What genre is your game? Time frame (Current year? war time 1940's? 1980's? before internet?) involved, could they have high tech ear gadgets for communicating back & forth when not all together.
Anything that keeps the players attention on the game is good stuff!
I used to have a player who would goof off while we were going through phases, and when his turn came up, he'd inevitably say, "What's happening?" I took it a couple times then started saying your holding your phase till you know what you want to do. And move on...