CST Systemic Team Coaching 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: According to the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS), which of the following is NOT one of the essential team coaching conditions?
- A real team with clear boundaries
- A compelling direction
- An enabling structure
- A certified ScrumMaster leading retrospectives (Correct answer)
Correct answer: A certified ScrumMaster leading retrospectives
Hackman's conditions for team effectiveness include real team, compelling direction, enabling structure, supportive context, and expert coaching — not a specific role certification.
Question 2: A Scrum Trainer is co-facilitating a team retrospective and notices two team members consistently interrupt each other. The most systemic intervention at that moment would be to:
- Ask the interrupter to wait their turn and set a speaking rule
- Name the pattern occurring and invite the team to reflect on what it means for them (Correct answer)
- End the retrospective early to avoid conflict
- Speak privately with both members after the session
Correct answer: Name the pattern occurring and invite the team to reflect on what it means for them
Naming the pattern without judging it makes an invisible dynamic visible and invites collective reflection — a core systemic coaching intervention.
Question 3: The 'drama triangle' (Karpman) is useful in team coaching because it helps identify:
- The three phases of a Sprint
- Dysfunctional relational roles (Persecutor, Rescuer, Victim) that teams can cycle through (Correct answer)
- The correct escalation path for blocked items
- How to structure three-amigos refinement sessions
Correct answer: Dysfunctional relational roles (Persecutor, Rescuer, Victim) that teams can cycle through
The drama triangle describes a systemic pattern of dysfunctional roles that teams unconsciously adopt, creating recurring conflict rather than collaborative problem-solving.
Question 4: When coaching a team 'at the system level,' a CST is primarily attending to:
- Individual team members' professional development plans
- Patterns, relationships, and dynamics that persist across multiple sprints and interactions (Correct answer)
- The accuracy of story point estimates
- The Definition of Done completeness
Correct answer: Patterns, relationships, and dynamics that persist across multiple sprints and interactions
System-level coaching focuses on persistent patterns, recurring dynamics, and the collective rather than on individual performance or process artifacts.
Question 5: A team coach uses a 'systemic constellation' exercise during a team workshop. The primary purpose of this technique is to:
- Map the product backlog priority spatially on a wall
- Physically represent relationships and tensions within the team's system to surface hidden dynamics (Correct answer)
- Assign team members to roles based on strengths
- Create a visual sprint board the team can walk
Correct answer: Physically represent relationships and tensions within the team's system to surface hidden dynamics
Systemic constellations use spatial positioning and embodiment to externalize and explore relational dynamics that are difficult to articulate verbally.
Question 6: A CST observes that every time the team achieves a difficult goal, the next sprint they underperform. This oscillating pattern is best addressed by:
- Reducing sprint length to avoid burnout cycles
- Exploring the reinforcing and balancing feedback loops creating the oscillation (Correct answer)
- Setting a mandatory team celebration after each success
- Adjusting the team's velocity calculation method
Correct answer: Exploring the reinforcing and balancing feedback loops creating the oscillation
Oscillating performance is often created by feedback loops — exploring what happens after success (e.g., relaxation, over-commitment) reveals the systemic cause.
Question 7: In the context of systemic team coaching, 'psychological safety' is best understood as:
- Ensuring team members have ergonomic workstations
- A systemic property of the team that emerges from interaction patterns and is maintained collectively (Correct answer)
- The responsibility of HR to enforce through policy
- An individual team member's personal resilience level
Correct answer: A systemic property of the team that emerges from interaction patterns and is maintained collectively
Psychological safety is a team-level, emergent property shaped by accumulated micro-interactions — it cannot be created by any single person's action but is co-created systemically.
CST Systemic Team Coaching 3
According to the Team Diagnostic Survey (TDS), which of the following is NOT one of the essential team coaching conditions?