When To Stop Helping Agile Teams To Change—A Real Life Story | Tom Molenaar

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: "When To Stop Helping Agile Teams To Change—A Real Life Story" | Tom Molenaar

Date: September 29, 2025
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Tom Molenaar, Team Coach, former Social Psychology and Behavioral Influence student

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Episode Overview

In this "Fail Monday" episode, host Vasco Duarte is joined by Tom Molenaar, a team coach from the Netherlands with a background in social psychology and behavioral influence. Tom shares a candid story of his early failure as a Scrum Master–centering on when and why it’s necessary to stop pushing teams to change, especially when the drive for change isn’t coming from within the team. The conversation delves into the importance of recognizing limits to one’s influence, the emotional labor of coaching reluctant teams, and the boundaries of the Scrum Master’s responsibility.

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Tom’s Journey to Scrum Mastery

[01:24–04:31]

• Background: Tom entered the Scrum Master world from a research/people-focused angle, not the technical side.
  • "I studied social psychology and when I was doing my master in behavioral influence... I approached this consultancy agency in Amsterdam because I needed an internship to link my practical insights to a real life situation." — Tom [01:51]
• Discovering Agile: His internship focused on researching the connection between job happiness and agile ways of working.
  • Interesting finding: No direct correlation between working Agile and job happiness, but a strong link was found between job happiness and autonomy/challenge.
• First Steps: Tom was offered a job and traineeship with the consultancy, blending insight, empathy, and strategy, despite little technical background.

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The Failure Story: Trying Too Hard to Change an Unwilling Team

[05:42–14:34]

Initial Context

[05:42–07:56]

• Tom joined a new data science team as an external Scrum Master. Their manager wanted improvement, but team members saw no urgency.
  • "From the point that I started joining their team, I felt that they didn't... feel the urgency to invest in improving their way of working or improving their team effectiveness." — Tom [05:42]

The Resistance

[07:56–10:38]

• Disengagement: The team complied superficially due to management pressure, but internal buy-in was absent; some team dynamics even started to turn toxic.
  • "There was a silent agreement because... their manager saw the benefit and I was hired as an external SCRUM master to guide that process. So they first, they went along because their manager wanted to, but I did feel that internally they were just very much in resistance." — Tom [07:56]
• Feeling Overlooked: As the product lead/PO got busy elsewhere, the team felt abandoned, exacerbating their resistance to change.
• Brown Paper Silence: Tom recalls running a session on process waste, only to be met by complete silence.
  • "No one spoke up. Like, no one, actually, no one. So I started filling it in because I was like, also a bit at that time afraid to sink in that uncomfortable feeling of, okay, nothing is happening here, guys, what does that mean?" — Tom [09:27]
• Emotional Toll: Persisting in the face of team disengagement left Tom exhausted.

The Turning Point: Recognizing Limits

[10:38–14:09]

• Self-Doubt and Pushing Harder: At first, Tom blamed his inexperience and tried even harder to engage the team.
• Support System: Having a manager/mentor to discuss these struggles was vital. They concluded that despite small process changes (e.g., moving from Sprints to Kanban to fit the team's flow), psychological resistance was too deep.
• Realization: “This is not mine to carry.” Tom had to accept that sometimes, the Scrum Master cannot 'save' the team.

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Key Lessons & Insights

When to Stop

• "Sometimes there isn't a way out, we need to get out so that things can take their own direction." — Vasco [12:44]
• "At the point when we feel exhausted... we're bringing passion and motivation and enthusiasm and all of that is just flying over the team, the team isn’t grabbing to any of that... at that point, it's really great to have a partner... But... sometimes that's it, that's the end of the line and there's nothing we can do. And that's okay because we're not supposed to succeed 100% of the time. Nobody is." — Vasco [12:44]

The Scrum Master's Responsibility

• "When the team doesn't feel the urgency and doesn't want to move, it's not my job to save a team. And that's like not my job to save the team." — Tom [13:40]
  • Vasco responds: "I think that's a T-shirt right there." [14:09]
• The importance of honest conversations, but also knowing when to let go.

Systemic Causes

• Underlying issues (e.g., team feeling abandoned) often block improvement efforts more than process tweaks ever could.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On entering the Scrum Master role:
  "You really came from the people side. A lot of the people we interview here on the podcast, they come from the technical side or project management side, but you came from the people side, of course, because this is also very much a people business." — Vasco [05:06]

• On facilitating when no one participates:
  "No one spoke up. Like, no one, actually, no one. So I started filling it in because I was... afraid to sink in that uncomfortable feeling of, okay, nothing is happening here, guys, what does that mean?" — Tom [09:27]

• On letting go:
  "It's not my job to save a team." — Tom [13:40]
  "I think that's a T-shirt right there." — Vasco [14:09]

• On systemic flaws:
  "They didn't feel the urgency. Their manager wanted them to become better. They felt a bit abandoned. I was trying to coach them in the best ways possible." — Tom [14:11]

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Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------| | 01:24–04:31 | Tom’s personal journey to Agile/Scrum, entering from social sciences | | 05:42–07:56 | Failure setup: Taking on a disengaged team | | 07:56–10:38 | Describing the resistance and emotional toll | | 10:38–12:44 | Realizing exhaustion and getting mentor support | | 12:44–14:34 | Accepting limits, the importance of letting go |

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Summary Takeaways

• Scrum Masters must recognize when team change can’t be forced and that reactivity to disengagement often only exhausts the coach.
• Systemic issues (like abandonment or lack of psychological safety) should be addressed before expecting progress.
• Open discussion with managers or peers about disappointment and exhaustion is crucial for personal and professional development.
• It’s not the Scrum Master’s job to 'save' teams that aren’t ready—progress is co-created, not imposed.

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This episode provides a nuanced, honest look into Scrum Master challenges, especially for those new to the field, and validates the emotional complexity inherent in coaching teams resistant to change.

Transcript

[Vasco]

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.

[Fosco]

Hello everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week, joining us from the Netherlands is Tom Mohlenaar. Hey Tom, welcome to the show.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Hey Fosco, thanks for having me.

[Fosco]

Absolutely. So Tom is a team coach with a background in social psychology and behavioral influence. He's passionate about physical fostering collaboration and helping teams flourish and achieve their potential. His approach brings together insight, empathy and strategy to cultivate team success. And that was a short intro. Tom, tell us a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Yeah, yeah, that's a funny story. I studied social psychology and when I was doing the master was a master in behavioral influence. I reached out to a small consultancy agency, a group of coaches based in Amsterdam, because I needed to do an internship where I was linking my practical insights from that master to a real life situation. And I had to do a research. So I approached this consultancy agency.

[Fosco]

And.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

That'S where I started researching the relationship between job happiness. So how happy are people on the workflow or with their jobs in relation to working agile? So during that internship I learned a lot about the factors that play a role in job happiness, what agile working means. And yeah, I got hooked because it's also a lot about team dynamics, change management. And yeah, this group of coaches was really experienced. So for me as a, I was in my mid-20s, it was a really, really cool experience learning so much from these coaches that were in there and the 30s, 40s. So I soaked it all in and yeah, basically they after the study and the funny thing is we didn't find a significant relationship between working Agile and job happiness, but we did find some really interesting results between factors of job happiness. For example, the amount of challenge or the amount of autonomy in your work. But basically it clicked also with these coaches and they offered me a job and a traineeship to become a team coach, Scrum Master. And from that point I started doing the training and, yeah, working, working on.

[Fosco]

People kind of land in the Scrum Master role. Kind of in the middle of something else. Being a tester, a developer, project manager, whatever. You landed in the Scrum Master role before you were anything in this industry than a researcher. This is very interesting. So it was both a way to land that position, but also to even learn about the existence of this approach of working.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Right, exactly. Straight from college, I started working with teams and also without any technical experience about coding or how organizations were really working. So there was a pretty fresh perspective and really from the. The people side of things, on team dynamics, I started to approach the role and I learned more and more about organizational dynamics and also the technical side of developing. So, yeah, this is pretty interesting because.

[Fosco]

You really came from the people side. A lot of the people we interview here on the podcast, they come from the technical side or project management side, but you came from the people side, of course, because this is also very much a people business. I mean, software is a people business. And now I'm interested to ask the next question, which is, of course, because today's Fail Monday here on the podcast is, what is the story of failure? A story or a moment where you, as a Scrum Master, you tried your best, but as it so often happens, sometimes the best just isn't good enough. So tell us that story, Tom.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. I also feel a lot, especially in those first years, and I learned a lot from it. And one experience that always pops up when I think about failure or about learning is one of the first teams that I really started coaching and helping as a Scrum Master. Yeah. From the point that I started joining their team, I felt that they didn't really. Yeah. That they didn't feel the urgency to invest in improving their way of working or improving their team effectiveness because they. They felt they were, yeah, doing just fine as. As it was. So they didn't see the benefits and there was no urgency. And for me, as a Scrum Master, instead of slowing down and meeting them in their resistance and talking to them and mirroring my observations, what I learned over the years, I started to try to drag team Because I saw that vision of improvement on the process side, on the people side, to improve their effectiveness. But yeah, they didn't feel it and they didn't feel like doing it. So the failure that I had was that I was trying to push and pull the team into, into that movement. And yeah, that, that didn't work, of course.

[Fosco]

How did the team, okay, so I, I imagine you were kind of seeing the potential, seeing how much better they could be doing and what were some of the things, obstacles and impediments and things that just slow them down and you had the motivation, the energy to help them see those things as well and then do something about them. Right. So you had that, that perspective, but the team, as you said, didn't necessarily have that perspective. So when you started pushing, as you said, the improvement ideas, how did the team react?

[Tom Mohlenaar]

They were just. Because they're, because they're. There was a silent agreement because they, they had view, because of their manager. Like, this was like on a management level, it was agreed that the team needed to improve in their journey. It was like, they're working on data, data science. And so their manager saw the benefit and I was hired as an external SCRUM master to guide that process. So they first, they went along because their manager wanted to, but I did feel that internally they were just very much in resistance. And also when the PO or the department leads, the product lead wasn't present. There was a whole other dynamic which was sometimes a bit toxic. And as a young SCRUM master, I tried too much leading the improvements. But what I learned from it is that there were a few reasons why they didn't want to move. For example, they felt overlooked, they felt a bit abandoned because it was like a fairly new team and they gained a lot of traction and attention. And the product leads and their PO also in the meantime had a new area to focus on. So they felt a bit overlooked. And that was one of the reasons why they felt like, yeah, we don't feel like improving because we're a bit abandoned. So there was something in team dynamics that we had to address. And eventually we did address it because at some point I saw myself leading sessions where, for example, we did like a brown paper session and I was asking the team questions about waste in the process and no, no one spoke up. Like, no one, actually, no one. So I started filling it in because I was like, also a bit at that time afraid to sink in that uncomfortable feeling of, okay, nothing is happening here, guys, what does that mean? And instead of using that silence I started to push and starting filling in the blanks, but eventually I got very tired of it, of course, and I felt it took a lot of energy.

[Fosco]

At some point, your enthusiasm and motivation into a team that was kind of just letting it flow away. Right. Like they were not responding to any of the things that you were bringing in. And of course that made you feel exhausted.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Exactly, yeah.

[Fosco]

So what did you do then at that moment when you realized that I'm becoming exhausted with this work with this team? Like, what did you do?

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Well, first I thought first it has something to do with my skills as a scrum master because I was fairly new to the field. So I, I tried harder for, for a time, like I tried to, yeah, get them more enthusiastic or try to understand them better. But I also had guidance from that, that small consultancy agency because I was working for them and I had like, yeah, I had one on ones with my manager, so. So I brought in these cases where I felt stuck with, with my manager and we would discuss them. So we went on for quite a period like this for a couple of months and eventually when we didn't see any improvements, especially in team dynamics, because on the upper side of process, things like we did move from working in sprints to kanban. So that, that was something that the team really wanted because the nature of their work was more. Yeah, it wants to have that flexibility and. And so we introduced that. But all the team dynamic stuff, I felt huge resistance. So I tried to deal with it for a couple of months until I got too tired of it and I realized this, this is not mine to carry. So again.

[Fosco]

This is really interesting because I think it's also an important reflection point for us as grandmasters that sometimes there isn't a way out, we need to get out so that things can take their own direction, whatever that is. But I think the one thing that I really want to emphasize is that at the point when we feel exhausted, right, like we're bringing passion and motivation and enthusiasm and all of that is being just, you know, it's just flying over the team basically. The team isn't grabbing to any of that, isn't attaching themselves to any of those ideas. At that point, it's really great to have a partner, a coach or a manager that can help us reflect on that. But I think it's also important for us as grandmasters to recognize that sometimes that's it, that's the end of the line and there's nothing we can do. And that's okay because we're not supposed to succeed 100% of the time. Nobody is.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

Yeah. So yeah, that's, that's maybe the realization like of course you, you can try all kind of stuff and try to meet the team where they are and have the, have those honest conversations about your observations about what you feel, what you observe. But when the team doesn't feel the urgency and doesn't want to move, it's not my job to save a team. And that's like not my job to save the team.

[Fosco]

I think that's a T shirt right there.

[Tom Mohlenaar]

They didn't feel the urgency. Their manager wanted them to become better. They felt a bit abandoned. I was trying to coach them in the best ways possible. I was also learning a lot. And that whole dynamic. Yeah, when I reflect on it, for all parties, it was really the way you phrased it.

[Fosco]

It's not my job to save the team unless they want to be saved, of course. I think that's a great way to summarize this great story. Thank you for sharing that story with us, Tom.

[Vasco]

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[Fosco]

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