DAC Servant Leadership Practices 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which of the following BEST describes the relationship between servant leadership and the DA principle of 'choice is good'?
- Servant leaders limit choices to reduce team confusion
- Servant leaders present options and help teams select the best fit for their context (Correct answer)
- Servant leaders always choose the DA-recommended default practice
- Servant leaders delegate all choices to enterprise architects
Correct answer: Servant leaders present options and help teams select the best fit for their context
DA's 'choice is good' principle aligns with servant leadership by presenting viable options and coaching teams to choose contextually appropriate practices.
Question 2: A DAC observes that two sub-teams within a large program have conflicting priorities. As a servant leader, the coach should:
- Decide the priority order on behalf of both teams
- Facilitate a joint session where both teams align on shared program goals (Correct answer)
- Escalate the conflict to the portfolio layer immediately
- Ignore the conflict since teams are self-organizing
Correct answer: Facilitate a joint session where both teams align on shared program goals
Servant leaders facilitate alignment conversations rather than imposing decisions or bypassing the teams involved.
Question 3: Empathy in servant leadership is BEST demonstrated by a DAC who:
- Excuses all performance issues to avoid upsetting team members
- Seeks to understand the personal and professional pressures a team member faces before advising (Correct answer)
- Avoids difficult feedback to maintain positive relationships
- Assigns empathy training courses to struggling team members
Correct answer: Seeks to understand the personal and professional pressures a team member faces before advising
Empathy means genuinely understanding others' circumstances and perspectives before offering guidance — not avoiding hard truths.
Question 4: When a servant leader 'heals' within the team context (Greenleaf's model), this primarily means:
- Resolving technical defects in the product backlog
- Helping team members recover from setbacks and restore trust after failures (Correct answer)
- Conducting medical wellness checks for remote workers
- Eliminating all sources of team stress permanently
Correct answer: Helping team members recover from setbacks and restore trust after failures
In Greenleaf's servant leadership model, 'healing' refers to restoring wholeness by supporting recovery from failure, conflict, or loss of trust.
Question 5: How does servant leadership support the DA principle of 'enterprise awareness'?
- By restricting the team's focus to their own sprint goals only
- By helping teams understand how their work connects to broader organizational objectives (Correct answer)
- By requiring teams to attend all enterprise governance meetings
- By aligning the team's backlog with the enterprise architecture roadmap
Correct answer: By helping teams understand how their work connects to broader organizational objectives
Servant leaders build enterprise awareness by showing teams the bigger picture and how their contributions support organizational strategy.
Question 6: A servant leader is coaching a newly formed agile team that lacks confidence. Which approach BEST demonstrates servant leadership in this situation?
- Give the team a fully structured plan to follow for the first quarter
- Pair alongside team members, offer encouragement, and gradually transfer ownership to them (Correct answer)
- Assign a senior member as team lead to direct daily activities
- Reduce the team's workload until they request more autonomy
Correct answer: Pair alongside team members, offer encouragement, and gradually transfer ownership to them
Servant leaders build confidence through presence, encouragement, and progressive delegation rather than directing or over-protecting the team.
Question 7: In Disciplined Agile, which metric is MOST aligned with servant leadership values when measuring team health?
- Story points delivered per sprint
- Team satisfaction, psychological safety, and collaboration quality (Correct answer)
- Number of impediments raised per quarter
- Velocity trend over 12 sprints
Correct answer: Team satisfaction, psychological safety, and collaboration quality
Servant leadership values people over output, making team satisfaction, safety, and collaboration quality the most aligned health indicators.
DAC Servant Leadership Practices 3
Which of the following BEST describes the relationship between servant leadership and the DA principle of 'choice is good'?