Why Your Scrum Master Job Needs a Reset with Every Leadership Change | Joelle Tegwen

Summary

Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast: Agile Storytelling from the Trenches

Episode Title: Why Your Scrum Master Job Needs a Reset with Every Leadership Change
Host: Vasco Duarte
Guest: Joelle Tegven
Release Date: July 14, 2025

---

Introduction

In this insightful episode of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast, host Vasco Duarte engages with Joelle Tegven, an experienced Agile Coach and Scrum Master, to discuss the critical need for Scrum Masters to realign their strategies with every change in leadership. Drawing from her 15-year nonlinear career in software development and Agile coaching, Joelle shares valuable experiences and lessons that are crucial for maintaining effectiveness in dynamic organizational environments.

---

Joelle Tegven’s Background

Joelle begins by outlining her journey into the Agile realm. She started her career as a developer on smaller teams before advancing to a managerial position. Her passion for the people-centric aspects of problem-solving led her to pursue Scrum Master certification after a company downsizing prompted her to reassess her career path. Since then, Joelle has oscillated between managerial roles, Agile coaching, and occasional Scrum Master positions, enriching her perspective with diverse experiences.

---

A Challenging Experience as a Scrum Master

Joelle recounts a particularly challenging period during a coaching assignment at a small startup in the USA. Initially brought in by a VP keen on driving significant changes amid a series of mergers and acquisitions, Joelle implemented innovative Agile practices to foster high-performing teams. However, shortly after her arrival, the original VP departed, and a more conservative leader took over. Despite the leadership shift, Joelle continued her prior change initiatives without recalibrating to align with the new VP’s priorities.

“I kept trying to keep up that pace of change and to really innovate in what they were doing... I just kept charging down that same path.”
— Joelle Tegven [05:06]

This misalignment led to subtle pushbacks from the team and upper management. Feedback ranged from non-committal responses like, “I’m not so sure what I think of that,” to more direct resistance. Additionally, one-on-one meetings with upper leadership began to be frequently canceled, signaling a disconnect between Joelle’s initiatives and the new leadership’s expectations.

---

Recognizing and Responding to Feedback

Vasco prompts Joelle to delve deeper into the nature of the feedback she received and how it manifested in her daily interactions. Joelle highlights the importance of not solely relying on immediate supervisors for guidance, especially when higher-level leadership may have differing priorities. The cancellation of meetings and hesitant feedback were indicators that her approach was no longer in sync with the organizational direction.

---

Lessons Learned: The Importance of Realigning with Leadership

Reflecting on the experience, Joelle emphasizes the necessity of treating leadership changes as an opportunity to redeploy and reassess one’s role and strategies. She points to the concept presented in the book The First 90 Days, advocating for a period of re-evaluation and alignment with new leaders’ visions and objectives.

“Whenever you get a new person above you up the chain, it's like your job starts over again. You have to go back and discover who they are and what motivates them...”
— Joelle Tegven [06:38]

Additionally, Joelle underscores the importance of gauging the organizational climate and the receptiveness to change. Pushing too aggressively for change can foster resistance, potentially positioning the Scrum Master as a hindrance rather than a facilitator of improvement.

---

Practical Steps for Scrum Masters During Leadership Changes

Vasco and Joelle discuss actionable strategies for Scrum Masters navigating leadership transitions:

1. Engage in Active Listening: Before implementing changes, interview new leaders to understand their priorities, vision, and desired areas of focus. This ensures that your initiatives are aligned with the broader organizational goals.

2. Assess Receptiveness to Change: Evaluate how open the team and leadership are to new Agile practices. Tailoring your approach based on their readiness can mitigate resistance and foster a more collaborative environment.

3. Communicate the 'Why': Clearly articulating the reasons behind Agile transformations helps in securing buy-in from both leadership and team members. As Vasco notes, the motivation for change must emanate from leadership to ensure cohesive and sustained adoption.

“You can be trying to do continuous improvement or continuous integration, but also the framework that that happens in makes a really big difference. Like why are we doing this thing? Not just how are we doing this thing.”
— Joelle Tegven [11:01]

4. Reiterate Alignment with Leadership Goals: Continuously align your Agile initiatives with the evolving objectives of the leadership to maintain relevance and support for your efforts.

---

Concluding Insights

Joelle Tegven's experience serves as a poignant reminder that the role of a Scrum Master is highly contingent on the organizational context and leadership dynamics. By proactively realigning with new leadership, actively listening to feedback, and clearly communicating the purpose behind Agile practices, Scrum Masters can navigate changes effectively and continue to drive team success.

Vasco and Joelle conclude the discussion by reinforcing the idea that change is inherently a people-driven process. Understanding and aligning with the motivations of leadership and team members is essential for fostering an environment where Agile methodologies can thrive.

---

Key Takeaways

• Realign with New Leadership: Every leadership change necessitates a reassessment of your strategies and alignment with the new leader’s goals.
• Active Listening and Engagement: Engage with new leaders to understand their vision and priorities before implementing or continuing change initiatives.
• Communicate the 'Why': Emphasizing the reasons behind Agile practices fosters greater acceptance and support across the organization.
• Assess Organizational Readiness: Tailor your approach based on the team’s and leadership’s openness to change to mitigate resistance.

---

This episode offers Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches invaluable insights into managing their roles amidst leadership transitions, ensuring sustained effectiveness and team cohesion in evolving organizational landscapes.

Transcript

[Vasko]

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.

[Podcast Host]

Hello everybody. Welcome to one more week of the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast. And this week, joining us from the USA is Joelle Tegven. Did I pronounce your name correctly there, Joelle?

[Joelle Tegven]

Yes.

[Podcast Host]

All right, so Joelle helps teams build products that customers love in a sustainable way and with high quality. She creates environments that foster high performing teams, improving their interactions. Her background in science and passion for cognitive science complement her work. Joelle's nonlinear 15 year career, which we will explore during this week in software development, has provided her with diverse perspectives. So Joelle, of course, first of all, welcome and thank you for being here and sharing your story with us. Let's start first with knowing a little bit more about yourself and how did you end up becoming a Scrum Master?

[Joelle Tegven]

So I started my IT career as a developer working mostly on smaller teams and so I came up through the ranks and I then got a manager position. And when I was there I really fell in love with the people side of the problems. And so when they did a downsizing, I really stepped back and I said what do I want to do with my career? I've got this opportunity to rethink and so I went and got my Scrum Master certification and I started becoming a Scrum Master. And since then I have been a manager a few more times. Mostly I spend my time though as an Agile coach, but I am a consultant so occasionally I end up Scrum mastering again also.

[Podcast Host]

Absolutely. So of course during that career, developer, manager, then learning about Scrum Master and that role within our industry. I'm sure you have a lot of stories to share. But today's Fail Monday here on the podcast, we'll dive into one of those tough, difficult situations. Of course, we do that because we want to learn, right, to take lessons so that others may benefit from our own experience. So share that with us. Joel. Joelle A story of a difficult moment that you had as a Scrum Master. And of course, we'll dive into the details later and the takeaways later, but share with us that story first. Joel.

[Joelle Tegven]

So this was one of the times when I was doing coaching, but I was coaching slash Scrum Master. I was at a small startup here in the cities, and there were actually several startups that had merged over the course of like a few years. It was one of those big merger and acquisition sprees. And I was brought in by VP who really wanted to make a lot of change. And shortly after I started, he left and they brought in a more conservative vp. And I didn't change my tactics, I didn't restart. And so I kept trying to keep up that pace of change and to really innovate in what they were doing. And instead of trying to help them get to a steady state and aligning to where the new leadership wanted to go, I just kept charging down that same path. And it was. And I wasn't reading the signals when I was being told that what I was doing wasn't what they wanted.

[Podcast Host]

So when you go back to that story and you think about what you were trying to do and then the kind of signals or feedback that you were getting, what were some of those things that, okay, so you were kind of following from the same dynamic that you had before, the same momentum, but then the feedback start coming. How did that happen? In practice.

[Joelle Tegven]

It would be things like, I'm not so sure what I think of that, or I've always liked doing it this way, or. And sometimes it was, sometimes it was actually being told no, but my man, my direct manager, was okay with it. And so I was listening to my direct manager, not to the people above her. But it was sometimes just a subtle, like, I don't think so. And then the other thing that I noticed happened was that one on ones would get canceled a lot with the upper, more upper leadership.

[Podcast Host]

So when you think back to that story, I mean, you were of course probably motivated and had a goal in mind and wanted to get things moving. Then the feedback started coming. But if you had the opportunity to go back and kind of relive that story again, what would you do differently if that happened today? Joelle.

[Joelle Tegven]

So One of the things I learned from that is whenever you get a new person above you up the chain, it's like your job starts over again. You have to go back and discover who they are and what motivates them and what they're trying to accomplish to make sure that you're well aligned to them. You have to. There's that book, the first 90 days. You have to go back through those first 90 days all over again because your job has changed. The other thing that I've learned is that when you're a change agent, you really need to be aware of what's going on around you and how well people are receptive to your change because they won't. Like, if you're pushing too hard, too fast. You're just going to get more resistance. You're not actually helping them become better or improving what they're doing. You're actually a problem in the organization at that point.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah, that's actually a very good point. Right. Because resistance is a reaction to something. It doesn't exist without anything else going against it. Right. So when you think about resistance, specifically in the context of this new leadership coming in and them bringing also some of that resistance, how would you go about it? Like, if you think about those first 90 days that you were describing, what would be the specific things you would do today to kind of assess, kind of take a new read of what is the level where we are at? How would you make that practical today?

[Joelle Tegven]

So I was thinking, and when I was thinking about it at the time, I was like, let me show you all these wonderful things I can do. Instead of, like interviewing him, this new vp, saying, what are your priorities? How are you seeing this situation? What are the things that you want to focus on? And where is the change that you want to see? And then take that and relook at what I was doing in terms of those things. Because the direction I was going was not aligned to the direction where he was brought in to do things, because I was brought in by somebody who was driving hard to make change a certain way, and the new one was not going that direction at all. If I had been doing that interviewing process, I would have noticed the differences between how those things were going. Where those things were going.

[Podcast Host]

That reminds me of this aspect. When we think about the change process and also how we relate to leaders around us, that reminds me of the aspect that it's always through people that change happens. We may document all of the new processes. We may put into paper or usually PowerPoints. All of this change, timeline and activities, but it is through people that, that that change actually happens because people need to act a different way. And when it comes to leadership, what I very often think is that they are the ones setting the example. So when, when we feel, or at least this is my perspective, when we feel resistance from leadership, we need to understand what are their goals, how can we align on that, and then move on from there. We might still be working on an Agile adoption or a continuous improvement or whatever that might be, or installing continuous integration and delivery processes, whatever that may be, but we need to align so that we are all, for lack of a better word, trying to enact the same change. Right?

[Joelle Tegven]

Yes. Yes. And you can. And also how you talk about what you're doing matters too. So you can be trying to do continuous improvement or continuous integration, but also the framework that that happens in makes a really big difference. Like why are we doing this thing? Not just how are we doing this thing.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah. And the why always needs to come from leadership, whether we like it or not.

[Joelle Tegven]

Right?

[Podcast Host]

Thank you for sharing that story, Joelle.

[Joelle Tegven]

You're welcome. Thank you, Vasco.

[Vasko]

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 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.

[Podcast Host]

I'll see you in the community. 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. Remember that sharing is caring.