Be direct and effective in your first message. And if you and an engineer have communication issues (you don't understand their tickets comments, their mails are too abstract and/or not factual enough), do not hesitate to do a bi weekly 1 on 1 until those communication issues are less glaring.

It helped my working conditions tremendously. I'm still really anxious when my manager contact me, but him being direct made me feel way more comfortable than the previous one.

Also do the opposite of the opposite.

If you need to fire someone, it's appropriate to use a somber tone to prepare the other party.

I was recently let go as basically agenda point 3 out of 4 during my normal weekly one-on-one with my manager and was completely blindsided (the position was made redundant entirely, so there was no preceding performance review or the like).