The Most Important Trait a Scrum Master Should Have: Don't Be a Bully

Meet Samuel, the Disruptor

In my seminars, I get to know new people almost every week. Most groups are really great to work with. Every once in a while, there is someone who makes it a rather challenging experience. This week, fate had it that there was such a person in my training.

This participant - let's call him Samuel - was mostly listening and relatively quiet on the first day, although he did make the occasional joke that made people uncomfortable from the beginning on. Although that makes me careful, at such a point it is still impossible to tell where it will be going. Sometimes it just stays like that - a bit weird, but it doesn't affect the training too much.

In this case it went a bit differently, however. The second day was much harder with him in the class. He started complaining a lot about and during exercises, wanted to change how they were done, and got in discussions with people who preferred to do it the way they were developed. These exercises had brought fun and insights to the classes before, many times.

In smaller breakout groups, he pressured others into following his lead who would have preferred to do things differently.

In general, his attempts to be dominant, his moaning sounds, complaining, and constant voicing of criticism had a negative effect on the entire group. Some were annoyed, some turned very silent. No one could have much fun any more in these usually very upbeat sessions.

A trainer has to know ways to deal with and mitigate such bad effects, and I tried as best as I could, but it was really hard work. However, I had a training to complete, and responsibility towards the entire group that couldn't be overshadowed by just one person.

I had this feeling of having someone in the class who did not want to understand agile ideas and leadership, and who bullied and disrupted the group. Like this, as harshly as that sounds, he will never be a good Scrum Master.

What makes a great Scrum Master?

The Scrum Guide says: "The Scrum Master is a servant-leader for the Scrum Team. The Scrum Master helps those outside the Scrum Team understand which of their interactions with the Scrum Team are helpful and which aren’t. The Scrum Master helps everyone change these interactions to maximize the value created by the Scrum Team."

So what makes a good facilitator and servant-leader? This is my check list:

• A person who is able to stand back and listen, and only then act appropriately
• A person with a good feeling for others, empathy, intuition, and tact
• A person with experience and healthy self-assurance when it comes to dealing with colleagues, managers, customers, stakeholders; not overestimating oneself, but also not hiding one's light under a bushel
• A person who never decides to go the seemingly easy way of insulting others or give unconstructive criticism when things don't go exactly their way

In short: Be a professional, mature, and responsible person. Absolutely don't be a bully.

What Samuel didn't want to hear

For some people, becoming a good Scrum Master begins with no longer bullying people and respecting the team spirit in a group. If your whole life has been destined by being competitive, this is not just a cultural change, but also a change in attitudes towards work and towards other people.

If a person refuses to live by such values, in the end, the only option can be to remove them from the team.

In the seminar, Samuel had asked me for step-by-step advice on how to implement Scrum in a new team for a specific project, which is difficult to provide due to the unique nature of projects.

I think I could have given this checklist above to Samuel, telling him: "First try to improve in these crucial interpersonal skills. Then we can talk about you being the Scrum Master for a team, let alone a new one. Otherwise, it will just be a disaster." He would not have liked this, I assume. But it would have been the blatant truth.

How many people do you know who could put a check mark to each of those list items?

How many people do you know who could really be a great Scrum Master? The good news for them: Scrum Teams need people like that to support them.

It's not following an implementation check list that makes a great Scrum Master. It is living the values.