One pattern I see with new managers is they try to prove they belong by over-communicating everything. Every decision gets a rationale. Every update gets a deck. Every piece of feedback comes wrapped in so much context that the actual point gets buried. They dump the entire spice rack into the pot because they're afraid of leaving something out.
I get it. When you're new to leadership, you feel the pressure to show your thinking. You want people to know you're thoughtful, that you've considered all the angles. But what your team actually needs is clarity. They need you to say the thing directly and trust them to ask follow-up questions if they need more.
Over the years I've had a lot of great mentors. The best ones didn't explain everything. They gave me direction and support in roughly equal measure. High expectations and a safety net. Try this new challenge. If you fail, I'll help you recover. That's mentorship in two sentences. Everything else is noise.
The hardest transition in management is shifting from being the person who solves problems to being the person who creates the conditions for others to solve problems. New managers cling to execution because that's where their confidence lives. They earned the promotion by being great at the work. Now the work has changed and their old strengths can become liabilities. The designer who could solve any UI problem now needs to let go and watch someone else solve it differently. Maybe worse. Maybe better. Definitely differently.
The real skill isn't communication. It's editing. Not the red-pen kind. The kind where you look at everything you could say and choose only what moves the conversation forward. Your team doesn't need your entire thought process. They need the conclusion and enough context to act on it. That's it.
I learned this the hard way, by watching smart people's eyes glaze over while I walked them through my reasoning. Now I lead with the point. If they want the reasoning, they'll ask. Most of the time, they don't. They just want to know what to do next and whether you trust them to do it.
Say less. Mean it more.