Servant Leadership

Servant Leadership inverts the traditional leadership logic: instead of the team serving the leader, the leader serves the team. The task is to remove impediments, create the right conditions, and enable the team to make good decisions autonomously. It is about empowerment rather than control.

In practice, Servant Leadership manifests in concrete behaviors. A leader who lives this principle does not ask for status reports in meetings but asks where the team needs support. They fight for resources, shield the team from external disruptions, and hand off decisions where the team has deeper expertise. In the Scrum context, Servant Leadership is the foundational mindset of the Scrum Master, who neither has nor should have directive authority but achieves impact through coaching, facilitation, and the removal of impediments.

The concept goes back to Robert Greenleaf, who articulated it in a 1970 essay. The Scrum Guide explicitly names it as the leadership model for the Scrum Master. The biggest hurdle in adoption is often the organization’s expectation that equates traditional command-and-control with leadership strength.