Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships | Juliana Stepanova

Summary

Podcast Summary: Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships

Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Juliana Stepanova
Date: February 4, 2026
Episode Theme: Navigating challenging relationships between Scrum Masters and Product Owners (POs) and strategies to build trust and collaboration rather than escalating issues.

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into one of the most delicate dynamics in Scrum teams: handling product owners (POs) who are disengaged, unprepared, or resistant to coaching—particularly when organizational structures make it difficult to align priorities. Juliana Stepanova joins Vasco Duarte for “Coaching and Biggest Challenge Wednesday,” bringing a real-life situation where a newly promoted PO’s behaviors are undermining effective Scrum processes. Together, they strategize actionable ways to support the PO, encourage team collaboration, and thoughtfully avoid escalation, emphasizing trust and patience in building healthier team relationships.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Context & Challenge: A PO Resisting Coaching

• Juliana’s scenario:
  • Her team’s PO does not want to be coached or accept help from the Scrum Master.
  • The PO's behavior is negatively impacting Scrum rituals and overall team efficiency.
  • Organizational structure complicates matters; the line managers for the Scrum Master and PO are in entirely different departments, lacking alignment and shared direction.
  • Quote ([03:41]):

    “We have really like different line managers who are going up to the different departments who are not connected...we have not aligned direction at this moment.”
    — Juliana

2. Manifestation of the Challenge

• The PO is focused solely on product delivery, often neglecting preparedness for essential Scrum rituals such as refinement.
• Refinement meetings are inefficient, with user stories being written live, leading to very long sessions and wasted team time.
• The PO does not see the value in these rituals and assumes their work is most important, expecting the team to wait for their direction.
• Quote ([06:56]):

  “He thinks that he's most important person and everybody else can wait. He's really overwhelmed...no time to prepare to refinement, but from other side to do it together with the team—it's not respecting the team.”
  — Juliana

3. Attempted Approaches So Far

• Juliana considered (but had not yet successfully tried) facilitating a team conversation with the PO about how the team could support their responsibilities.
• The team appears willing to help, but the PO resists accepting support, preferring to maintain control and independence.
• The PO's pride in their new role and lack of prior PO experience exacerbate the issue.
• Quote ([09:07]):

  “This conversation is not accepted via PO because he is really proud of his role and... holding all his tasks.”
  — Juliana

4. Escalation vs. Collaboration Decision Point ([10:34–13:35])

• Vasco pushes on whether the team should respond by escalating up the chain of command, staging a standoff (“we can’t work”), or continue covering for the PO’s operational gaps.
• Juliana clarifies that while work continues, inefficient refinement means productivity is suffering and the team can’t be as effective.
• The team still believes the problem can be resolved internally through improved communication and supporting the PO.
• Vasco introduces the idea of experimenting with internal solutions, such as a temporary PO proxy or deeper team involvement in PO activities.

5. Focusing on Building Trust, Not Escalating ([14:40])

• Juliana is clear that escalation should be the absolute last resort, as it risks harming both the team-PO relationship and organizational trust.
• Escalation could lead to losing the current PO, getting someone new with uncertain capabilities, or a permanent trust fracture.
• Building trust and fostering open communication within the team is seen as the sustainable, winning approach.
• Quote ([14:40]):

  “Escalation on the upper level...could be done but it's not a good idea because in the worst way we will lose PO and we don't know when we get another one. And in the best way, we have a PO who really knows that we were escalating the problem outside the team. So the trust will be built then for years.”
  — Juliana

• Quote ([14:40]):

  “My suggestion is to really try out in a supportive way—build trust, encourage communication, and come to the solution as a team all together. This is like really win-win situation.”
  — Juliana

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Memorable Quotes with Timestamps

• “We have really like different line managers...who are not connected. So...not aligned direction at this moment.” — Juliana ([03:41])
• “He thinks that he's the most important person and everybody else can wait...no time to prepare to refinement...it's not respecting the team...” — Juliana ([06:56])
• “This conversation is not accepted via PO because he is really proud of his role and...holding all his tasks.” — Juliana ([09:07])
• “Do we go into a standoff...? Or do we try to cover for the lack of attention and time on the product owner?” — Vasco ([10:34])
• “Escalation...could be done but it’s not a good idea...the trust will be built then for years. My suggestion is to really try out in supportive way to build in trust...This is really win-win.” — Juliana ([14:40])

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Key Takeaways

• Patience over escalation: For difficult PO relationships, especially where trust is fragile, it is wiser to approach with patience, compassion, and repeated attempts at collaboration before considering escalation.
• Understanding context: Organizational misalignment and a newly promoted, inexperienced PO complicate the ability to simply “fix” process gaps.
• Team support: While escalation can be tempting when a PO blocks productivity, teams should first exhaust all options internally—clarifying roles, offering support, and creatively sharing PO workload where possible.
• Trust as foundation: Escalating to management risks damaging trust for years; lasting change comes from strengthening ties within the team and supporting everyone’s growth.
• Experimentation mindset: Instead of “solving” the problem outright, try out safe-to-fail experiments, such as having another team member temporarily shadow or help the PO, or incrementally increasing team involvement in PO tasks.

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Important Topic Timestamps

| Timestamp | Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:23 | Introduction of the “coaching and biggest challenge” format | | 02:05 | Juliana presents the PO challenge and context | | 03:41 | Discussion about organizational misalignment and its impacts | | 05:14 | Manifestations of PO disengagement during refinement | | 06:56 | Analysis of PO’s attitude and the toll on team time | | 09:07 | Insights into PO’s inexperience and refusal to accept help | | 10:34 | Standoff vs. collaboration decision | | 13:35 | Experimenting with solutions and importance of collaborative stance | | 14:40 | Why escalation should be the last resort; trust-building as central to resolution |

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Overall Tone

The conversation is candid, supportive, and realistic, reflecting the complexity and emotional nuance of coaching in tough team dynamics. Juliana advocates a respectful, empathetic, and patient approach, resisting the shortcut of escalation in favor of investing in long-term trust and collaboration. Vasco guides the conversation with curiosity and pragmatic advice, helping listeners see multiple perspectives and practical options for experimentation.

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This episode is a must-listen for Scrum Masters, Agile Coaches, and team leaders facing difficult PO relationships, offering both empathy and tactical wisdom for building lasting trust and sustainable improvements, even in challenging organizational environments.

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 Wednesday, the biggest challenge and coaching day of the week. This week with Juliana Stepanova. Hey Juliana, welcome back.

[C]

Hi Vasco.

[B]

So Wednesday is the coaching and biggest challenge day. As Scrum Masters, our work happens in the middle of complexity. There's team stakeholders, organizations that are constantly changing and that means that we're facing new and evolving challenges every single day. So it's important for us ourselves as grandmasters to practice the coaching conversation. And this is what me and Juliana are going to do now. Juliana will bring a challenge and then we will explore that together and think through options and finally define an experiment we could run to try to solve that challenge. So Juliana, back to you. What's the challenge you bring to us this week?

[C]

So it's pretty tricky for me at least the challenge in the team that happening actually and it's mostly related to the po and the challenge is so it's normal for Scrum Master to work with po. That PO don't want to be coached or do not hear the Scrum Master. And the behavior of the PO in somehow way is ruining the Scrum rituals and not supporting Scrum. The question is really how it could be managed or how it could be done with different ways with different approaches probably. And here it will be really like great to brainstorm what the possibilities are if you need can give them a little bit more context.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. So we'll go into that and first when you think about this particular challenge, let's explore a little bit of the context. But also why does it feel particularly challenging to you? Because I mean dealing with people is what we do every day. Right. Like one could say PO is one stakeholder, but there are I don't know how many in this particular context, but maybe there are 10 or, or 15 or whatever number of stakeholders. So we're dealing with everybody. So I would ask from that perspective, what do you think is making the interaction with this product owner specifically challenging for you as a Scrum Master?

[C]

Really if I'm thinking in this way, it's for me depending on the line management because previously I have a chance to work on the line manager who is above to ask him to support or in this way to see how it will be solved. And in this particular case we have really like different line managers who are going up to the different departments who are not connected. So like department of the people would say people department it's Grandmaster Land Management, npo it's product department and people in product department they are not connected at all. And this like make it worser. So we have like not aligned direction at this moment. You want to mute.

[B]

Oh yeah, sorry. So that's what I was going to say next is this idea that when you talk about these different lines of reporting, it's not. I mean for me, at least in my mind the lines of reporting are just a circumstance, they are a constraint. But what you said at the end there is very important. So you feel that there's this difference in direction.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

And how do you define that? Like can you give an example of what that could mean in practice? Like this difference in direction now specifically between you as a Scrum master and the product owner.

[C]

It'S mostly like product. It's normally they're trying some product direction. They're trying to push to make, to make releases, to write a code in their own way or to reduce the time and work more efficiently. But they try to cut everything that it's not necessary. And the people department would say support in Scrum and would like to keep it organized in the framework was chosen for this company. What could happen PO not respect refinement and not come to refinement prepared and start to prepare user stories directly in the refinement meeting which can long four hours in. And of course it will be cut it because it's waste of the time from other side. If we are not have a refinement at all, productivity will not grow because team actually really have no idea what they need to do there.

[B]

So do I get you right that you're feeling in this particular story that the product owner is focusing on something whatever that is, we haven't discussed that, but the proctor is not taking into account what the team needs to perform. Like in this case, very practically, it would be coming prepared to the refinement meeting and keeping the refinement meeting because that's what allows the team to understand the requirements, be ready and then implement things within the sprint. Is that what you're seeing?

[C]

And additionally, it's actually what I want to say. And additionally to that, the po, it's really like for me, it the feeling that he thinks that he's most important person and everybody else can wait. So it's. He's really overwhelmed. It's like in a company problem that PO has so many stuff to do additionally that he has really no time to prepare to refinement, but from other side to do it together with the team. It's not respecting the team in my opinion, because when we calculate the time of the team, like I don't know, eight persons sitting in the refinement for four hours, it's like really a full week of the person working.

[B]

Okay, so I want to go back to these different lines of reporting because what you just said is very important. You initially said you felt that the product owner didn't respect the team, but you also just now said that you felt that the product owner was overly busy, overwhelmed with many responsibilities. So of course, assuming the product owner is part of the team, and this is now my assumption as I go into this next part, assuming the product owner is part of the team, then it would make sense for us to have a conversation in the team about how do we help the product owner, right? Like there are things we can help the product owner get rid of, like you know, motivation, discussion, escalation, whatever. But then there are things we can't help the product owner get rid of. Maybe they are expected responsibilities for that person. But we as a team, meaning the product owner is inside the team, not outside the team. Inside the team, we as a team can look for potential workarounds and solutions until the product owner finds the right balance between other responsibilities and helping the team. Have you tried discussing this with the product owner in the team? Like how can we help the product owner have more time and have more preparation time for us.

[C]

It's a good decision, good idea to solve this problem. This conversation is not accepted via POD because he is really proud of his role and actually here again about a little bit more context. It's like a newly born PO with no previous experience in the PO area, but product area and he was really Proud to get this role and he was holding all his tasks.

[B]

Do you feel that the team wants to help the po, or do you feel that the team is just stepping back and letting the PO do their thing and you know, come late or come unprepared or whatever team was ready to help? Okay.

[C]

It's not that like they're proactively looked because in this case, PO really not accept. Not acceptance or help or idea. So in this case it's more like, I know the best way I will do it. Just wait till.

[B]

I will just wait for what? Was there like a follow up to that? Just wait for what?

[C]

For example, user stories will be prepared till I will give you next direction.

[B]

Okay, so now we need to decide, do we go into a standoff? Right? Like, because that's, that's a possibility within an organization. There are escalation mechanisms and, you know, chains of command and so on. Do we go into a standoff where the team can't work and just actively says that to the manager, we can't work, we have no user stories. Or do we try to cover for the lack of attention and time on the product owner? I'm hearing from you that what you're trying and what the team is trying is to kind of COVID accept the delays and cover and hide from their own management the fact that they can't actually work on anything because nothing is ready to be worked on. Is that what is happening there?

[C]

No. So they have stories, but the stories are not prepared in the way that it's efficient. And somehow I would say so here I'm more guessing. I cannot answer this question directly because I really don't know. It's not about hiding, it's not about to protecting the team and not like getting information out. But they still believe that it could be solved in the team with a proper communication to the po.

[B]

Okay, so they believe that the PO will come around and be able to work in a way that helps the team succeed.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Okay, so we are not at the state where the team would go into a standoff. We are more at the state of we would try different things, like maybe help in a different way. Like define a PO proxy inside the team that would work more closely with the po, maybe go to meetings with them and so on. Is that an idea?

[C]

Yeah, it's one of the solutions that could be done. And it's like in this case, for me as a Scrum master, I really believe that I can come over with the time to the PO that he is. Listen, what Actually suggested the team or myself and can act in this way and accept our help. And from other side, the idea is not to like define the proxy in this way. I really don't like the proxy in teams, it's not my style. But to engage more in the activities of the PO to understand in which points which kind of task can be done by other people or to really say no, it's not the part of the teamwork, it's not the part of the PO to really like support in their very care way and not with a pushing, but to have on the backside like a backup solution.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Well, this is exactly where we now go and define an experiment. And that's what we would do next in this kind of coaching conversation. Because it's really important to know what is the situation between the team and the po. And if we are still in a collaborative stance, then we can look at multiple options that would increase that collaboration, perhaps just bandwidth, so more time together or create enablers like the proxy, which is not a perfect solution, but it can be perfectly good as a temporary stopgap. So it's great to think about these options because at the end, as you said, we also have to consider people's motivations and if the PO is motivated to continue to work in this way, the team needs to then decide, okay, do we push the responsibility towards the PO and fail gracefully? Right. Or do we take the responsibility and work together with the PO to try to get the PO closer to the team, more engaged with the team and eventually more collaborative with the team?

[C]

Of course, for sure. And in this way, if we took the longer perspective, so escalation on the upper level, it's actually, it could be done but it's not a good idea because in the worst way we will lose PO and we don't know when we get another one and the quality of the po. And in the best way we have a PO who really knows that we were escalating the problem outside the team. So the trust will be built then for years. And this way my idea or my suggestion is to really try out in supportive way to build in trust really to encourage communication and to come to the solution as a team all together. This is like really win, win situation.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. It's a great conversation.

[C]

Thank you for asking. It was tricky question and tricky challenge and I hope it will be better over the.

[A]

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[B]

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