Communication
I have a few suggestions for communicating to your team.
First off: Do it! Communicate. Don’t assume people know what’s going on, or that they are in the loop. Assume you are the loop.
Second: Don’t waste people’s time. Endless meetings run together, and the message gets lost. Communicate impactfully. Not everything should be a meeting. Not everything should be an email. Not everyone can stay late on Thursdays to hash out the new schedule. Use the format and the timing that will give your team member the information they need when they need it, in a format they can use, and ideally not taking up a lot of their time.
Third: Have a message! Know what the “big picture” is, and tie the information you are sharing into that. It helps to keep the meeting or the email from rambling, if you can keep things focused with that message.
Fourth: Listen! Ask people for their input. Ask if they have questions. Ask them to come to you with their ideas. And when they are talking, pay attention, and don’t be doing anything else—not checking emails, not planning what to have for dinner tonight, not rehearsing what you are going to say when they finally stop talking—LISTEN.
Fifth: Give people their best chance to impress you. Don’t spring “pop-quiz” questions on them in meetings; give them the agenda in advance and let them know what you expect their contribution to the conversation to be, e.g. “I’m going to ask you to fill us in on the changes since last month,” or “Come with any questions you have about the new phase of the project,” or “Be ready to troubleshoot any problems we had with the pilot program—we want to kick the tires on this before we roll it out to the entire company.”