I previously offered the recursive definition “True leadership is about enabling others to lead.” I believe that this definition of leadership can also serve as one explanation of what Agile in general and Scrum in particular are all about.
Often, people have a hard time reconciling the word “leader” with the word “servant” and they have a hard time reconciling the role description of a Scrum Master with the word “leadership”. The reason is that an old-fashioned definition of the word “leadership” is ingrained in their minds. They assume that leadership means that one person leads and other people follow, and that the leader/follower relationship is immutable.
A Scrum Master however is not a leader who expects others to follow. The Scrum Master’s goal is to enable the team to stop following. The Scrum Master leads the team into self-organization and into collective leadership. This is where my definition of leadership comes from, and I believe that Scrum Masters should measure their own performance based on whether or not their team is (or is becoming) a team of leaders, who then – following the recursive definition – collectively empower each other.
AgileEvangelist 