Servant leadership
A leadership style, associated with the Scrum Master role, that prioritizes serving the team and organization over directing them.
What it means
A servant leader focuses on removing obstacles, coaching, and creating the conditions for the team to succeed, rather than issuing commands or controlling how work gets done.
For a Scrum Master, servant leadership plays out at three levels: serving the Scrum Team through coaching, serving the Product Owner through backlog management support, and serving the organization through Scrum adoption and stakeholder education.
Common mistakes
This is not a passive style; effective servant leaders challenge assumptions, ask hard questions, and hold the team accountable, but they do it in service of the team's own growth and success.
Example
Instead of telling the team how to fix a recurring bug, the Scrum Master facilitates a session where the Developers design the fix themselves.