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This post is part of our Engineering Productivity Series, where engineers and leaders from Gusto share how we approach productivity — not as working faster, but as creating the conditions for meaningful, sustainable work.

In this final installment, Tara explores how leadership can empower productivity — by building environments of clarity, trust, and alignment where teams can thrive together.

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Photo by Mathias Jensen on Unsplash

As a People Empowerer (what we call Engineering Managers @ Gusto), I used to think productivity was about helping engineers work faster. Now I see it’s about helping them work freer, reducing cognitive friction so energy goes where it matters most.

Leaders don’t write the code, but we design the system around it. Our job is to make flow possible by removing friction, providing clarity, and setting rhythms that sustain deep work.

Why Leadership Is a Productivity Lever

If Wouter reminded us that small habits create flow, Asaf showed us how environment and mindset enable focus, and Armando demonstrated that high-leverage work multiplies impact, then leadership is what makes all of those insights stick across a team.

Great leadership doesn’t create more velocity. It creates consistency, the compounding force behind meaningful productivity.

1. Design for Flow, Not Busyness

Productivity isn’t about being “always on.” It’s about having the right information, at the right time, with minimal context switching.

When teams are overloaded with stand-ups, Slack pings, and ad-hoc questions, it’s not a focus problem — it’s a design problem.

As a manager, I try to protect deep-work windows as intentionally as I protect deadlines. I ask myself: “Is this meeting worth breaking someone’s flow?” If not, we find a lighter-weight way to stay aligned.

For a while, my team kept having the same conversation every few weeks. Is standup still helpful? Should we move it? Should we have it every day? No one could agree, and the debate itself became its own distraction.

Eventually, we realized the problem wasn’t standup at all. It was that people didn’t feel any agency over their calendars. Team meetings and changing priorities were eating into their focus time.

We decided to experiment with a no-meeting day. One quarter later, our DX survey “deep work” score jumped from 50 to 86. Almost everyone said having a day dedicated to focus made a huge difference in their energy and output.

Now, before I schedule anything, I ask: “Is this meeting worth breaking someone’s flow?” If it’s not, we find a lighter-weight way to stay aligned.

Takeaway: Productivity isn’t about squeezing in more. It’s about creating space to do the right things well.

2. Reduce Hidden Cognitive Load

The biggest drain on team productivity is ambiguity. When engineers have to constantly reconstruct context, they lose energy before they even begin building.

My approach is to proactively expose that invisible load:

• If multiple teams are hitting the same dependency, we co-author a spec early.
• If reviews keep looping, we define what “ready for review” means together.
• If onboarding is slow, we document decisions once — then scale clarity through reuse.

This isn’t about the adding process. It’s about removing decision fatigue so focus can return to creative problem-solving.

At a previous company, our on-call system was the perfect example of this. When an engineer went on-call, they had to monitor several places: support tickets in Jira, a product feedback Slack channel, a sales Slack channel, and Datadog alerts that had no severity ratings. It was chaos.

We fixed it by introducing clear categories: product feature, question, or bug. Then we added severity ratings. P0 and P1 were reviewed immediately. Anything lower was reviewed once a week and added to the sprint if appropriate.

Next, we trained other teams to use an intake form instead of tagging engineers directly in Slack. If someone tagged an engineer, we redirected them to the form.

Once that system was in place, everything felt lighter. On-call engineers could finally focus on what mattered most and make confident decisions about what needed attention right away versus later.

Takeaway: Every unclear expectation is a productivity tax. Pay it once, automate it next time.

3. Model Rhythms That Sustain Energy

Team productivity tends to follow the rhythm of its leaders. If I respond to everything right away, my team learns urgency. If I make time to think before acting, they learn reflection.

Sustainable productivity depends on rhythm. It means creating steady cycles of effort and recovery. I encourage teams to end sprints with reflection, not just a list of retro items. We also talk openly about energy management, not just task management.

The goal isn’t to avoid intensity. It’s to prevent depletion. When people know they’ll have time to reset, they use their energy more intentionally.

After we shipped a high-priority feature that took months to deliver and involved many teams, my tech lead came to our one-on-one looking completely drained. The project had gone well, but he couldn’t see it. He was already bracing for the next sprint.

I reminded him how smoothly the project went and how much his leadership mattered. Then I told him to take some real time off — to disconnect completely, not just step back from meetings.

When he came back, I asked him to think about the projects that genuinely interested him, the ones that had been sitting on the back burner. I said, “Let’s make space for something that recharges you before we start the next big thing.”

He looked relieved. Sometimes people just need permission to rest and reconnect with what they enjoy building.

That conversation reminded me that recovery is part of the work. If we don’t make space for it, teams eventually burn out instead of building momentum.

Takeaway: Productivity isn’t about how fast we go. It’s about knowing when to push and when to rest.

Leadership as the Fourth Layer of Productivity

Across this series, we’ve explored:

• Habits that sustain momentum (Wouter),
• Systems that create efficiency (Asaf),
• Leverage that multiplies impact (Armando).

Leadership is what turns those layers into a shared rhythm. Because productivity at scale isn’t an individual skill. It’s a design problem.

When we create clarity, reduce friction, and build healthy pace into the way teams operate, productivity becomes a byproduct — not a goal.

Conclusion: Designing for Flow

When I think about productivity now, I don’t think about speed or output. I think about clarity. I think about calm. I think about a team that moves together because the system around them makes it possible.

Leaders don’t enforce productivity. We design for it. It shows up in how we communicate, how we plan, and how we take care of the people doing the work. When expectations are clear and there’s space for deep thinking, progress takes care of itself.

The best kind of leadership doesn’t call attention to itself. It builds trust, keeps a steady rhythm, and creates the space for people to do their best work together. That’s what keeps a team grounded, creative, and proud of what they build.

Empower Growth With Us

At Gusto, we believe great engineering leadership is about creating environments where people can do their best work — with clarity, trust, and purpose. We care deeply about collaboration, empowerment, and building systems that scale both impact and well-being.

If you’re passionate about helping others grow and shaping how teams work together, we’d love to meet you.

👉 Explore open roles on our Engineering Careers page