Conflict Resolution for Agile Teammates Who Hate Conflict

The best agile teams thrive on conflict, embracing it will help you have more productive sprints—and a better product. This isn’t just for scrum masters, it’s for everyone on the team.

If you’ve ever needed to have a tough conversation with someone but the thought of doing it stressed you out, this talk is for you. Maybe it’s for a teammate who drastically overstepped. Or possibly you've wanted to bring up a problem at work and don't know how to approach it. Maybe your product owner constantly interrupts you and undermines your credibility. Please join us as Californian, dog-lover, and Pivotal designer, Josh Mauldin (@joshuamauldin), offers help by giving you tools you can use to navigate sticky situations.

The approach he’ll share is based on building and maintaining psychological safety by employing tactical empathy and other concepts. He's used and refined these techniques in conflict himself—and also coached others through conflicts using these same techniques.

By attending this talk, you’ll learn a framework that provides powerful, practical techniques for handling almost any scenario you’d find yourself in—we'll even talk through real life examples.

At the end of the talk, you’ll walk away with tools you can use immediately. They’ll help you get your message across clearly without the conversation (or you) going to pieces.

Takeaways

• Learn a tactical framework to prepare for and have tough conversations
• Know how to maintain psychological safety for both sides so you can keep talking even if it goes sideways
• Understand how to get to the heart of the issue by asking the right questions
• Gain an understanding of when it’s not worth it to continue and how to proceed after that