To be clear we are using commitment based planning. From PO training I was led to believe that a healthy balance could be achieved between the PO pushing for aggressive committing, and the team pushing back to a realistic target. In this way the priorities and limits are made much clearer to everyone. This way has worked well for us, with commitment based planning, so far.

About the SM role being a leadership one, perhaps we are arguing over semantics. We are based in China where the idea of soft leadership is not a commonly held one. Gaining a position over your peers, such as becoming a scrum master, usually is perceived as climbing up the hierarchical ladder. The word leader, here, is seen as almost synonymous with manager. It’s good to be very clear that the SM role is not a role of traditional team management, but a role of guidance and soft leadership.

I think it’s a bit odd where you’re disagreeing with Ron as Ron is one of those people who actually created Agile…

About your last sentence, I disagree. According to the definition of the Scrum Guide ( http://www.scrum.org ), the Scrum master role is a management role without hierarchy.