An uncomfortable but inescapable truth about agile today is that most organisations avoid it.
Average managers produce average Scrum Masters.
In my experience, this is not due to a lack of potential in Scrum Masters, but rather to the leadership model under which they are employed. It was not Scrum that failed us. It was leadership. 9 in 10 people I speak to think it is a problem with Scrum. Over two decades, I worked with more than 10 organisations, consulted with 50+ Organisations, and trained close to 12000 people. The Root Cause Is Not Scrum. It Is Managerial Thinking
Let me break this down. The purpose of the Scrum Master role is to challenge the status quo. They are supposed to be servant leaders, system thinkers, and coaches.
And yet, the majority of Scrum Master job listings describe:
- Ceremony coordinators
- Jira board managers
- Status-report carriers
- Delivery enforcers without authority
This role erosion happened because average managers replicate what they know. They just pass on their mental model down the hierarchy. Managers rooted in command-and-control often reach the JD level; they want someone to obey their orders. Except for the title “Scrum Master” nothing else resembles the role of a Scrum Master. Control, predict, and report within a role designed for learning, adaptation, and empowerment.
When Managers Fail to Understand Leadership, They Shrink Roles
Average managers lack the understanding of:
- Self-organizing teams
- Psychological safety
- Transparency without micromanagement
- Distributed decision making
So, they unconsciously weaponise the process. As a result,
- Scrum becomes a box to tick.
- The Scrum Master becomes a process Enforcer.
And what was meant to be agile is just a performance and nothing more.
Why Do We Have a Jira Bed Goer “Scrum Master”?
Job descriptions are not neutral documents. They are a reflection of someone’s experience and knowledge. A study shows that 4 in 5 workers have been ‘career catfished’ into jobs they don’t want. In other words, a JD is not a neutral artifact it is shaped by whoever wrote it, their assumptions, and their superficial understanding of the role. That’s why organisations hiring Scrum Masters often end up with templates, not thoughtfully defined roles. I relate this to the organisation’s leadership philosophy.
A weak Scrum Master JD usually exposes four underlying beliefs:
- Fear of empowered teams
The organisation is uncomfortable with autonomy, decision-making at the edges, and teams owning outcomes. - Confusion between project management and agility
Scrum is often misunderstood as a delivery framework rather than a learning and adaptation system. - Obsession with velocity over value
Outputs are rewarded over outcomes, predictability over discovery. - The belief that people need to be “pushed” to work
A deeply industrial mindset where control is mistaken for productivity.
These reasons drive many job descriptions to ask for 8-10 years of experience with Scrum, as if mastery comes with time, “strong follow-up skills,” “ability to ensure compliance,” and other Scrum Master, or rather, non-Scrum Master, requirements. These are all managerial insecurities disguised as requirements.
So What’s the Rescue?
Criticism without rescue is just noise. From my two decades of experience, the cure for this problem should start with individuals.
Silence at the Interview Stage Is the First Act of Failure
If you cannot educate leadership during the interview process, you are guaranteed not to be heard after onboarding.
Interviews are not just evaluation mechanisms; they are cultural rehearsals. They reveal how power flows, how dissent is handled, and whether feedback is genuinely welcomed or merely tolerated. Culture does not magically change on Day One it hardens under pressure.
Leaders who do not listen to feedback during hiring will not suddenly become reflective once you join. In fact, the opposite happens: once authority structures are set, feedback becomes riskier, not easier.
Great leaders behave differently. They treat interviews as two-way sense-making conversations. They probe, challenge, and absorb uncomfortable perspectives—not because they agree with everything, but because they value clarity over comfort. They understand that leadership without feedback is delusion.
Silence during interviews is often misinterpreted as alignment. It is not.
It is an avoidance by both sides.
And when a Scrum Master stays silent during interviews merely to secure an offer—avoiding hard conversations about autonomy, leadership behaviour, team ownership, or organisational impediments—they are not being pragmatic. They are planting the seeds of a predictable failure.
The High Cost of Staying Silent to “Get the Offer”
Choosing silence to get an offer has consequences:
- You normalise role dilution before you even join
- You legitimise misconceptions about agility
- You surrender your credibility before your first day
- You accept a leadership ceiling that you will later complain about
At that point, frustration is no longer accidental; it is self-inflicted.
An “average Scrum Master” is rarely born on the job. They are often created at the interview table, where difficult questions are withheld, assumptions go unchallenged, and red flags are rationalised as “we’ll fix it later.”
Later never comes.
From Silent Interviews to Average Teams
When Scrum Masters enter organisations without challenging flawed expectations early, the outcome is inevitable:
Poor Leaders → Average Scrum Masters → Average Team Thinking → Average Outcomes
Not because Scrum Masters lack skill, but because they entered a system without confronting its constraints.
Agility requires courage before authority.
If that courage is missing at the interview stage, it will not magically appear once payroll starts.
Stop Accepting Broken Scrum Masters Vacancies. Create Some Scarcity.
I understand that this may sound extreme; however, I assure you that it is necessary. Stop accepting Scrum Master roles for situations that are obviously broken. In conditions where the organisation
- Does not change the behaviour of the leadership
- Prefers compliance rather than learning
- Considers Scrum Masters to be policing the delivery
Let them suffer the pains of scarcity. Either do not accept offers from such organisations or play a different role. Not everyone needs to be a Scrum Master. Scarcity will force organisations to confront:
- Why are the teams dependent
- Why are the managers overloaded
- Why the “coordination glue” is missing and the delivery collapses
- Abundance obscures dysfunction.
- Scarcity brings it to the forefront.
In certain situations, the most ethical action is to leave the role unfilled.
Courage Requires Financial Breathing Room
The freedom to be brave comes with a cost, and it’s something you have to be willing to talk about. You have a lot of financial commitments that are guiding you to make decisions based on survival and not on beliefs. You don’t have to question systems, and you certainly don’t have to question leadership. Financial pressure makes you compliant.
Financial freedom allows you to be brave and to make more intelligent decisions. You have the freedom to stand up and voice your discontent with a situation. You are not quiet in moments of discomfort. You are not willing to remain silent when a voice is needed. The ability to mitigate silence in critical moments, while allowing it when appropriate, is a key differentiator.
Think of the Scrum Master’s position as starting a non-profit. Would you start a non-profit while being burdened by personal debt? Or would you wait until you are financially stable to avoid compromising your freedom and making the right decisions? The same goes for Scrum Masters. It is a “ thankless” role. It requires the freedom to be morally courageous rather than transactional role compliance. Without financial freedom, the role becomes about avoiding risk. With financial freedom, the role is a catalyst for change.
Stop Measuring Growth Through Appraisals. Start Measuring It Through Impact.
To become a true Scrum Master, one mental shift is non-negotiable: you must stop equating growth with external validation. Promotions, annual raises, performance ratings, or managerial ‘likeability’ do not reflect one’s growth as a Scrum Master; they reflect one’s comfort level within a given organisation. These systems reward obedience rather than bravery.
A Scrum Master’s internal growth is about systemic thinking. It is not about pleasing a few individuals; rather, it is about adding value to the system as a whole. It is systemic when teams are self-managing, when everyone feels they can open up about difficult issues, and when the influence to change things is not just through an authority figure. Mastering the system is the ability to change thinking and behaviours without mechanisms of control.
Every Scrum Master must choose between two roads.
The road to shallow success is easily travelled, and it fills people with a false sense of accomplishment. Metrics, accolades, and consistent performance ratings celebrate poor Scrum Master growth. Better Scrum Master growth is the road to deep success, and deep success will change the system for the better. Deep success revolves around resistance and is often not recognised for a long time, frustrating those who venture down the road. However, the only driver of whether a Scrum Master chooses deep or shallow success is the Scrum Master themselves, not the organisation they work for.
The Last Question on Leadership
Prior to blaming the Scrum Master, organisations must ask themselves, do we value a culture where truth can be shared without retribution? Do we have clear guidelines in place, or have we shifted the ambiguity and the risk to the Scrum Master? Are we actually prepared to face the uncomfortable, that weak and outdated assumptions and leadership practices are exposed? No amount of Scrum training, SAFe certification, or the implementation of agile tools will help an organisation that is blind to the truth. No framework will fill the void left by the lack of leadership.
A Scrum Master will never be able to function to their fullest extent when leadership is restricted, either purposely or out of ignorance. When leadership philosophy is mediocre, and the lack of courage and truth is welcomed, the end result is predictable: mediocre Scrum Masters, mediocre teams, mediocre outcomes. The leadership ceiling must be raised. Otherwise, the organisation must stop pretending that the issue is with the “frameworks”.
About Author
Dr. Venkatesh Rajamani has several years of experience delivering working software in short, feedback-driven cycles. He has helped organisations adopt agile software delivery practices, including large organisations in banking, payments, telecom, and product. He started his career as a Software Engineer and spent several years as a hardcore Programmer. He has worked with large software delivery organisations like HP, IBM, Logica, PayPal, Ericsson, and RBS. He founded tryBusinessAgility.com in 2018 to execute his mission of Humanising Organisations.
Dr. Venkatesh is fluent in 4 languages. He is based in Chennai, India and sets the overall direction for tryBusinessAgility. He is the world’s first to hold CST, CEC, CTC, PST, Path to CSP Educator, CAL-Educator, and ACS-Educator. He loves reading, travelling, and public speaking. He received his B.E. from Anna University in Chennai and his MBA from the University of Madras. He received his PhD from Girne American University and DBA from PPA Business School. He teaches regularly in some of the prestigious B schools in India and the Europe.
