For Scrum Masters & Agile Leads
Handle Difficult People in Scrum
Without Being Their Boss
Practical strategies for handling pushback, complaints, and conflict, even when you have no authority to make anyone change.
In plain terms: you can't fire, discipline, or force anyone on your Scrum team to change. This course gives you what actually works instead.
This course gives you the words, the boundaries, and the specific moves for the moments that actually happen: someone dominates every meeting, someone complains but never proposes a fix, your Product Owner overrules you in front of the team.
No fluff. No personality quizzes. No promises that difficult people will magically become easy. Just what to do the next time it happens.
Access to the Thinkific Learning Platform. Go through it at your own pace, on any device.
Watch the 2-minute preview
Sound familiar?
You already know the person I'm talking about.
Maybe more than one.
- Someone who pushes back on almost everything, just to push back
- Someone who dominates Sprint Planning or the Daily Scrum
- Someone who complains constantly but never once proposes a solution
- Someone who drops a sarcastic comment and then says "I was just joking"
- Someone who ignores what the team agreed on, every single time
- Someone who challenges your decisions in front of everyone
- A Product Owner or stakeholder who has more organizational weight than you do, and uses it
You didn't sign up to manage people's personalities. You signed up to help a team deliver good work. But somehow, this is also your job now.
Why the usual advice falls short
You've probably already tried the standard playbook.
- Being patient
- Explaining Scrum values one more time
- Talking to them privately
- Hoping the team sorts it out on its own
- Simply ignoring it and getting on with the work
Why doesn't this work?
Sometimes none of it changes anything, because a chatterbox, a "know it all," and a Product Owner who overrules you in a leadership meeting are not the same problem. They don't respond to the same fix. Treating them the same way is why the usual advice runs out of road.
Here's the shift this course is built on
You can't make a difficult person change. You can get much better at how you respond to them.
The playbook
Five stages, in order, that carry through the whole course.
-
01
Control your response
Before you can handle anyone else, you have to stop letting other people decide how you feel. This is the foundation everything else sits on.
-
02
Understand the behavior
Not all "difficult" looks the same. A complainer and a sniper need two completely different responses.
-
03
Set limits and boundaries
Stop rewarding behavior you don't want. Most difficult behavior continues because, somewhere, it's still being allowed.
-
04
Have the conversation
A simple, repeatable structure for saying your piece clearly, without turning it into an argument.
-
05
Escalate when it's genuinely needed
What to do, and how to say it, when the problem is bigger than a private conversation can fix.
Handle specific types of difficult behavior
This is where the course gets concrete.
You'll get a specific approach for each of these.
TypeThe constant complainer
How to move them from venting to proposing, or make it clear that complaining without a solution isn't going anywhere.
TypeThe aggressive or dominant team member
What to do when someone acts like they're the one calling the shots, whether they're a developer, a Product Owner, or someone with more seniority than you.
TypeThe friendly sniper
The passive-aggressive comment dropped in a Daily Scrum, followed by "I didn't mean anything by that." How to take away the cover that makes sniping work.
TypeThe chatterbox
Protecting the team's time without turning it into a personal conflict.
TypeThe know-it-all
How to respond when someone talks over everyone else and treats every meeting like a lecture.
TypeThe nagging team member
How to move a conversation from problem-focused to solution-focused, so the nagging has nothing left to attach to.
TypeThe uncooperative Product Owner or stakeholder
What to do when the difficult person has more organizational power than you, and "just talk to them" isn't enough on its own.
TypeRemote and hybrid teams
The same behaviors show up differently on a screen. What used to be a look across the room becomes a comment in the chat window. This section covers what actually translates, and what's genuinely new about managing conflict remotely.
When they have more power than you
Most courses on "difficult people" skip this entirely.
It's usually the hardest situation Scrum Masters actually face.
Scrum doesn't put the Product Owner above the Scrum Master. There's no hierarchy built into the framework. But in most companies, that's not how it feels day to day. You can't performance-manage a Product Owner. You can't pull rank on a stakeholder.
So what do you do instead? You'll learn to:
- Lead with outcomes instead of feelings
- Make a risk visible to the person who actually owns the decision
- Escalate the impediment, not the person, so a manager can act on it
- Recognize when it's genuinely not fixable, and why stepping back can be the correct call, not a failure
What do I actually say?
Most advice about "difficult conversations" stops at "communicate better."
This course gives you the actual structure: the FBI framework. Feeling, Behavior, Impact. Three parts, one conversation.
Feeling
What happened inside you, stated as your experience, not a fact about them.
Behavior
Only what a camera could have recorded. No labels, no mind-reading.
Impact
The specific, concrete result, not a sweeping claim you can't back up.
"I felt frustrated when you interrupted me twice during the estimate discussion, and the impact was I lost my train of thought and we didn't finish going through the backlog."
Before and after
What changes once you have this playbook.
What this course is not
To be clear about what you're getting.
- This isn't personality theory. You won't be typing anyone into a Myers-Briggs box.
- This isn't about becoming tougher, louder, or more aggressive.
- This isn't a way to win every argument or embarrass someone in front of the team.
- This isn't a substitute for HR or legal guidance if you're dealing with harassment or serious misconduct. Know where that line is, and this course will tell you exactly where it sits.
What it is: a practical, repeatable way to respond to difficult behavior, built from real Scrum team situations.
Inside the course
Seven parts, built to be used, not just watched.
Part 1Take Control of Your Response
Self-control, why you get angry in the first place, and owning your share of any conflict.
Part 2Build Relationships That Reduce Conflict
Trust, respect, kindness, and psychological safety, the groundwork that prevents most conflict before it starts.
Part 3Stop Enabling Difficult Behavior
Negotiation, limits, boundaries, and what actually happens when a boundary gets crossed.
Part 4Handle Specific Difficult Behaviors
Complainers, aggressive team members, snipers, chatterboxes, know-it-alls, and nagging members, one at a time, with a specific approach for each.
Part 5Have the Conversation
The FBI framework, and how to prepare for a conversation you've been avoiding.
Part 6When the Difficult Person Has More Power
Product Owners, stakeholders, and what to do when "just talk to them" isn't enough.
Part 7Remote and Hybrid Teams
The same behaviors, translated for Zoom and Teams, plus the conflict dynamics that are genuinely new online.
Included with the course
Three tools you'll actually use, not just read once.
Printable companions to the lectures, built to sit open on your desk during the moment they're for.
Are You an Easy Target? Self-Assessment
A 15-statement self-check that scores your boundary, trigger, and self-talk patterns, and points you back to the exact lecture that matches what you find.
Bonus PDFThe Difficult Team Member Playbook
All 8 types from the course, condensed to one page each: how to spot them, why they act this way, the numbered steps, and one exact line to say. Built to open 30 seconds before a hard conversation.
Bonus PDFThe FBI Conversation Builder
Fill-in-the-blank fields for Feeling, Behavior, and Impact, plus a worked example, so you can write your actual script before a real conversation instead of improvising.
Who this course is for
Built for Scrum Masters who:
- Are dealing with one or more genuinely difficult team members right now
- Keep avoiding a conversation they know they should have
- Need to set a boundary and don't know how to do it without a blowup
- Have a Product Owner or stakeholder who's hard to work with
- Want language for difficult conversations instead of improvising in the moment
It's also useful for: Agile Coaches, Product Owners, team leads, and anyone who needs to influence behavior on a team without formal authority over the people in it.
Who this course is not for
Be honest with yourself first.
- If you're looking for Scrum certification prep, this isn't it.
- If you want to learn Scrum fundamentals from scratch, start with a foundations course first.
- If you're expecting a technique that makes a difficult person permanently change, that's not something any course can promise.
- If you're dealing with harassment or workplace misconduct, that needs HR or legal support, not a course.
About your instructor
Dejan Majkic
- 20+ years in enterprise IT leadership, including running IT as a CIO
- 10+ years working directly with Agile and Scrum teams
- 140,000+ students taught practical Scrum and Agile at whatisscrum.org
Everything in this course comes from actual situations with actual teams, not theory. The Product Owner who overrules you in a leadership meeting, the sniper who makes a comment and says "I didn't mean anything by that," the boundary you keep meaning to set and never do. I've been on the receiving end of all of it, and I've had to work out what actually helps.
What students are saying
"Amazing"
Gilda"Good course to share some ideas about how to deal with different kinds of persons"
Abigail"The course had good insights, looking forward to implement them"
AmitFAQ
Questions before you start.
It's built primarily for Scrum Masters, but Product Owners, Agile Coaches, and team leads who need to influence people without formal authority will get value from it too.
That's covered directly. There's a full section on situations where the difficult person has more organizational power than you do.
The course gives you different responses for different types of behavior, plus a specific framework (FBI) for the conversation itself, so you're not improvising.
Yes. There's a dedicated section on the "friendly sniper," the passive-aggressive type who makes a comment and denies meaning anything by it.
Yes. There's a section specifically on how these same behaviors show up differently on Zoom or Teams, and what's genuinely different about managing conflict when the team isn't in the same room.
No course can promise that, and I won't pretend otherwise. What it will do is make you significantly better at responding, which is the part that's actually in your control.
It's built as a practical, focused series of lectures you can go through at your own pace and come back to whenever a specific situation comes up.
You can't choose everyone you have to work with on a Scrum team.
But you can get much better at how you respond when someone makes the team harder to work with.
If you're tired of avoiding a conversation, or not knowing what to say when someone pushes back, or feeling stuck because you're not anyone's boss, this course gives you a way through it.
Handle Difficult People in Scrum — $15
Access to the Thinkific Learning Platform. Covered by our standard return policy.