DAC Servant Leadership Practices 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A Disciplined Agile Coach notices that a team member dominates every retrospective, silencing others. What is the servant leader's FIRST action?
- Privately coach the dominant member on inclusive behavior (Correct answer)
- Remove the member from future retrospectives
- Let the team self-organize without intervention
- Report the behavior to the member's manager
Correct answer: Privately coach the dominant member on inclusive behavior
Servant leaders address interpersonal dynamics through private coaching before escalating or restructuring team participation.
Question 2: In the Disciplined Agile context, 'creating psychological safety' means a servant leader primarily ensures:
- Team members can experiment and speak up without fear of retribution (Correct answer)
- All decisions are approved by leadership before execution
- The team avoids risky technical choices
- Conflicts are escalated immediately to management
Correct answer: Team members can experiment and speak up without fear of retribution
Psychological safety enables teams to take risks, voice concerns, and learn from failure — a core servant leadership outcome.
Question 3: Which servant leadership behavior BEST supports a team's long-term capability growth according to DA principles?
- Solving complex problems on behalf of the team quickly
- Teaching the team problem-solving techniques and stepping back (Correct answer)
- Assigning experienced members to all critical tasks
- Escalating all unresolved issues to the program level
Correct answer: Teaching the team problem-solving techniques and stepping back
Servant leaders grow team capability by teaching and then withdrawing support, rather than creating dependency by solving problems for them.
Question 4: A DAC practicing servant leadership is pressured by a stakeholder to commit the team to an unrealistic deadline. The best response is to:
- Accept the deadline to avoid conflict with the stakeholder
- Shield the team from the demand and negotiate a realistic timeline (Correct answer)
- Let the team decide whether to accept the deadline themselves
- Escalate immediately to the enterprise agile coach
Correct answer: Shield the team from the demand and negotiate a realistic timeline
Servant leaders protect their teams from unreasonable external pressure while negotiating openly with stakeholders to reach feasible commitments.
Question 5: According to Disciplined Agile, how should a servant leader handle a situation where the team's chosen way of working (WoW) is suboptimal?
- Mandate the correct WoW to save time
- Guide the team to reflect on and improve their WoW through retrospectives (Correct answer)
- Escalate the issue to a governance board
- Allow the team to continue since autonomy is absolute
Correct answer: Guide the team to reflect on and improve their WoW through retrospectives
DA servant leaders facilitate team reflection and continuous improvement of WoW rather than imposing solutions or ignoring problems.
Question 6: In servant leadership, 'listening to understand' differs from 'listening to respond' in that it:
- Focuses on formulating counterarguments during the conversation
- Prioritizes comprehending the speaker's perspective before reacting (Correct answer)
- Speeds up decision-making by anticipating outcomes
- Delegates the conversation to a note-taker
Correct answer: Prioritizes comprehending the speaker's perspective before reacting
Active listening to understand means a servant leader fully absorbs the team member's perspective before forming any response.
Question 7: A servant leader in a DA environment is LEAST likely to do which of the following?
- Remove impediments blocking the team's progress
- Make all architectural decisions to protect the team's time (Correct answer)
- Foster collaboration between the team and stakeholders
- Celebrate team achievements publicly
Correct answer: Make all architectural decisions to protect the team's time
Making all architectural decisions on behalf of the team concentrates authority rather than empowering team members — contrary to servant leadership.
DAC Servant Leadership Practices 2
A Disciplined Agile Coach notices that a team member dominates every retrospective, silencing others.
What is the servant leader's FIRST action?