When I talk about being a considerate leader, people often push back.
They tell me it sounds nice, but they worry it will slow them down, and they have too much on their plate to slow down.
I understand the objection. Pausing to think before we respond, preparing for a hard conversation, and checking that everyone is clear before a meeting ends all take time, and time is the one thing most of us feel we don’t have.
But there’s a saying from the U.S. military, often credited to the Navy SEALs, that I think answers it:
Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Let me explain.
Where Speed Really Comes From
We tend to think speed comes from effort. If we want to go faster, we push harder, skip a step, and hope it works out.
But real speed comes from smoothness. When we rehearse something slowly and deliberately until it’s ingrained, we create muscle memory that helps us perform when the pressure is on.
Musicians know this well. They learn a hard passage with the metronome turned way down, and only when they can play it clean do they click it up a notch. If they try it at full tempo first, they practice the mistakes.
John Wooden knew it too. He was the legendary UCLA basketball coach who won 10 national championships in 12 years, and at the first practice of every season he made his players sit down and learn how to put on their socks and shoes. They smoothed out the wrinkles at the toe and heel, tightened each eyelet, and double-tied the laces.
Why? Because wrinkles cause blisters, and blisters keep players off the floor.
The slowest, most basic drill came first, because Wooden understood that subtle shifts compound into significant successes or problems.
A Two-Minute Pause in the Operating Room
In 2009, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study of a surgical safety checklist from the World Health Organization. Eight hospitals worldwide, in cities like Seattle, London, New Delhi, and Manila, added a short pause before, during, and after surgery. The team confirmed the patient and procedure, and introduced themselves by name. The whole checklist had 19 items and took a couple of minutes.
The researchers studied 7,688 patients. Deaths fell from 1.5% to 0.8%, and complications fell from 11% to 7%.
Think about that! A pause of a couple of minutes, in one of the most time-pressured rooms, saved lives.
I guess urgency feels productive, but urgent doesn’t mean effective.
The Subtle Shift
Here’s something to consider this week:
Where am I moving too fast but getting slow results?
In other words, where are you pushing for speed and causing a bunch of rework downstream?
If you can focus your attention on the things you keep redoing, you can break the chain. It might be a meeting that never ends with a clear decision, a handoff that keeps coming back wrong, or a conversation you’ve now had three times.
Once you identify it, slow that one thing down. Rehearse what you want to say, write down the two or three points that matter, or take a couple of minutes at the start to make sure everyone knows why they’re in the room.
It’ll feel slow at first, and that’s okay. Keep at it until it feels smooth, and I think you’ll be surprised by how fast you can go.
