this to everybody. Not backroom policies and somehow everything in the dark or we change ways every single escalation call.

[A]

When you think about teams like this, and of course teams that exist for any random reason in a highly political organization are unfortunately very common. What are the things we should really be looking for? Because I mean, of course, you know and I know everybody knows that there are teams that are put together for random reasons in highly political organizations that despite all of that succeed yeah. So what made this team especially prone, I guess we could say to anti patterns.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, I think it's a good point that even the environment can. Can be bad, but the team can still be good. And I think in this case it was. We never had a good conversation about what is success for us, how should we work together, how can be our team success reflected in individual success and vice versa? If you have the impression that the success is a zero sum game where if you win, I lose and vice versa, then it will be really hard. Or if you think a good collaborator is somebody who has all the answers and discussions about what should we do are very hard to do. So I think it was a bit like, how do you show up at the job? But also then again to the management level. How do you develop your people? What is expected of the people? It was never answered.

[A]

I really like that phrase. When success is a zero sum game, you can't have a team for sure. But now I want to zero in on something that you just mentioned again, which is this idea that management patterns have an influence on how the team develops. When you think back to this story, what were some of those management and leadership patterns that made it impossible for this team to succeed despite the context they were in?

[B]

Yeah, the first, what I call sandcastle planning, and that's okay, you do a sprint planning, you say, okay, we are going to aim for this and that and that should be it. And just after the meeting, manager comes in and throws it overboard and puts in his ideas and says, no, we need this. And you ask yourself, yeah, why did we wasted time in the planning. And over time, you're smart. It's like you build a sandcastle, somebody tramples over the castle, you don't build it again. You don't put in the effort again because you know, whatever you say will be overruled. Anyway. So I have. This is a very painful memory of mine. And the other one was somebody had worked through the weekend. So weekend work became more the norm, at least for some people, at work, through the weekend. And then a mild disagreement led to escalation. Somebody had no nerves left. So first I was quoted into the room with the manager and then into the room with the manager and the manager of the manager. And this kind of. Okay. And then they told me, yeah, because you are from Germany, so you must be very authoritarian. So basically telling me, as an immigrant, we judge, we expect that knowing your culture is all it needs to be to predict your behavior. So as an immigrant, this was really the Worst situation I've ever experienced just a couple of months into the country. And yeah, it's not representative of the Dutch, but it was really the worst moment. And after that I knew, okay, we are not going to discuss topics in safety or with the right level of challenge. If it comes to that, then, you

[A]

know, one thing that you just said, and I mean you experienced it in that story, reminds me of an anti pattern and that is unfortunately very common in politics today. Treating other people as labels. So we treat other people as just buckets, like names, labels, instead of treating them as human beings. So in this particular case, instead of them being curious about what your experience was because maybe you have a different cultural background, you may see things we don't see because we are in the middle of it. Right. But instead of that, they just labeled the culture as the problem. Right? You come here, you tell us we're wrong. And because you're the foreigner, you must be the one who is wrong. And that is so self destructive. No wonder the team was in trouble. Because one of the things that we must know is that when people use one label, whether it is immigrant or whatever the label might be, back end, front end, Python C, whatever the label is, you can immediately know that they're using those labels in their thinking. And there's no telling how many labels there are. And labels kind of narrow our thinking and sometimes trigger even fear reactions because of the foreigner in your case, literally. Other cases not so literally, like you know, Python versus Java and so on, are also cases of being outside the in group. Right. And we need to be so careful when using those labels these days. When you have conversations with managers maybe, or just the team. How do you keep track for yourself, Gunnar, of where those labels emerge that might lead to lack of empathy, dehumanization of the other?

[B]

Yeah, so I said, we said in the introduction that intercultural contexts are very important for me, it's a life topic. I grew up in an international environment actually in a small town in western Germany. And what I like a lot is there are several books about it in concepts is looking into the dimensions of cultures and what does it mean and what kind of behavior is expected to be the norm in a specific country. And then finding out, oh, obviously, even in my own, even according to the culture of my country of origin, I'm not a typical person. There are things that are very different for me. So for instance, I'm an emotionally expressive person, which is not the norm in Germany. Germany, everybody likes to be very calm and sober. And I Always create some irritation when I'm back in my home country. And then even making this an explicit topic of a conversation, if you have a new colleague or you're getting to know somebody and upfront telling them, you know what? In this regard, I'm really typical and more with a smile. And in this regard, I'm totally not typical. And once you've said it, it's like, oh, we are banning the demon. We know the demon's name. Because then people know, oh, I'm also aware of how I am and how, what effect this might have on other people. And then we can find work agreements and say, okay, if, if I'm more emotionally expressive, I talk a lot, then we should find structures that inhibit me from talking too much. Or people are allowed to signal to me when it's too early morning for them to get so many emotions. Oh, that's totally fine. Or creating more quiet moments for the introverts and saying, okay, our talking patterns are like this. Maybe we'll take some. If we weren't on a podcast, we would rather take several seconds of silence, which I also like a lot. And I put myself off mute on a call to intentionally trigger that somebody else breaks the silence.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And what you just said, like being aware of these cultural patterns. And cultural does not mean different countries or even different cities within a country. Cultural just means the person's culture. And if we are not curious about that person's culture, we will never understand them. Labels and standards do not open the complexity of human existence. If we really want to help teams succeed, I mean, there is no other way around. We need to know these people, we need to know who they are, we need to know their background, we need to know what makes them tick.

[B]

Yes. And the thing, after you've seen it work in different teams, you also understand, yeah, teams need to find explicit agreements on. This is how we work. Maybe you're a bit more polite, maybe you're a bit more open and use strong words, but whatever the standard is, once you settle for it, make it explicit and live up to it. And if you find over time always shifting, okay, make it explicit and then find a new agreement. Or be ready to explain how you're working to a new member so they don't step in, they don't make all the mistakes or they understand what's going on.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. So much we could talk about on this topic, but that will have to wait for another podcast. Indeed. Kunar, thank you very much for sharing all of that with us.

[B]

It's been a pleasure.

[A]

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