I was the Scrum master of a team whose organization had just begun adopting Scrum. Several sprints in, during a retrospective, the team began to vent about someone who was always trying to add work to their sprint backlog and insert himself into every Scrum event. It was becoming very disruptive. I joined in the complaining, not understanding why this manager was so adamant that he be included in everything.
On my drive home from work that day, I felt guilty for joining the complaining. To redeem myself, I decided the best course of action was to display the Scrum value of courage and sit down with the manager to see what he was feeling. As it turned out, he was only a few years from retirement and was concerned about what his place in the organization was going to be moving forward. In his eyes, it seemed that the team was doing great and that he wasn’t needed anymore.
I worked with this manager and the team quite a bit to create empathy and understanding on both sides. Continuing to complain without action would have raised the tension and stunted the organization’s ability to successfully adopt Scrum. To this day, I wish I’d have facilitated during that retrospective instead of complained.