Disagreeing with my scrum master
I took on a team that had had frequent manager changes over the previous year, and hadn’t had a manager for a while. Their Scrum Master was the de facto leader, running meetings and doing 1-1s. But her and I quickly discovered that we had a fundamental clash of expectation.
Before then, my approach was to be present in all retrospectives and team meetings. It was important to me to witness decision-making, behaviour, how teamies related to each other and spoke about the work. Retro’s were especially important to me as a space for setting tasks aside and talking about feelings.
The Scrum Master believed strongly that a manager in the room would be an undue influence, and she did not want me to attend team meetings. She clearly had first-hand experience of these teamies feeling unsafe around their boss. I took this personally—I had a track record of servant leadership, maintaining trust, of empowering teamies. My past teams had told me how safe they felt. I wanted to participate here and prove what a “good” manager looked like!
We talked through our philosophies, but were unable to find a middle ground. I agreed not to attend those meetings for now, but was clear that I wasn’t happy about it.
Through my 1-1s, I discovered some important facts. She was a diligent scrum master and servant leader. The team trusted her deeply—she’d consistently cared for them through significant change and uncertainty. It was clear that she was excellent in her role. She simply wanted to run things differently to me.
These facts fed back into our “negotiation” over the next few weeks. By now we had shared enough stories, seen enough evidence of each other’s care and passion, and developed (and verbalized) a mutual respect. We worked out that we wanted the best for the team, that our only disagreement was on process.
So I laid out that while I would prefer a different approach, she clearly had the teams’ respect, was clearly excellent in her work, and that I was here to support the team, not do things my way. That I trusted her and wanted to help her succeed, and so would let go of my expectations.
And it worked out well. I was able to share my responsibilities with her, and the team was able to continue navigating change. I learned that I didn’t need to do things the way I was used to. I could be even more hands-off and still know what was going on. More importantly, I was able to let someone else own their success by leading in their own way.
It’s easy for it to feel like a win-win after the fact, but going through it, I felt uncomfortable, annoyed, uncertain.
This is evidence for me that emotions are a strong signal, but not always of what I initially suspect. I thought at first that my frustration was a sign of someone doing something “wrong”. Exploring the facts showed that not to be true. My feelings were actually a sign of my own fear and discomfort at doing something differently, of letting go of ways of working that I thought I couldn’t live without.
