The Triangulation Technique—Coaching Agile Teams Through Challenges | Bernie Maloney

Summary

---

Episode Overview

Title: The Triangulation Technique—Coaching Agile Teams Through Challenges
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Bernie Maloney
Date: September 9, 2025

In this Team Tuesday episode, Vasco Duarte welcomes back veteran Agile coach Bernie Maloney for a deep dive into how Agile teams can self-destruct—and, more importantly, how Scrum Masters and coaches can intervene. Bernie introduces the powerful "Triangulation Technique" for coaching through team challenges, shares pivotal books that shaped his coaching style, and digs into practical strategies to nurture self-leadership and psychological safety.

---

1. Influential Books for Agile Practitioners & Coaches

Bernie discusses multiple books that profoundly shaped his approach to coaching Agile teams:

• Start With Why (Simon Sinek) & Drive (Dan Pink)

  • Widely referenced for understanding motivation and leadership through purpose.

• Change the Culture, Change the Game

  • Key Idea: Change requires leaders to demonstrate the new behaviors they're asking for.
  • "You actually need to get leaders to start demonstrating the change that they want." (03:16, C: Bernie)

• The Secret Language of Leadership (Steve Denning)

  • Neuro-linguistic programming and storytelling as a leadership tool.
  • "Sinek talks about storytelling as a leadership technique. And it's really powerful. He says compelling stories have a pattern of attention, emotion, and reason." (03:45, C: Bernie)

• Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders (Rajeev Peshawaria)

  • The most difficult management transition is moving from first to second-level, requiring letting go and enabling others.
  • "In Agile, by having self-directed teams, lots of line managers have to let go." (04:37, C: Bernie)

• The Geek Way (Andrew McAfee)

  • Four high-performance cultural norms: Science, Openness, Speed (of learning!), and Ownership.
  • "Speed of learning—most organizations get this wrong because they hear speed and they think speed of execution. It's actually speed of learning." (05:19, C: Bernie)

• Right Kind of Wrong (Amy Edmondson)

  • Differentiates between basic, complex, and intelligent mistakes; highlights the danger of chains of failure in over-constrained environments.

• Strategic Play: Creative Facilitator's Guide (Lego Serious Play)

  • Practical facilitation book—“great for facilitation… using an eight-brick LEGO kit with a technique called ‘what the duck.’” (06:13, C: Bernie)

---

2. Key Team Dysfunction: Lack of Clarity About Intention

[07:17] Bernie identifies a chief challenge—unclear intentions at all organizational levels, manifesting as:

• Unclear vision, strategy, goals, and opportunities
• Teams treated as task-executors with little autonomy
• Teams waiting for direction rather than acting proactively

"They're just giving teams a task list because the teams don't know what direction that they're going in. And so they can feel depressed, like cogs in a machine... human doings instead of human beings." (07:37, C: Bernie)

• Startups, by contrast, more often “beg forgiveness” rather than “seek permission,” embracing risk and self-direction.
• In large orgs, waiting for direction is a self-destructive behavior.

"That waiting for direction is a self-destructive behavior. And that's one of the things I try and coach out of them.” (09:36, C: Bernie)

Scrum Master’s Job:
Facilitate psychological safety—the environment in which teams can thrive, take risks, and attain high performance.

---

3. Coaching Teams into Self-Leadership

[10:18] Vasco asks how to help teams embrace self-leadership and seek clarity through dialogue.

The Triangulation Technique

• What is it?
  A coaching method that shifts focus from personal blame to shared problem-solving.

• Practical demonstration (audio-visual cue adapted):

  • When you say “We have a problem” while pointing at the person, it feels accusatory.
  • When you say “We have a problem” while pointing away from both of you (towards a shared space or whiteboard), it feels collaborative.

"You're taking the problem out from in between us to before us. So... just, I'm going to do it with you really quickly. Observe how you feel." (11:19, C: Bernie)

Vasco’s Reaction:

“When you point away, it feels more like solution. And when you point at me, it feels more like blame." (12:19, B: Vasco)

Bernie’s Explanation:

"You want to take a problem from being between us to being before us." (12:27, C: Bernie)

Tools:

• Collaborative online workspaces (Miro, Mural, etc.) allow distributed teams to “triangulate” on a problem together.

Notable Extension for Leaders

• If leaders ask, “What went wrong?”, follow immediately with “and where does the team need help?”
• This repositions the conversation around the situation, not the individual.

"The next words out of their mouth need to be 'and where does the team need help?' Because that simple phrase says, it's not about you, it's about the situation." (13:44, C: Bernie)

---

4. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• "Start with not being a human doing, but a human being." (07:38, C: Bernie)
• "That's part of the reason why my company is called Powered by Teams with a subtext of fueled by leaders thriving in change." (09:13, C: Bernie)
• "We have a problem." [points at person, feels like blame] / "We have a problem." [points outward, feels collaborative] (12:19, B: Vasco & C: Bernie)
• "You want to take a problem from being between us to being before us." (12:27, C: Bernie)
• "The next words out of their mouth need to be 'and where does the team need help?'" (13:44, C: Bernie)

---

5. Key Takeaways

• Clarity and Intent: Teams flourish when goals and intent are explicitly communicated and owned.
• Triangulation Technique: Effective coaches frame problems as external shared challenges—not interpersonal conflict.
• Psychological Safety: Scrum Masters must deliberately create conditions for teams to take risk and drive toward self-leadership.
• Leadership Language Matters: Leaders must be careful with framing—switch from blame to support and solution-focus.

---

6. Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:33] – Bernie’s Most Influential Books
• [07:17] – Common Team Dysfunctions (Clarity and Intent)
• [10:18] – Coaching Teams in Self-Leadership
• [11:19] – Triangulation Technique Explained
• [12:19] – Demonstration and Reaction
• [13:44] – Coaching Leaders: Blame vs. Support Language

---

Summary:
Bernie Maloney urges Scrum Masters to move past task management, actively foster clarity, and coach teams toward shared problem-solving using powerful techniques like triangulation. By focusing on psychological safety, storytelling, and collaborative framing, both teams and leaders can transcend self-destructive behaviors and thrive amidst constant change.

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.

[B]

Hello everybody. Welcome to our Team Tuesday where we talk about teams that self destruct. But first we welcome our guest back, Bernie Maloney. Welcome back.

[C]

Thank you, Hasko.

[B]

So Bernie, we'll talk about teams in a second. But first share with us what was the book that most inspired you in your career as a Scrum Master?

[C]

You know, Vasco, I'm not going to point to one. I've got a bunch when, when you brought this question up, it's like, oh, he may love me or he may hate me for this. Now look, everybody out there loves Sinex. Start with Y and Drive by Dan Pink. And I think, I think they're great books. I found Sinek around 2010, right about the time they published the book. But I'm going to cite several others. So one that I read about the same time in 2010 is change the culture, change the game. Because that's really the job that we're in as Scrum Masters is changing the culture. And a big point that I can remember from that, I'd have to go back and review it again to be current is you actually need to get leaders to start demonstrating the change that they want. Now, about the same time that I found Sinek and everybody knows Sinek's Golden Circle, the why, how, what? I also found a book by Steve Denning. Steve Denning got really popular with the Leader's Guide to Radical Management in Agile Circles. But before that he wrote a book called the Secret Language of Leadership. Now like I I explained in the Monday episode, neuro, linguistic programming is all about language. So this, this kind of caught My eye. And Sinek talks about leader or talks about storytelling as a leadership technique. And it's really powerful. And he says compelling stories have a pattern of attention, emotion and reason. So the ability to tell a compelling story on the fly is a really great skill. And you see the same thing reflected in connects. Why, how, what? Attention, emotion and then reason. If you know the triune model, the brain, it maps identically. You also see that in any newspaper, any day. Attention, a big banner, headline, emotion, full color picture, reason. The little details you see down the side. Another one that I think is, is really significant is Too Many Bosses, Too few Leaders by Rajiv Peshawaria. Now in that book, Peshawaria makes two significant points. He says the hardest transition to make in management is when you go from first level to second level management. Because the second level you have to let go. And that's what we do in Agile. By having self directed teams, lots of line managers have to let go. But then he says the second problem is there's nobody, there's no structure there to help you do that. You're on your own. You got to go figure it out. So to me, that's a big part of being a Scrum master is helping those line managers, those project managers, recognize how they need to develop coaching and mentoring skills to really step into that second level of management. Because that's what second level managers should be doing. Now a more recent book came out in 2023 is by an author, Andrew McAfee, called the Geek Way. And he talks about four cultural norms that go into high performance. It's really, really impactful. In fact, he's going to be part or that reference is going to be part of the thread that I give at the Scrum gathering Banff in about a month from when we're recording this. So and if you put that in for a lunch and learn everybody, you can reach out and contact me. Happy to bring that in as a lunch and learn. But McAfee says the four cultural norms are science. The willingness to run experiments, openness, the ability to challenge authority, speed. Now this is where most organizations get it wrong because they hear speed and they think speed of execution. It's actually speed of learning. Okay. And then ownership, actually letting the teams own the decisions. That's huge. Okay. Another book that I'm going to cite in that talk is Amy Edmondson's Right Kind of Wrong. Now Amy was the one behind Psychological Safety. And in Right Kind of Wrong she points out that there's three types of mistakes. Commonly there's basic Mistakes. And that's what most organizations think the mistakes are. Okay, there's complex mistakes. These are chain of failure mistakes. I'm going to come back to that in a second. And then there's intelligent mistakes. Intelligent mistakes we see all the time. Like in pharma where you're running experiments. Oh, we're back to experiments again. And you want to run intelligent failures on stuff like this. Now we're back to make new mistakes. Okay. So the complex failures are the ones you got to watch out for. And she points out in a lot of instances these are over constrained problems where if you put too many constraints in, then a chain of failures happens and literally the plane falls out of the sky. So and then another great one for Scrum masters is a book called Strategic Play, Creative Facilitators Guide. It's out of Lego Serious Play and it is a great facilitator book that you can use with teams for lots of different things, using an eight brick LEGO kit with a technique called what the duck. So it is, it is great for facilitation. So all of those are like really influential and I cite them all the time. Vasco, sorry for like running on and on and on.

[B]

No, absolutely. And of course we'll put the link to all of this in the show notes. Some of these have been mentioned before, but of course everyone has a different reason why they were influenced by the book. So thank you for sharing all of that with us, Bernie. So next we turn to the teams because all we are learning is to help teams succeed, become high performant, as you mentioned in some of these books was also part of the content of the book. But not all teams are high performant. I mean some really get into troubles. Troubles that sometimes the team themselves create. So let's explore one of those stories. Walk us through what was happening. What were those little behaviors that developed and over time grew and affected significantly the teams performance.

[C]

So I'm going to anonymize things here so that people won't get embarrassed. And so I, I see a couple of common patterns. So one of the patterns that is really prevalent is lack of clarity about intention. Now let me expand what I mean by intention. And that's not solely on the teams. So to a high degree a lot of the organizations I work with have very unclear intent. By intent I mean things like unclear vision, unclear strategy, unclear opportunities that they want to pursue, unclear goals in product and sprint and sprint goals that we talk about in Scrum. And so really what they're doing is they're Just giving teams a task list because the teams don't know what direction that they're going in. And so they can feel depressed like cogs in a machine or just we're human doings instead of human beings. Some teams. So you'll find teams where they will beg for forgiveness. They're going to go out and they're going to run the experiment and if it goes sideways, great, they'll beg forgiveness because we know we were headed in this direction. You see that a lot in startups because startups don't have the time to like seek permission. Seek permission is the next level. We think we want to do this. But a lot of teams, particularly in big organizations, they wait for direction because they've been treated like hogs in a machine so long. They wait for direction and then they do the best they can and it goes sideways. And you get things like yeah, that's what I asked for, but what I really needed was out of your clients. So the teams aren't taking enough self ownership. They're not speaking up about hey, we're being over constrained here. And part of the role I see of a scrum master is helping to create that safe environment. One of the ways I phrase the job of a scrum master is to create the space within a team which a team can thrive and get to high performance. That's part of the reason why my company is called Powered by Teams with a subtext of fueled by leaders thriving in change. That's what I really help my clients do is become powered by teams and fueled rather than ruled by leaders. And when you do that, you've got organizations that are thriving in change. So that lack of clarity that goes on in a lot of organizations hamstrings team. So it constrains them over much and then they don't push the envelope. So that waiting for direction is a self direct, direct self destructive behavior. And that's one of the things I try and coach out of them. I try to get them to see where they've got some psychological safety, to expand some things and take a risk.

[B]

Tell us a little bit more about that. Like how do you help teams to take on that? You called it self leadership. That, that ability to look for direction in dialogue, in conversations, in Q&As, in planning, in retrospectives, et cetera. How do you help teams really absor absorb that role?

[C]

So one of the, one of the big things I do is I will routinely teach a coaching skill called triangulation. So and I'll teach this to both teams and to stakeholders, and it's important to do both. So since we're only audio, I'm going to describe what goes on here. But, Vasco, since you and I have video while we're recording this, I want you to observe how you feel when I say these two phrases. Now, for the folks listening, I'm going to describe what I've done. Okay. Or what I'm about to do. And then, Vasco, you'll still be able to kind of observe this. So a lot of times when things come up and the phrase what went wrong goes on, okay. It feels like it's directed at us. Okay. Because you're looking straight at the person versus there's a different feeling. Like, think of going up to a whiteboard when there's a problem. Okay. And people are like, okay, what's going wrong here? And you're looking at the whiteboard shoulder to shoulder and solving it. That's triangulation. You're taking the problem out from in between us to before us. So, Vasco, just. I'm going to do it with you really quickly. Observe how you feel. And that'd be great to, like, record that for the audience. So I'm going to say the same thing two. Two slightly different ways. And the visual is here where the first time I'm going to put my hand in between us, and the second time I'm going to put. Put my hand kind of pointing away from us. So just observe how you feel when I say this. Here's the first way. Ready, Vasco? We have a problem. That's first way. Here's the second way. Vasco, we have a problem. That's how you feel different when I point away.

[B]

Yeah, when you point away, it. Look, it feels more like solution. And when you point at me, it feels more like blame.

[C]

Yeah, exactly. So that's why I talk about this as you want to take a problem from being between us to being before for us. And this is what happens when we have collaborative tools like I use Miro a lot. Lots of other people use other similar facilities like mural or lucidcharts. And we're. Now we've got a collaborative space that we're working in even if we're remote from one another. We. We've got a shared problem space. We see this when we're face to face where we've got a whiteboard and we're solutioning, you know, working out things in the whiteboard so we can have a really tense conversation. But we know that that tense conversation is about the situation, not about the individual's performance.

[B]

I can totally see the NLP approach here, and it's very important for us as coaches to actually prepare this type of approach.

[A]

Right.

[B]

Like with facilitation skills, with talking to leaders, with talking to team members. Because this also happened between happens between team members.

[A]

Right.

[B]

It's not just leaders that point. Team members point a lot as well. And if they have a different direction to point to, then it's not you who is the problem, it's the problem we are both trying to tackle.

[C]

Yeah. Another thing I'll coach leaders on is they can come up with something really strong like what went wrong? But the next words out of their mouth need to be and where does the team need help? Because that simple phrase says, it's not about you, it's about the situation.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Great story and great tip. The coaching skill called triangulation. Thank you for sharing that with us, Bernie.

[C]

You're welcome, Pascal.

[A]

All right, I hope you liked this episode, but before you hit next episode, here's the deal. This podcast is powered by people like you. The members who wanted more than just inspiration. They wanted real tools and real connection to people who are practicing agile. Every day we're talking access to over 700 hours of agile gold, CTO level strategy talks, Summit keynotes, live workshops, E courses, Deep dive interviews, books, and if you're into no estimates, we got the pioneers of no Estimates in those Deep Dive interviews as well. Agile, Business Intelligence, creating product visions, coaching your product owner courses, you name it. You'll get invites to monthly live Q&As with agile pioneers and practitioners, plus a private Slack community which is free of all of that AI slop you see everywhere. And of course, without the flame wars, it's a community of practitioners that want to learn and thrive together. It's the best place to connect with community and learn together. So if this podcast has helped you before, imagine what you will get from this podcast membership. So head on over to scrummastertoolbox.org membership and join the community that's shaping the future of Agile. We have so much for you, so check out all the [e-mail] membership because listening is great, it's important. But doing it together, that's next level. I'll see you in the community.

[B]

Slack. We really hope you liked our show. And if you did, why not rate this podcast on Stitcher or itunes? Share this podcast and let other Scrum masters know about this valuable resource for their work.

[A]

Remember that sharing is caring.