Business Management category interest

I was sitting one day many years back and preparing for my new soccer season.  I was coaching my very first travel team and I had all the drills ready, watched all the coaching videos, call on other and asked for advise, I had my entire plan ready.  Since I was a newbie to coaching but not the game I wanted to make sure everyone was prepared for my style of coaching.  I wrote up a one page contract for the players and parents, it explained my expectations of the parents and players and also showed waht they should expect from me.  We would all sign and everyone knew they needed to uphold the contract or ther would be consequences.  It worked like a charm for so many years, I didn't have parents yelling instructin form the sideline, everyone was on time for games and practices, all the kids were respectful and I made sure it was fun and fair!  Every year from there on out my parents and players would expect to see this from me and enjoyed the relief of not having to assume anything but know exactly how things would work.  

In the business world we all have good intentions of following through and doing what we set out to do from the initial start of any project.  Then somewhere because things happen the expectation we set up from the beginning gets lost and we forget that the team is still expecting and assuming the original expectation, we are not communicating and setting new expectations to keep everyone feeling good about the process. 

Some things I like to do: 

1. at the beginning of any new project I sent the enitre team a "what to expect now" sheet, pointing out what they should be expecting from me and what I expect of them. 

2. I make a daily log of the activities for the day and letting each person in the project aware and if there is any change in expectation I require from them. 

3. Always keep "taking the temperature" of all involved to be sure they are all still feeling good about how things are progressing and listen to all good or bad. 

Once I learned this and applied it to all aspects of my life it changed everything, from my personal life to my professional career. 

Then more communication we have whether big or small is so valuable during the process and will set you apart from everyone else!