Scrum Master, You Are the Leader Without Authority: Can You Please Assure Success?

Once upon a time, leadership and authority used to consistently coexist, but more and more individuals are being appointed to leadership roles without having positional authority, which is the authority that comes from title, rank, and status.

A study done by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) discovered that many errors by flight captains were not challenged or corrected by crew members with less positional authority. One airline determined to check their crews via flight simulators, having the captains make fatal mistakes at a critical moment. The results of the experiment showed that 25% of the flights would have crashed because no one would have questioned the position of the one with the highest positional authority, the plane’s captain.

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As a scrum master, you do not own the team members, but you are working with the scrum team members to get the work done.

How do you manage it? If you are in command, it was natural! Just scare the people! As that privilege is not there in the new style of leadership, you may have to implement a different method.

What else can you do? This is how it always is.

Should you complain? Should you tell your boss?

“The farmer has patience and trusts the process. He just has the faith and deep understanding that through his daily efforts, the harvest will come. And then one day, almost out of nowhere, it does.”

― Robin S. Sharma, The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

There are 10 steps that the Scrum Master should continue to follow — perseverance is the password to success.

Most of the time, we realize nothing is working, but an escalation (like telling your boss) is not necessary.

• Building Trust. You as a Scrum Master need to establish trust with the team members. It will take time, but you have to invest a lot of effort. Once trust is established, the team can achieve everything for you. With trust you can influence your team members.you grow into the natural leader when they trust you, they will listen to you.

• Build a purpose and establish shared objectives. With the team in collaboration, establish a bigger purpose that inspires all the team members to contribute. Everyone should get motivated by shared goals. This will enables individuals to go beyond extra steps. You do not have to force the team members, they will figure it out. Once you keep inspiring people you naturally turn into the leader.

• Build transparency across. You must build transparency with facts, data, and decision making. Put all the practice in the common wall where subjects are visible to all. The Why regularly is evident. People know why they are performing what they are accomplishing and how those activities affect all the stakeholders. In this process, you develop into a legitimate leader
• Collaborative and democratic decision making. Involve everyone in the decision-making process. Take feedback from all the team members. They should feel they have been heard. It is their judgment, and they were also involved in whatever may be the outcome appears. That ownership feeling will encourage individuals. as you are with them, you grow into a genuine leader. They require to understand that you care about them without exhibiting any complaint sign in your face.
• Establish the belief that you are the person to go for all trouble. You ensure any issues team members are seeking; you are offering your 100% to fix it. All the team members know you are the go-to person for everything and you are dealing with those issues with your level best.
• You are passionate. You are demonstrating your passion in your endeavors. It comes out in your performance. You do not have to explain that you are performing hard. It is revealing in your body language, your deliverable and your day to day work.
• Listen and understand others, you have a genuine interest to helps others. You spend time with the team members to figure out what they are presently working on and how can you aid them. You are curious to discover if anyway you can serve. That is a sincere interest to help the team.
• You practice daily to enhance your EQ. Every morning in front of the mirror, you rehearse how to adjust your various emotions. At work, you ensure you observe and moderate your emotional intelligence. You are continually polishing all your emotions sense and correcting those regularly. You also look at the feedback where emotion is out of control. It helps others also to do so wherever they demand.
• Optimistic attitude. People prefer to be around with individuals who can look at the bright side of the work. You are already optimistic and constantly seeking to learn from the circumstance. People will make you as a leader when you have this style in your personality.
• Appreciate often. You can diagnose the smallest great action accomplished and highlight those as an achievement in the community. People choose to get recognize however maybe the minor task. You ate not miserly in recognizing others; it inspires others to do these small great things more and more. They will come to you and ask for your advice.

These are all from my observation, you might have experienced something else, which you can share for others to learn.

Further Reading

A Scrum Master Works on Three Levels

A Day in the Life of a Scrum Master in a Startup

How the Role of the Scrum Master Changes Over Time