The Dark Side of High-Performing Dream Teams | Natalia Curusi

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Episode: The Dark Side of High-Performing Dream Teams | Natalia Curusi
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Natalia Curusi
Date: December 16, 2025

This episode explores the unexpected challenges that arise within high-performing Agile teams, focusing on the darker side of tightly bonded groups. Natalia Curusi, an experienced Scrum Master, shares a candid story of how a dream team she nurtured evolved into an exclusive group, leading to difficult integration for new team members and ultimately resulting in exclusionary behaviors. The discussion sheds light on the complexities of team dynamics, the limits of a Scrum Master’s influence, and highlights the importance of support systems when facing issues like bullying and ostracism.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Influential Books for Scrum Masters

Timestamp: 01:22 - 04:57

• Natalia's Recommendations:
  • "Coaching Agile Teams" by Lyssa Adkins
    • Changed her perspective from being the “indispensable glue” of the team to empowering teams to be independent.
    • Realized the true goal is to make oneself replaceable.
    • “A good Scrum Master or a good coach is actually not that person that everybody's depending on… the more replaceable you are, the better you are.” — Natalia Curusi [03:04]
  • "Training from the Back of the Room" by Sharon Bowman
    • Valuable for facilitators who want to run interactive sessions where participants learn from each other, rather than passive slide presentations.

2. The Birth of a "Dream Team"

Timestamp: 05:58 - 08:22

• Team Composition:

  • Majority were junior developers, recently graduated, built from scratch by Natalia.
  • Established clear working agreements and team norms.
  • Early bonding experiences (e.g., working trips, celebrations outside work) cemented strong team camaraderie.
  • Mature, technically strong, highly independent — capable of operating without Natalia’s constant presence.

• Quote:
  “This is dream team even now… the team become very, very mature and independent.” — Natalia Curusi [06:59]

3. Group Dynamics Turn Dark: Exclusion and Bullying

Timestamp: 08:23 - 12:02

• New Team Member Struggles:

  • A more experienced but less technically adept developer joined.
  • Struggled to keep up with the fast-moving ‘hero’ team.
  • Became a clear “outlier,” failing to integrate into the tightly knit group.

• Social Exclusion:

  • Ostracized during meetings and team activities.
  • Teammate behaviors, initially perceived as harmless jokes, grew problematic.
  • Natalia initially didn’t label these behaviors as bullying due to cultural context:
    “In Republic of Moldova, we don’t speak about bullying. We don’t know what is that.” — Natalia Curusi [09:41]

• Intervention Attempts:

  • Natalia conducted 1:1s with the new hire and team.
  • Both sides minimized or denied the issue — new member declined help, others insisted “we’re just having fun.”
  • Realization that team morale and cohesion were deteriorating.

• Escalation and Resolution:

  • Natalia escalated to leadership and worked with a psychologist.
  • Ultimately, the new team member was rotated to another team for a better fit.
  • Reflection that not all situations are within a Scrum Master's ability to resolve alone.

• Quote:
  “What I want to say to all the Scrum Masters, sometimes this is not in our power to change the situation. Sometimes you just need to let it go, you know, so this is the things happens because they happen.” — Natalia Curusi [12:10]

4. The Limits of a Scrum Master's Influence

Timestamp: 10:16 - 12:54

• Group Cohesion as a Double-Edged Sword:

  • Vasco reflects how strong team bonds can create high barriers for newcomers.
  • Discusses different forms of exclusion — not sharing information, lack of invitations, or overt bullying.
  • Emphasizes that certain group dynamics are resistant to intervention, even for experienced coaches and psychologists.

• Quote:
  “You can’t control group dynamics. They are what they are. The team needs to either decide to adopt this new team member or they decide… to expel that team member in many different ways.” — Vasco Duarte [11:00]

• Self-blame and Acceptance:

  • Natalia shares feelings of guilt for not resolving the issue.
  • Concludes that some failures are beyond the Scrum Master’s responsibility and control.

5. Crucial Takeaways for Scrum Masters

Timestamp: 12:02 - 12:54

• A Scrum Master’s success is not measured by omnipotence; knowing when to escalate or seek help is vital.
• Social exclusion and unhealthy team dynamics may require external support — don’t carry the burden alone.
• Building a strong team includes ensuring openness to newcomers, not just intra-team bonds.

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Notable Quotes

• “A good Scrum Master or a good coach is actually not that person that everybody's depending on… the more replaceable you are, the better you are.”
  — Natalia Curusi [03:04]

• “I make sure that they could get rid of me very easy. So they were very independent. Everybody can do the Scrum Master role, facilitate the retrospective.”
  — Natalia Curusi [06:59]

• “He was an outliner. It became very evident that at some point that person became a black swan… He was ignored by some of the team members.… Now I understand that was like a form of bullying.”
  — Natalia Curusi [08:55]

• “You can’t control group dynamics. They are what they are… even if we have all the tools and strategies, it may still fail.”
  — Vasco Duarte [11:00]

• “Sometimes this is not in our power to change the situation. Sometimes you just need to let it go… this is not just a Scrum Master to be blamed in that situation.”
  — Natalia Curusi [12:10]

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Episode Timeline

• 01:22 — Book recommendations for Scrum Masters
• 05:58 — Origin story of the "dream team"
• 08:23 — Integration challenges for a new team member and emergence of exclusion
• 09:41 — Cultural factors and delayed recognition of bullying
• 10:16 — Host and guest reflect on group dynamics
• 12:02 — Lessons on the limits of Scrum Master intervention
• 12:54 — Episode concludes

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Key Lessons for Listeners

• Even ideal teams can develop unhealthy social patterns.
• Strong intra-team bonds can foster exclusion and bullying if not carefully managed.
• Scrum Masters should foster not only independence but also openness and inclusivity.
• Escalating and seeking support is sometimes the best course — self-blame has limits.
• Awareness and humility are essential tools for handling team challenges beyond procedural Agile practices.

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This episode offers a sobering, practical discussion on the realities of team dynamics and the crucial, sometimes under-acknowledged, boundary between what Scrum Masters can and cannot control.

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 war free 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 this 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 our team Tuesday this week with Natalia Kurusi. Hey Natalia, welcome back.

[B]

Welcome. Yeah, I'm very happy to see you again.

[A]

Absolutely. It's a pleasure to have you back. And today we're going to talk about famous team Tuesday, right? Like teams that self destruct. But before we dive into that, do share with us Natalia, what's the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?

[B]

I probably will not be very innovative here and I probably will name a book that already other Scrum Masters and agile coaches named so. Lisa Atkins Coaching Agile Teams. So that was probably the first book about coaching and about agile coaching in general that I have read and this is how I understood. I was already performing kind of Scrum Master or Project manager role at that time and I recognized myself that I was super responsible, organized. I understood my role like I need to be a glue that integrate end to end all the stakeholders, all the teams. So I was the only person that understand every single piece of delivery in the team and I thought that I'm so strong because of that and I was so proud of myself. And then I have read Lisa Atkins Coaching Agile Team and that completely changed my perspective. So I understood that a good Scrum Master or a good coach is actually not that person that everybody's depending on or not that person that is going in vacation and when a person, everybody, everything is falling apart because you are not there the person that is going on vacation or you are not at the place, you are not with a team and the team is still independent that can can deal about you that's the strongest scrum master, that's the strong, strongest coach. And I started to work with myself to get it. Get rid of that kind of over control, to get rid of that kind of over responsibility, to let it go and to grow the team. Another thing that I understood after reading that book, that actually we don't need to be unreplaceable at our workplace. So we need to make sure that we grow some of our team members that can replace ourselves. So the more replaceable you are, the better you are. Because at some point you need to make yourself obsolete. You need to step out of a team to start coaching another team or to go on in another workplace. And you still need to make sure that the agility and the continuous improvement continues. So that was one of the base book that I still recommend to every single scrum master that is a junior maybe and they want to embrace this role of scrum master or agile coach. And another one, very good one for facilitator is facilitation. It was training from the back of the room. That is Sharon Bowman. So I recommend this book to every single facilitator that would like to learn how to do interactive sessions, how to run interactive workshops where you as a trainer, you don't spend more than 50% of time presenting slides and so on, but another 50% of time the people are learning from each other. So the people bring something in the room, they learn from each other, and that's why they go out of their own with not 10% of the information, but with much more because they, they understood something from learning and teaching others. So that was two of my preferred books. But I can.

[A]

We got a bonus two books for the price of one. Thank you very much for that, Natalia, and great recommendations, by the way. And I think that in this episode specifically, the important thing is for us to understand how everybody has a slightly different experience from even the same books, because we are all at different stages in our development in our career when we read certain books. So it's important to hear even when there are repeated books, because everybody has a different experience. All right, but now we turn our attention to the teams and how sometimes they become their own worst enemies. So, Natalia, teams can develop these kind of behaviors or patterns of acting that lead to problems. And that's the story we want you to tell us. Introduce the team so that we know a little bit about the context and then talk to us about how those maybe small lines, small behavior, small actions developed over time and eventually became a problem for the team.

[B]

Yeah, sure. So this team that I'm going to present now is the team that I am the protest of. So this is the team that I pick up from the beginning. I build them. Most of them were junior developers just after the graduation of university, just after our induction course in Endowa. So I managed to put everything in place. I managed to put the ways of working agreement. We put, we did together the definition of done. We had a new client, we traveled even to America together. So we had two weeks, amazing, amazing weeks in Texas us with a good part of the team. So that was amazing. So the team, this is dream team even now, even the problem that I'm going now to present is still my dream team in my memory. So the team become very, very mature and independent. So I make sure that they could get rid of me very easy. So they were very independent. Everybody can do the Scrum Master role, facilitate the retrospective. Also they are technical, they are very, very strong. So even we had young developers that was a net team, so young developers, but they have very strong and strong testing skill set. That team also become friends, good friends between themselves outside of workplace. So we did all the time these kind of Christmas parties, pizza parties. So we celebrated together. I don't know, birthday parties, other stuff, karting together. So that was amazing. What happened that at some moment a new team member joined the team and that team member was a little bit less technical capable, let's say like that. So he was like not junior because he had a lot of experience in it, but he was a little bit more slow in kind of understanding some of the things. As I had a team of heroes, I had a team of fast trackers. And that person was first of all he joined a little bit later. Secondly, he was like an outliner. So he was an outliner. He was. He. It was. It became very evident that at some point that person became a black swan now. So he was ignored by some of the team members. All the team members are doing some kind of fun during the retrospectives and stand ups with that. And me as a Scrum master at that point I didn't know what to do with the situation. So I have a strong team, they all have fun together. And that person doesn't feed the team, just doesn't feed the team and that's it. So I started to do some one to one meetings with that person with other team members. I didn't know what. Doesn't mean bullying at that time. So after that I understand that was like a form of bullying. You Know, because like, look, in Republic of Moldova, we don't speak about bullying. We don't know what is that. So I had all kind of discussions. That person doesn't want even to address the challenges. He say that I'm okay, I don't need any help. Then other team members that was involved in that situation, they say, look, I be just making fun. Like that's nothing here. So we are just making fun. So after making going back and forward with that situation, I understand that the team start to self destroy. How you say, like the team is not the team structure, the team morale is not the same. So I understand that I need to do something with that. And that probably was the moment when I understood that I need to escalate the situation. So I discussed with head of disciplines, I discussed with the local psychologist and we tried to address the situation. So at the end of the day, that person was rotated to another team just because he felt more comfortable like that. But that's a very good example that the Scrum master cannot deal with all of that stuff. So I think sometimes we as a Scrum masters, we just need to understand that this is enough. If there is a conflict or situation or there is bullying, there is harassment in the team, you just need to address that. And we are not supermans and superwomans and sometimes we need other persons to help us.

[A]

Yeah, we can use the support structure around us and we should know what that support structure is. This story reminds me of something that is. I read this in the book many, many, many years ago, but of course also witnessed it happening just like you describe it. When there is a very strong sense of group within the team, everything works. The team feels allegiance, they have parties outside work, they even share personal life or whatever. Then it's very hard for someone to come in and become part of that group, even if we try to. Right. And I think that that's the important aspect here because what you said is important. Even if we know in advance that we have, you know, an uphill battle, that we need to bring a new person in and that person needs to become part of the team. And even if we know that in advance, even if we have all the tools and strategies, it may still fail because you, you can't control group dynamics. They are what they are. Right. Like the team needs to either decide to adopt this new team member or they decide, like in your story, to expel that team member in many different ways. Like you talked about bullying, that's one way ostracizing, not sharing information Doing stuff outside work and never inviting that person. Those are other methods of putting the person on the outside and therefore not accepting them in. And I think it's very important what you said, because these are things that we can't control. And as you learn from working with a psychologist, not even psychologists can fix this. Sometimes the only solution is to really just find another home for that person if they are willing and if they have the technical skills to do that.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. I just think that, you know, at that moment I felt myself very blamed. I blamed myself because I felt. I felt that I should be blamed for that situation. That me as a Scrum Master couldn't fix that situation. What I want to say to all the Scrum Masters, sometimes this is not in our power to change the situation. Sometimes you just need to let it go, you know, so this is the things happens because they happen. From my point of view, I did everything that I could to address the situation. If I don't manage, this is not just a Scrum Master to be blamed in that situation.

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a very important realization. There are things that are beyond our control, no matter how much experience and how well prepared we are. Great. That was a difficult but very important and insightful story. Thank you for sharing that, Natalia.

[B]

Thank you, Vasco.

[A]

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[B]

Slack.

[A]

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