How would you like your project manager? Autocrative, people pleaser, social, focused on project objectives?

Interesting that you'd consider servant-leadership as focused on agile only, Sante, as I view it as applicable to any type of work - project (lifecycle agnostic) or operations.

Servant-leadership does not preclude situational task-orientation by a PM, it just prioritizes people first.

Kiron

Depends what country you live in Kiron. When I was in the Philippines, the fact that it was a collectivist society (usually predicated by factors such selflessness and putting the team before the individual) was and still is a misnomer. While the lower-level teams and some team leaders do strive to operate at that level, the fact that it is a class-system which always trumps any positive traits of collectivist cultures. The prevailing view within management is that workers are "lower" than themselves, and must obey the chain of command. The same things goes for rich people, or people of a higher social status such as celebrities. This factor, despite the collectivist attributes, is evident when you observe their demeanor in the workplace when engaging management. It's as though the bottom of the chain is collectivist (as you say prioritize people first) and the top is individualistic and dictatorial, and never the twain shall meet. I can't stand it myself, but there you have it. As for projects, let's just say Agile is not very widespread, and where I have seen it (including the company I worked for where I introduced it), it's looks like Agile, walks like Agile, and even talks like Agile, but it isn't Agile because management step in to display varying degrees between Marcos and Mao. Addressing your statement more precisely, waterfall is traditionally non servant-leader; the PM rules the roost pretty much. Agile is more servant-leader (ideally). And yes ideally it would be great for all managers in both waterfall and Agile projects to be more like servant-leaders, but I have argued this case before that in some industries (ie. the military) this is just not feasible. Yes they need to bond the team and remove roadblocks, but they also cannot be dictatorial and autocratic and be called a servant-leader at the same time. The term servant-leader was coined by Robert Greenleaf when he said "The servant-leader is servant first…It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first." The PM in waterfall wants and needs to lead first, not serve first, mainly because they are accountable for the deliverables, whereas the team is accountable in Agile. The project manager must direct project work in waterfall, yet the team directs their own work in Agile. The PM also is involved in process and quality improvement in the way the project team works. The PM/PO/SM is generally excluded completely from the team's process improvement initiatives in the retrospective. And the list goes on. But in summary, I am on your side, in that I believe there are aspects of servant-leadership in waterfall, but I would draw the line at calling waterfall PM's servant leaders. To come first circle on the original post question; I think waterfall PM's are "focused on project objectives" way more than "prioritizing people". Sorry to waffle on :-)