Generally, servant leadership isn’t well understood and many people have never even heard of the term. Without any further explanation it’s easy to think of senior employees being negatively treated or oppressed by the people they are in charge of. Even servant leadership experts still discuss the exact traits that make someone a servant leader. However servant leadership is something that many within the lean / agile software development community see as having a positive impact on team effectiveness and product outcomes.
Mike Burrows spoke at length at Agile Yorkshire to throw some light on the servant leadership topic, what it is and what it isn’t.