Five Things to avoid as Scrum Master

What makes a good Scrum Master, what makes a bad Scrum Master? Here is my short list of things a Scrum Master will not do in my team. This post is written from a Product Owner perspective, so YMMV.

#1 - Dogma

This has got to be the absolute #1 on my list as it is my personal pet peeve.
I don't care what this or that guru said about Scrum, and I don't even care what you think Scrum means. I'm not using Scrum for Scrum's sake. I care for stuff that works - and for fixing stuff that doesn't work. I've had too many conversations with certified ScrumMasters who claimed "According to Scrum ...", and my only response was: "Show me the passage in the Scrum Guide!" (knowing full well they were proliferating a myth). If you can't explain to me (or my team) why the things you think should be different would work better than what we're currently doing, you're wasting everyone's time.

#2 - Factions

Your job as a Scrum Master is to create one high-performing team, and that just won't work if the team is wasting energy fighting against others (or even worse, against each other). If factions exist, you should try to mend them - and if none exist, I would expect you to be the last person to create some. Factions often come with actions such as placing blame (aka. finger-pointing) or perceived feelings of superiority. I expect you to not tolerate, much less support any such behaviour.

#3 - Menial labour

Also known as the "Jira Admin". If your entire responsibility in the team boils down to doing the things nobody else wants to do, such as updating tickets, writing reports or organizing meetings, you have clearly not understood your role. As Scrum Master, your value is exclusively limited to the additional performance you bring out in the team. If you can get 5 people to work 50% more effective, you're pulling your weight. If, however, you're just doing work that a minimum wage worker could do after a week of training, don't expect a higher pay than minimum wage.

#4 - Breach of trust

As Scrum Master, I expect you to be the person in the team who has the highest level of trust from anyone within the entire organization. I would expect that people should feel ready to confine their innermost secrets to you, even stuff that's totally NSFW, because they might need someone to talk about it in order to have a clear head for work. If you do stuff like reporting to management or tell team internal information to outsiders, you will never again be able to regain the trust you need in order to do a proper job.

#5 - Project Management

I do agree that not every team is ready for self-organization and sometimes, an intermediary path needs to be taken. As Product Owner, the person who would be doing inevitable PM activity would be me. As Scrum Master, frankly, you don't even need to know more about the team's progress than I and the team feel necessary. There is no reason why you should feel the need to coordinate, organize or report anything for anyone. Well, unless you're being asked to - and even then, you should ask "Why?"

Conclusion

If I see you, my Scrum Master, doing any of the above things, you're up for a long conversation with me regarding your role and responsibility. You will walk out with a clear list of things that you will change about your own behaviour as soon as possible.
If I see you continuing these things against better knowledge, I will make sure that I get a Scrum Master on my team who knows their ropes.