Speed does not fix a team that is guessing

A technical team can look productive from the outside and still be working around the same problem every week.

The meetings are happening. The messages are flowing. Customer questions are being answered. Supplier work is moving. Product details are being translated. The calendar is full.

But full is not the same as clear.

A team can spend a lot of energy moving work through a process no one has stopped to question. Asana’s Anatomy of Work Index found that knowledge workers spend 60% of their day on “work about work,” not the skilled work they were hired to do. That should get every manager’s attention.

For technical and commercial teams, that “work about work” can show up as repeated internal explanations, unclear handoffs, customer meetings that do not change, supplier information that has to be reworked, or people waiting because no one is sure who owns the next step.

The useful question is not, “How do we make everyone move faster?”

The useful question is, “What are we asking people to keep carrying that should be stopped, clarified, automated, delegated, or redesigned?”

That question takes time. It also saves time.

Trust is built before the hard moment

This is where many managers get trapped.

They are promoted because they are strong individual contributors. They know the product, the customer, the supplier, the system, or the process. Then the job changes. Suddenly, success depends less on having the answer and more on creating the conditions where other people can tell the truth, learn, improve, and make decisions with confidence.

That shift is easy to underestimate.

Gallup reported that U.S. employee engagement fell to a 10-year low in 2024, with only 31% of employees engaged and 17% actively disengaged. The manager layer is not the only reason for that, but it is one of the places where the daily experience of work becomes real.

People notice how their manager responds when they make a mistake. They notice whether feedback is clear or loaded with frustration. They notice whether quiet voices are invited in, whether remote communication becomes purely transactional, and whether the leader only reaches out when there is a task or problem.

Trust is not built by one big leadership moment. It is built in smaller deposits.

That is the part leaders have to solve before pressure hits.

If the first real conversation happens during conflict, feedback, missed performance, or urgent change, the relationship may be too thin to carry the weight.

Good managers slow down enough to see people

In Episode 150 of the Leadership in Manufacturing Podcast, Nate Witsaman, Manager of New Market Development at DigiKey, talked about curiosity as one of the practical habits of good managers.

Curiosity slows the leader down before they jump to the easiest explanation.

If someone is quiet in a meeting, the answer may not be that they have nothing to say. If someone is struggling, the answer may not be that they cannot do the work. If feedback lands badly, the issue may not be that the person is defensive. There may be missing context, unclear expectations, low confidence, a communication mismatch, or a relationship that has not been built yet.

Good managers ask before they assume.

That kind of curiosity is not soft. It is operational.

It helps leaders find the real constraint instead of pushing harder on the wrong one. It helps teams improve while things are still going well, not only after something breaks. It also makes feedback easier to receive because the person knows the manager is paying attention to more than the task.

Listen to the full conversation with Nate Witsaman on the Leadership in Manufacturing Podcast

The pressure to move faster is not going away. Technical teams will keep dealing with more information, more tools, more customer expectations, and more cross-functional handoffs.

That makes trust more important, not less.

If you want a team that can move quickly when it matters, build the relationship before the urgent moment. Ask better questions. Make room for quieter voices. Look at the work before adding speed to it. The team that trusts the manager is more likely to tell the truth early enough to do something useful with it.

Sannah Vinding