Slow Is Smooth, Smooth Is Fast

People often admire decisive meetings.

The kind where someone frames the problem clearly, tension surfaces, perspectives clash a little, and a strong direction emerges by the end. It feels productive. Strategic. Powerful.

I admire those meetings too. I like clarity. I like direction. I am not short on opinions, and I’m comfortable steering a conversation when it needs steering. I care about outcomes. I care about momentum. I care about not wasting time.

But I’ve started to notice something.

By the time a hard conversation goes well, the real work has usually already happened.

The work that happens before the meeting

Before the meeting, there have often been one-on-one conversations. Sometimes directly about the issue at hand. Sometimes indirectly, reinforcing something more foundational: that a person’s perspective matters, that disagreement is welcome, that raising a concern won’t quietly cost them later.

That groundwork rarely shows up in the calendar invite.

And yet it shapes everything.

In the meeting itself, I usually arrive with a point of view. I’ve done the thinking. I have a thesis. I can articulate a direction. That part comes naturally to me.

What doesn’t come as naturally, and what I’ve had to learn (and still learning), is holding that thesis lightly enough that it can change.

If I walk into the room with an answer that’s already locked in, then I don’t actually want collaboration. I want endorsement.

The best answers I’ve seen don’t come from endorsement. They come from integration. They absorb perspectives I couldn’t have generated alone. They are refined through friction. They are stronger because they’ve been shaped in public.

But that only works if the room feels safe.

In The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the foundational dysfunction isn’t conflict. It’s absence of trust. Without trust, teams avoid real disagreement. Without real disagreement, they commit artificially. And when commitment is artificial, accountability and results suffer.

You can’t shortcut that first layer.

Psychological safety isn’t something you declare. It’s something you build.

The discipline of not rushing

And building it requires discipline.

I resist speed, even though moving fast can look decisive.

I resist over-controlling the narrative, even though I’m capable of doing so.

I resist the urge to appear fully formed and perfectly prepared.

There’s a saying often attributed to the U.S. Navy SEALs: slow is smooth, smooth is fast. It is one of my favourite sayings.

It’s not a slogan about taking your time. It’s about precision under pressure. Move deliberately enough to avoid chaos. Be smooth enough that execution accelerates naturally.

I’ve seen the same principle play out in teams. When we slow down enough to surface real dissent, to let silence breathe, to allow an idea to be challenged before it calcifies, the decision becomes smoother. And when the decision is smoother, execution moves faster.

I try to let silence stretch longer than is comfortable. I try not to rush in to rescue the room. Often, that pause is where courage gathers. It’s where someone decides to disagree or to say the risky thing. Or to suggest something more ambitious than they would have otherwise.

This kind of work is sometimes described as glue work. The relational labor. The context-setting. The trust-building. The one-on-ones. The steady reinforcement that each voice matters. Historically, women have often carried more of that work in organizations.

But I don’t see it as auxiliary. I see it as structural.

Bold direction without trust is brittle.

Speed without safety narrows the range of ideas in the room.

Control without space produces compliance, not commitment.

What success actually looks like

For me, success isn’t walking out of the room having been right. It isn’t hearing my original thesis echoed back to me.

Success is when the decision no longer feels like mine.

It’s when there is real buy-in because the idea was shaped together. When people can see their fingerprints on the outcome. When constructive dissent made the answer better. When commitment is strong because ownership is shared.

That kind of buy-in doesn’t happen accidentally. It’s the result of work that most people never see.

When speed is necessary

That said, not every moment allows for that kind of integration.

Sometimes we do need to move fast. Sometimes the call has to be made. Sometimes the room doesn’t have time for full debate. In those moments, I am decisive.

But when a team operates in a psychologically safe environment, those moments land differently. There is trust and context. There is an understanding that if space wasn’t held this time, there is a reason.

Speed is accepted because it isn’t the norm. Authority works because it isn’t overused.

The foundation holds.

Building something that lasts

There is power in setting direction. I do that often.

But there is also power in building the conditions where a team can challenge, refine, and ultimately co-own that direction.

When that happens, the decision holds.

Why? Because it was built not dictated.