The Perfect ScrumMaster as Servant Leader?

 

I found this interesting post that outlines what the author belives makes the perfect ScrumMaster:

1. Servant Leader – Must be able to garner respect from his/her team and be willing to get their hands dirty to get the job done
2. Communicative and social – Must be able to communicate well with teams
3. Facilitative – Must be able to lead and demonstrate value-add principles to a team
4. Assertive – Must be able to ensure Agile/Scrum concepts and principles are adhered to, must be able to be a voice of reason and authority, make the tough calls.
5. Situationally Aware – Must be the first to notice differences and issues as they arise and elevate them to management
6. Enthusiastic – Must be high-energy
7. Continual improvement - Must continually be growing ones craft learning new tools and techniques to manage oneself and a team
8. Conflict resolution - Must be able to facilitate discussion and facilitate alternatives or different approaches
9. Attitude of empowerment - Must be able to lead a team to self-organization
10. Attitude of transparency – Must desire to bring disclosure and transparency to the business about development and grow business trust

The one that caught my attention was the quality of being a servant leader.  The Greenleaf site which is inspired by the founder of the movement, Robert Greenleaf, introduces servent leadership by quoting Greenleaf who describes servant leadership as:

The servant-leader servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions…The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types. Between them there are shadings and blends that are part of the infinite variety of human nature.

The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: Do those served grow as persons? Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged in society? Will they benefit or at least not be further deprived?

Basically what this boils down to is having a ScrumMaster or project manager lead teams with a high emotional intelligence.  Instead managing through a command and control sytle, the ScrumMaster acts as a servant leader to the team. The ScrumMaster leads the team, but differently than the traditional project manager.

Servant leadership is about patient, respectful and selfless management of team members and encouragement of a more colloborative engagement.  A servant project leader will raise issues and remove impediments, without taking responsibility away from the team, yet stay in the background and supports team communication and team decisions with little intrusion.  It's about being a coach and mentor as well as manager and leader.

Though this notions fits the ScrumMaster role a bit better than the traditional project manager role, adopting a servant leadership style regardless of what type of project method or process you implement will make you a more effective leader in our modern, fast paced and networked world.