Great ways to keep communication flowing

Whether you’re in leadership mode or management mode, the team needs to believe in you and your ability to guide them — and that makes trust and communication vital.

Here are a three ideas to help make sure that you and the team are approaching challenges as one unit, united in understanding and purpose.

• Explain your decisions as much as possible. Help your team understand your thinking, and be explicit about the variables in consideration. Otherwise, gaps might get filled in with misinformation.

• Keep the team informed of what’s going on at other levels of the project and the organization. This helps create shared investment.

• Be approachable. This could mean scheduling one-on-one meetings, having an open door policy, or simply responding quickly to emails. The team needs to know you’re receptive to both constructive feedback and new ideas.