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Home > Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast > Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships | Juliana Stepanova
Podcast: Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast
Episode:

Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships | Juliana Stepanova
Category: News & Politics
Duration: 00:18:07
Publish Date: 2026-02-04 11:05:00
Description: Juliana Stepanova: Trust Over Escalation — A Patient Approach to Difficult PO Relationships

Read the full Show Notes and search through the world's largest audio library on Agile and Scrum directly on the Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast website: http://bit.ly/SMTP_ShowNotes.

"The team still believes it could be solved with proper communication to the PO. My idea is to really try, in a supportive way, to build trust, to encourage communication, and to come to the solution as a team altogether. This is like a win-win situation." - Juliana Stepanova

Juliana brings a challenge that many Scrum Masters will recognize: a Product Owner who doesn't want to be coached and whose behaviors are undermining Scrum rituals. The situation is complicated by organizational structure—the Scrum Master reports to the people department while the PO reports to the product department, creating misaligned directions with no common leadership thread.

The PO arrives at refinement meetings unprepared, writing user stories on the spot while eight team members sit idle for hours. When Juliana explores the root cause, she discovers the PO is genuinely overwhelmed with responsibilities outside the team. But here's the twist: this newly promoted PO is proud of the role and resistant to accepting help, preferring to say "just wait, I will manage it."

Rather than escalating—which Juliana notes would damage trust for years or potentially lose the PO entirely—she advocates for a patient, collaborative approach. The experiment she designs focuses on engaging more deeply with the PO's activities to understand which tasks could be delegated or eliminated, while continuing to build trust through support rather than confrontation. The team maintains hope that the PO will eventually accept help, choosing persistence over escalation.

In this segment, we talk about coaching Product Owners and building trust.

Self-reflection Question: When facing a resistant stakeholder, do you default to escalation, or do you invest in building the trust that enables genuine collaboration?

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