What is an Agile Servant Leader?

What is a servant leader anyway?

Like many of my college peers, I tend to catch myself in endless scrolling on social media, like Facebook and LinkedIn. As I would scroll, the phrase “Servant Leader” continually caught my eye in both posts by individual professionals and articles. I think it really caught my eye because it almost seems like an oxymoron, servant leader. Usually, when I think of a group of people there is one leader who sets the standard for the group, and the group works toward following that path and meeting the goals.

After doing a little research on this, I discovered that this concept was created by Robert Greenleaf in 1970. I was surprised it was never brought up in any of the leadership classes I have taken growing up, since it has been around for so long. Greenleaf’s idea is that a servant leader is a person makes the decision that they want to lead and who leads by serving their people. The leader can do this by listening, helping to alleviate problems slowing the team down. Not everyone is a servant leader, some leaders are called more to the power of the position than the opportunity to help the people following them.

So how does this philosophy affect or interact with the Agile Scrum project management methodology?

The primary goal of the agile methodology is to do less formal planning and producing multiple small versions of a product instead of just one final product. The whole philosophy behind the agile methodology is that there are several aspects of traditional project methods that can never been fully known prior to actually starting the project. To make the agile methods more united an Agile Manifesto was written. Within the manifesto are 12 principles, one of which is to “Build projects around motivated individuals. Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.” This environment is created and nurtured through positions like Project Owners and Scrum Masters. The scrum master’s job is to help facilitate and help alleviate “road blocks” incurred by developers or other members of the development team. The Product Owner is the representative between the client and the developers. These roles are rooted in the full meaning of servant leaders, their jobs are primarily laying the path between the clients and product team members.

Although, this philosophy can easily be applied to Agile’s scrum methodology but I think for many of the people in these roles it goes beyond that. This philosophy has the ability to have a real impact on society as a whole. If people outside of the IT and the agile methodology, take this idea heart they would see a dramatic result in employee satisfaction. Employees who feel like their boss actually cares, and is willing to take time out of their day to help them, are more likely to work harder and with more loyalty to the business than those with an unappreciative tone.

Samantha Zobel