About 10 years ago I was an agile coach at a client organization and I was also acting as a Scrum Master for two teams.
I remember a director coming up to me and asking me, as the Scrum Master of a team with folks who reported to him, how was a specific engineer performing. He explained that he had concerns that the engineer wasn’t pulling his weight and he wanted some specifics to confront him with.
I remember my reaction viscerally to this day…
I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach;
I even felt a little weakness in my knees;
I struggled with what to say, knowing that the engineer he was talking about was indeed struggling;
I didn’t know if this was part of my role as a Scrum Master or not;
I wondered how he would take it if I declined to give him feedback;
I worried about the impact my feedback would have on the engineer…
It was a horrible experience because I wasn’t sure what to do. If I gave him the feedback, it would certainly compromise my role within the team. I guessed that it would get out and that I’d never really be trusted again.
AND, I was a part of the Scrum Team, wasn’t I? It would be like becoming a “snitch”. And nobody likes a snitch.
But if I didn’t give him the feedback, would it put me at risk?
In the end, I respectfully declined. I said that he’d have to observe the team in our sprint to sort out how everyone was performing. To my surprise, he accepted that reply. But I left feeling incredibly vulnerable and physically shaking.
