Agreed. The "trust" part of "trust but verify" is important, too.

For me, it was learning to build ways where I could invisibly monitor someone's progress without bothering them. Setting up Subversion/Git to alert me at commits. Having the database show me a progress of tasks completed/uncompleted, etc.

But yeah definitely: interrupting people doing good work, asking them to do things with "status" in them, is the worst way to go.