Scrum.org's Scrum Master skill wheel identifies 8 choices (sometimes called stances) that can be used as needed. These choices are Teacher, Mentor, Uphold Scrum, Take Action, Facilitator, Coach, Actively Do Nothing and Point North. It's expected Scrum Masters will have strengths in different areas of the wheel compared to their colleagues and that's okay - it's not about being perfect, but it is about being professional. Being suitably skilled (at least to some extent) in each of these choices is vital for success.
The stance of a mentor is often discussed yet rarely formalised in the context of Scrum Mastery. While the Scrum Master is widely misunderstood as a servant leader, their role is more accurately described as a true leader, one who creates the conditions for others to succeed through clarity, ethics, and consistent presence. Among the many stances a Scrum Master may take, mentoring offers a subtle and enduring form of influence. Unlike those centred on facilitation or intervention, mentoring supports long-term growth through trust, shared reflection, and voluntary guidance.
It is worth distinguishing mentoring from coaching. In mentoring, it is acceptable—even expected—for the mentor to share their own experiences and offer possible answers. That said, mentoring does not mean excessive instruction or dominance. Over-offering strips others of their autonomy. By contrast, coaching focuses on guiding individuals toward discovering their own answers. A coach does not validate or confirm those answers as correct. They hold space for inquiry, without adding endorsement. A mentor may offer a light, experience-informed perspective. A coach deliberately withholds it.
Mentoring is also relational. It is about finding a pair. A mentor-mentee relationship must have sufficient trust and character fit. Not every potential pairing will be effective, no matter the skill or experience involved. This is one reason I support the practice of identifying your own line manager within an organisation. The freedom to choose who supports your development respects the personal dimension of mentoring and strengthens its impact. Forced pairings risk formality without connection.
To professionalise the mentor stance is to move it from instinct to intentional practice. It means developing judgement about when and how to engage. It means being precise in language, patient in timing, and clear about the limits of influence. Professional mentoring is not about personality or seniority. It is about being useful to someone else’s learning without making that learning about you. It involves preparing for the moment when your experience is needed, and being wise enough not to offer it when it is not.
In my experience, professionalising the mentor stance requires more than good intention. It involves deliberate choices about how to engage, when to hold back, and what to protect. The five principles below; Consent, Safety, Restraint, Relevance, and Integrity are not universal truths. They are my opinion, formed through practice, reflection, and (lots of) failure. They have helped me make sense of what it means to mentor within a Scrum context.
The Professional Mentor: Five Core Principles
1. Consent
Professional mentoring begins with mutual consent. The person receiving support must invite or acknowledge the presence of a mentor. In complex environments where autonomy and self-management are foundational, unsolicited guidance can be interpreted as interference. A Scrum Master must learn to sense when the invitation to mentor is truly present—not only in words, but in posture, tone, and timing. Consent is not a one-time event. It must be renewed implicitly through the ongoing value perceived by the mentee. Without it, mentoring becomes imposition.
Consent also has a relational dimension. Mentoring requires fit. A mentor may be credible, insightful, and experienced, but the relationship will struggle if there is no mutual trust or alignment in working style. Some pairings simply do not work. This is one reason I advocate allowing people to identify their own line managers within an organisation. When a mentor is chosen, not assigned, the foundation of consent is stronger. It reflects personal agency rather than institutional structure. A professional mentor respects that not every invitation will be theirs to accept - or extend.
2. Safety
Psychological safety is essential. A mentor does not only pass along experience, they create a space in which learning can occur. Teams and individuals must feel safe to express doubt, surface mistakes, and explore alternatives. This is more than emotional reassurance. It is the active reduction of social risk. Scrum Masters who act as mentors take responsibility for reducing fear, not eliminating discomfort. Growth often requires tension, but never humiliation. Without safety, a mentoring conversation cannot become reflective, and without reflection, there is no development.
3. Restraint
The mentor stance requires intentional restraint. Experience can become a temptation, particularly when the path ahead seems obvious. However, ethical mentoring does not hinge on being right or useful - it depends on being supportive and generative. The mentor offers perspective, not pressure. The temptation to solve, correct, or accelerate someone else’s thinking must be met with quiet discipline.
This is where the difference between mentoring and coaching becomes most pronounced. In mentoring, it is acceptable to occasionally offer a story, a hard-won lesson, or a considered suggestion. But restraint ensures that these contributions do not become leading or corrective. In coaching, even this light touch would often be withheld. The mentor stance honours experience, but disciplines its use. In doing so, the Scrum Master enables others to develop their own clarity. Restraint is not passivity; it is deliberate withholding for the sake of the learner’s autonomy.
4. Relevance
Mentoring is not abstract. It gains impact when it is relevant to the context, timing, and challenges of the person being mentored. Vague advice, detached reflections, or stories from unrelated domains dilute the relationship. The mentor must connect through what matters now. That relevance may be tactical, emotional, or interpersonal, but it must be connected to the mentee’s current experience. In the stance of a mentor, relevance is the evidence of attentiveness. The most effective mentors do not generalise their wisdom—they localise it.
5. Integrity
The mentor stance is grounded in integrity. This includes confidentiality, consistency, and clarity of purpose. A Scrum Master who engages in mentoring must hold the mentee’s confidence, avoid triangulation, and keep their own ego in check. Integrity also means clarity of role. The Scrum Master does not mentor to serve their own influence or visibility. They do it to support the growth of others, in alignment with Scrum’s emphasis on empirical improvement and self-management. Mentoring from integrity ensures that support does not drift into dependency or distortion.
Final Thoughts
Scrum Masters who wish to professionalise their mentor stance must move beyond intuition alone. Mentoring in Scrum is not about comfort, charisma, or being a sage figure. It is about ethical presence, relational discipline, and relevance to context. To professionalise mentoring is to treat it as a structured, reflective practice—one that places responsibility on the mentor to be purposeful, measured, and ethically grounded.
The five principles I have described—Consent, Safety, Restraint, Relevance, and Integrity—are not definitive rules. They are my perspective, grounded in what I have seen work, and in the mistakes that taught me more than any success did.
In later parts of this series, we will examine how to apply these principles in the field. We will explore what mentoring looks like with new Scrum Masters, seasoned Developers, Product Owners seeking alignment, and even stakeholders navigating agility for the first time. By professionalising the mentor stance, Scrum Masters can support not only team performance but sustained human development.
Being a mentor is not a lesser part of being a Scrum Master but it is a slower one (and often, a more enduring one).
Stay tuned for the next blog in this series, where I will explore each of the core principles in depth, beginning with the foundational role of Consent in mentoring relationships.