Hi Travis - Leadership is influence. The SM role most definitely is a leadership role.

Also, if you read Greenleaf's original paper defining servant leadership, he says very clearly (many times) that a servant leader _leads_. Scrum incorrectly describes servant leadership.

Effective leaders _do_ involve themselves in the details. I recommend the book The Innovators, by Walter Isaacson, for myriad case studies of successful leaders of many types.

If we look at some of the most successful tech leaders today, they are people who _do_ immerse themselves in their products.

The SM role is an ill-defined role, and it has changed significantly more than seven times, indicating to me that its authors don't know what they are doing. I suggest looking to models of leadership from outside of Scrum. There is a rich field of leadership theory out there. The model of "transformational leadership" is particularly compellilng.