Effective Communication Skills for Women in Transportation
Disclaimer:
Everything below is a mix of what I observed and heard during the event. The goal isn’t to pinpoint "who exactly said what," but to share (usually) an outsider's view and overall perspective on these industries. I’m not here to act as a definitive firsthand source—readers should do their own research. I hope this inspires you to attend events, explore new industries, and hear what leaders are presenting. These notes combine my observations with thoughts on how things could run smoother and how ideas connect (IMO). I’m not an expert, you know? Just hanging out in the room with them. Enjoy!Topics Covered: Communication Skills, Leadership, Team Management, Self Confidence, Planning, Goal Setting, Teamwork
Want to learn to be a better communicator? It may be one of those things you don’t want to admit to… but we all can use help with. Learn more about effective communication and focusing on your purpose when speaking with others. Your voice matters, no matter what level you are in your industry. This event covered a lot of framework and practical steps on how to get your voice heard and help improve systems around you.
Why Attend: This event was welcomed to women of all experience levels in the transportation industry. Since I consider myself, both, a ‘transportation superfan’ - and I’ve even had meetings before in the past, talking up ideas for fairs and festivals with the local transportation department… I felt fully qualified to attend this event. I’m like someone starting “at the beginning of their career” in the transportation industry. A transportation freelancer. (I love transportation!!! We need more of it, we need it more embraced… quit, everyone, being so obsessed with only cars! lol :) )
Overall Event Ratings: Venue: 4/5, Food: 4/5, Speaker Content: 5/5, Networking Opportunities: 5/5, Likeliness to Return: 5/5… (more below)
Photo Collage & Commentary
Notes from the Event —
Arrival:
I tried my best to get there on time (without spending $50+ on the ride both ways), so, embracing ‘Public Transit’ to the ‘public transit’ event was cute. LOL, I rode the bus/subway/bus. It was fun to arrive to the bus station and be right-exactly across from where I needed to go, basically. Felt a bit royal! On a “bus riding” level. :D
The seats were super packed, so I took my time to figure out where to sit. My goal was to take notes on my laptop, as well (and sometimes when other peopel do that, it annoys me, cause they start to browse on their computers!! But I try to leave my internet off at these events and just type, type, type!)
When you arrived, you had a name tag and then put a sticker by your name indicating your years-of-experience in the industry. Blue = 8+ years, Pink = 20+ years…. I put blue with a hint of pink (there were other colors, too) but it’s cause I’ve been working for over 20 years, and over 8 years professionally on Kelly Tutors. It was strange to think about, but I realized that at my past job, I did get to a “senior” level… and even now, I still have that qualification and expertise. Something about that set me into this mindset of “hm, I’m a bit of a leader” when I sat down. Then, throughout this event, I found myself speaking up a bit.
I love the transportation industry, hahaha, it was all-women, so that was a nice environment, and then I had a lot to say about this topic. It honestly reminded me a lot of the “Registrars’” event, and a lot of the things they were told and encouraged to say in their workplace there, I encouraged them to say here. One of the biggest things was along the lines of this:
a lot of times, policies are made that impact your work life, that actually makes things worse. The “solutions” create more problems.
In a dream world, you would have been able to help make the rules ahead of time and prevent these situations, or a least call out a few things that are just impossible or not realistic… instead, now you have to deal with it and report what’s not working.
The people you’re reporting to are going to be annoyed, cause you’re pointing out the problems, and that their solution didn’t work. But even so, your voice matters because you are there.
The registrar’s event helped the women realize: your voices are important every single step of the way, because you know what they don’t know.
I’d think the same would go for the transportation industry… there are so many pieces, and people in all sectors need the bravery to speak up.
I was telling them how it’s so important to remove yourself and your identity and your ego from this… if you know that what you’re saying will improve the situation, push through and say it.
I told them the quote I heard recently, “the more easily you are offended, the more easily you are manipulated.”
Another idea, you’ll see my elaborate on it later, is to put things in the language that your audience understands: show them how much money they are losing from this situation. Like when I saw the security guards going from train to train in groups, so inefficiently.
I brought up how a lot of times, I feel like I’m sick of talking… I’m a person who has overtalked for my whole life, so if I am going to tell a story, do I really need to? Or just be quiet? You know what? No… if you’re going to tell a story, show respect to yourself and the person listening, and tell the story the best you can. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt that it’s worth it in the end, and maybe even not then and there.
The leader of this event, added: remember your purpose. Why are you telling these things? If the intentions are good, it is worth it.
NOTES FROM PRESENTATION:
On avg 60M losses in each business per year because of miscommunication
Lots of discussions on strengths and challenges in the workplace:
Strengths: types of communication style (phone, text, email - the things that go into it… less thought behind words on the phone than in an email)
Weakness: sometimes being direct and honest it can come across as mean. The ability to balance directness with efficiency
Different people require different modes of communication
Some people want to talk about their friends, family, and lives for 15 min before starting the work. Prepare for those people.
No one likes having crucial conversations. It’s okay. It’s difficult but it’s a skill thats effective when you put it to the right use.
What is workplace communication: it’s exchanging info, ideas, notions so you can have understanding and alignment and action.
What have you seen that makes communication challenging? Communicatoin breakdowns:
- Assumptions
- Lack of Body Language
Emotions
Ego
Accents
Difference in explaining things
Things aren’t clear (“what did we just talk about?”)
When thinking about communication, maybe this framework can come in handy… let’s work to minimize breakdowns:
Purpose: why are we sharing this?
People: audience needs, styles, make it resonate
Process: how do we prep and talk about it.
PURPOSE:
Purpose is communicating with clarity.
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place” - George Bernard Shaw
Leaders spend 80% of their time communicating, though 57% of employees say leaders need to improve their ability to communicate. Good communication is what builds trust.
Have you ever had a conversation but then you walk out of the room and you’re not even sure what happened or what you’d agreed to?
Center your purpose in communication.
You can’t control the other person/people in the room, but when you are entering with clarity and purpose, that will build you up for a better chance of having clarity and action at the end of the day.
Think of your last vacation, your last road-trip… where did you go?
I went to Vancouver, Columbia, Dubai
Who did you go with? Family, friends?
Purpose is the reason you went on the trip: I wanted to spend time with my husband…
The “reason” is why you’re taking the trip.
PURPOSE IS THE REASON WHY YOU COMMUNICATE.
What is the desired outcome you want from a situation?
What are you walking into and what do you want to take out?
What can the other party expect?
What is the one thing you want the other person to take away?
Maybe you want to talk about many things:
Which would you want to talk about first?
- What’s the key thing you want this person/group/team to take away?FOUR STEP FRAMEWORK:
- 1. Start with a goal: what is the action, emotion, understanding you want to come out of this? What are you hoping to accomplish at the end of this interaction?Are you trying to resolve something? Is the goal to come up with a plan?
Set up your conversation so you have clarity on the goal.
2. Craft your core message… the process of going through it in order to give yourself some clarity. Even if you still end up with a few problems, going through this process will help you resolve and elevate plenty. Some things are much higher in importance than the others. Craft your core message.
Stay grounded in why you’re having this conversation
3. Structure your support: provide relevant details or evidence. Avoid overloading with unnecessary info
4. End with a Call to Action: outline what you need from your audience.
When things are on the line it can be tough to keep your cool. Especialyl in these situations we need some type of center. Purposeful centering.
Once emotions are hightened, it’s hard to stop and say, “what are we doing here?”
It really is a practice of your mind. Stop and say, “What am I trying to do here? Am I adding to the chaos?”
Centering of purpose is even more important in these challenging situations
(I’m cracking up cause it’s valentines day and I just keep relating all of this to my relationship hahaha. It just feels like a dating advice class.)
=Tie the goal of your conversation to the goal of your client.
Map out the message and have a call to action at the end (this is really a great idea for marketing too!!!)
We often forget the call to action because we get so focused on the message.
Because of the talking, there is an assumed call to action.
Don’t let people assume there is a greenlight to go run. Be specific about when you need versus just discussing.
“Your cape is always on, whether you recognize it or not. When you walk into that room, the team members are going to see you as the leader.”
PEOPLE:
Building connections through knowing your audience and powerful storytelling.
Trust Pyramid: three areas (awareness, relevance, and connection)
Purpose in Action:
What scenario would you like to improve your communication impact?
Map your message:
What outcome or action do you want?
What is your core message and key takeaway?
What evidence supports your message?
What specific step do you need from your audience?
Partner Discussion:
As a communicator, what do you notice?
As an audience, what do you notice?
Awareness: Know your audience?
Context: Is it informal? Regulatory? What are walking into?
Characteristic: Who are the people you are engaging with? What are their roles? What are their experiences and what are they coming into?
Senior leaders may need a quick executive summary, while the team leader needs more details
Concerns: What are they concerned about? What is keeping them up at night?
Understand their pain points when you’re tailoring the message.
You could be making absolutely valid points, but if your intended audience isn’t concerned about it, it doesn’t matter
Communication Styles: Be aware of yourself and their style.
Do you like to dive into things? Be direct? Do you treasure relationships and sometimes go around things?
Know the other person and people, is it an introverted group? More active? Understand your audience to achieve your purpose.
“Communication is measured at the listener’s ear, not at the speaker’s mouth.” - Kim Scott, Radical Candor
Strict board meetings, casual team meetings… any/all of these conversations it holds true.
You can speak to things that are relevant when you have better context. Once you know your audience a bit more, if you know who you’re talking to, understand their concerns and styles… then you can look at your message and your purpose.
Tailor your words to the audience.
TAILOR YOUR MESSAGE
RELEVANT: it needs to be relevant to be meaningful.
RESONANCE: make the message connect emotionally.
The moment you understand their concerns you have a better chance to connect.
RECIPROCITY: engage so you’re having a dialogue.
Communication is two ways, it’s not a broadcast.
You want to engage the other side and see what’s their stake & perspective.
What do they see in this situation.
Speaker tells a story: “Earlier in my career, I was the director for the membership organization. The manager was a great sponsor for me and put me in a board meeting to share member survey data. Excited, great data, good insights there with some decisions that need to be made. I thought the meeting went well, we talked about things, satisfaction, what members want. At the end of the meeting, I realize we dove really deep into the data, but now that we came out of it… w didn’t really make a decision on the two things that we wanted to. The feedback my manger gave me was about tailoring my message. I was really into the data and gave a lot of good information, the board was from an engineering and tech background, so they were in their element too digging into the deep data. Understanding the characteristics of my board, the board has the propensity to go deep, so it would have helped me a lot to actually say, “hey this is great, we’re going to talk about XYZ, but we need to make decisions on A&B”. I went in, talked about the data, had a great time, but didn’t really get to the endpoint of we need to make these decisions”. I thought I knew the audience, great, they like data…. But I didn’t tailor it in a way that met the audiences needs (they need to make decisions on this) we didn’t do that. I got engagement in terms of data, but not in lined with my purpose. It’s all about who you’re talking with.”
When you are a few steps disconnected from your audience, whoever you’re connected with, that’s who you need to ask questions of. At least have that direct conversation and see if there are other ways to find out if it’s a certain association or client. Do this from talking to others and researching. Who can I talk to to learn more about that field and what they’re concerned about? Sometimes you don’t have direct connection… but as much as you can, ask them outright? How do you make this effective?
How do we make it so that it actually lands for them? How do we make it land for whoever it is that we’re working with. How can we set this up for success?
Connect to the concerns and values of the person.
Some want to see the data and numbers behind it.
Know your audience and how they function.
What’s the core value? Do you want to save lives? Save money? Save time?
True or false: People are more likely to listen to your message if they can relate to it on a personal level…? TRUE
STORIES ARE A TOOL:
Bringing in an emotional connection with relatable stories and experiences helps people engage and undreastnd the message better. YOu’re not here just to go, “hey, I’m telling a story” - but again, what is the purpose? Why are you saying this ? What is the purpose behind this story.
- Studies show that stories are 22x’s more memorable than facts alone
Lol this reminds me of the joke/video they showed at the event about healthcare and how I had no clue why they played that joke, though “hey, I’m showing a video”
Do you come from a natural storytelling personality? If not, it’s okay. We’re not making up stories here
You don’t need to be fancy, funny, entertaining…. Just be authentic. Help others relate to your message a bit better.
Ground on authenticity. You don’t need to be a whole different person to tell about your experience, just tell about your experience with authenticity and relatability.
What about you is relatable and insightful?
What did you learn from this and what do you hope others learn from this?
Framework for effective story-telling:
Context
Set it up to be relatable and interesting for your audience.
Set the context
Challenge
What’s going on? Running out of time? Failed? Working on something new for team?
Build it up
Resolution
What happened during the story? What adds to the lesson that you would want to share about this experience?
Lesson
What did you learn from it that is important enough that you’re actually sharing the story with your audience?
Record yourself. You don’t know how you sound.. sometimes passion can come off as anger, who you’re just really feeling it? When you’re like this you may sound angry/mean. IT’s weird to watch yourself and practice… but it can be worth it. Answer it, record yourself, watch yourself - and learn how you’re responding.
You will become a better storyteller and mentor.
“Communication is not a personality trait. Storytelling and connecting isn’t a personality trait… you can always practice and improve your skills. Each day get 1% better. “
When speaking with someone else, think about your purpose? Give them and yourself the respect to try your best to tell the story. What do/not to include? Stay within the framework, round out with what you learned… think of what you learned. You can keep going back to what you learned
Frameworks: the beauty is that its a hanger where you can hang the rest of the materials on
The practice that you’re doing, what you’re doing today, it’s just one try of it
If it doesn’t feel quite right, go back and see if something else works.
You don’t have to do anything… but it’s good to have guidance on how to tell a story. If you include a little of all of this, it’ll help you craft a story to deliver your message. (Is the story clear, does it resonate, is it say to connect?)
As a storyteller, it can be tough to figure out where to start… the first couple of words can be tough, but after a while you can get going.
Work on your lead in.
Write everytyhing down, get it out, then you can always go back to the beginning. Get it all down.
Maybe you treat your story like a movie: tell the genre… say it’s going to be an adventure, dramatic, technical
“It’s okay to stumble on the words if you heart is in the right place”
genre: it reminds me of _____, it’s a bit similar to ____, this story is really dramatic so get ready
I did something really embarrassing
It’s a little tough to get, but have you seen “____”, it’s similar to that
When your story ends up crazy, no one is surprised…
Framework and structure are tools, but the authenticity and heart and experience is the goal.
Your own wisdom no there ruins the point. You need to make the connection. Be honest with yourself or it’s tough for the other side to grasp what’s going on.
There is such thing as oversharing, especially when giving feedback… prioritize what is really important to share.
Sometimes its easy to forget to share what was done WELL because the problems stick out so much
This event has me speaking up so much hahaha. It’s a really engaging event.
Name what you’re going to talk about:
Those are interesting conversations, thanks for bringing it up… we’re here to talk about “X” but I see that this is “Y”… has our objective changed? What do we want to talk about right now?
Actively manage this so that we achieve our purpose.
We wanted X, Y is being more important… so you need to manage this.
Crucial conversations:
You need to prepare and set the stage for success:
Define your intent, start wit your heart
Clarify your goals and anticipate challenges
Execute the conversation so that it is productive for everyone involved
Follow up to summarize the next steps and check in later
Remember nonverbal communication:
Keep open body language, make eye contact, make affirmative gestures, mirror positive postures, respect personal space
Avoid: defensive posture, eye contact avoidance, inconsistent facial expressions, excessive gesturing, restless movement
Let’s figure out hot to address this. Let’s discuss why this is important. Let’s review what needs to happen next?
Self advocacy is a learned skill.
Generational & cultural difference in communication style. Especially when you have a big age and power difference… interpreting what they may see as “not a big deal” versus you thinking it’s a big deal. They say, “Kids these days” but you’re like, “uh, yeah! We are the future!!!”
- We don’t specifically talk about it here, but we can use specific examples
In general, a lot of the principals we talk about hold true. Whether it’s’ someone much older, younger… what’s the purpose and the intent? Are you trying to make a positive connection or not?
Are you nervous and initimidated… what are you trying to get out of it? Ground on your purpose and intent…
It’s a human thing, not a generational thing.
What are they concerned about that they can potentiall relate to? If your intention and purpose are clear and positive, you can find a good way to communicate that
ZOOM MEETINGS:
When you’re meeting online, discuss explicit norms:
- “we always do cameras unless____”
If you want to raise your hand, raise your hand
If you want to speak ____
Tell them what the norms are from the start
Proactively manage… your purpose and intent is to have a productive conversation. Make sure the conversation is had.
The first couple minutes definte them all. “Everyone turn on your cameras, evroyne turn off” - different companies have different company cultures. Advise leaders to be more intentional about it. When you are opening or leading a remote meeting, set up your norms.
- We’re doing a lot of brainstorming in this meeting. We’d love it if you turn your camera on.
Connect your actions and your “why” to the purpose.
Cameras on, unmute. The action of unmuting someone… a lot of people don’t unmute.
LUNCH/LEAVING:
I had to leave the event early because of a meeting I had from 1-2, so I missed a big part of this event.
Funny enough, a number of peopel were sad to see me go hahaha. A few peopel came up to me and applauded the ideas I shared and thanked me for saying a few things I’d said. It was something I haven’t had happen at that level, before, but made me feel great - duh! haha. It is fun to experience my personality and confidence (and usefulness) blossom bit by bit.
This does remind me of the BOLD Women’s event I went to (lol! another womens’ event about speaking up and amplifying your voice hahaha) and that one I did amplify my voice and share what i’d learned about crawlers and marketing from a different marketing event). So, it’s fun to have these opportunities to speak up and share useful info.
uh ohhhh - I realize I like this, now… the action of “saying smart things at events” hahahaha. :D
Until next time… let’s get into the details of my reviews hahaha. Enough of that.
Conference “Overall Rating” Further Elaboration:
VENUE - /5
Room for Improvement:Okay, the outside of Bellevue City Hall is weirdly eerie… it has an uprooted dead tree metallic statue/art out front??? and its like chopped off just to be the bottom of a dead knocked over tree… Tell me how I’m wrong about that being a little eerie!? Hahaha.
Besides that, the room was great but PACKED. It was a compliment to the turn-out :)
FOOD - 4/5
Room for Improvement: Classic Panera breakfast, lunch was boxed lunches. Not out of control amazing, but not bad at all. I wish they’d had tea + coffee, not just coffee. Cause then I end up drinking coffee.
SPEAKER CONTENT - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: This started a little slow, but ended up super interesting and engaging. Everyone was enjoying the conversation and finding it useful. Completely!!! It was a surprisingly useful and great event that everyone on Earth should attend hahah. This type of check-in with yourself as an employee/professional/advocate for your ideas is so useful.
NETWORKING OPPORTUNITIES - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: They just made so many efforts to make time for peopel to talk, that by the end, even I was hitting it off with a few people!! It was a great event that focused on talking with others and sharing with the group. It was so useful to hear from others this much.
LIKELINESS TO RETURN - 5/5
Allow me to Elaborate: I love the topic and I loved the event. For sure I want to build a good relationship with this group and work together somehow soon :)
Until next time, I wish you the motivation and success to search for opportunities around your area. Search and explore: Who is out there giving talks? There are new things happening all of the time
Find relatable or interesting topics you like and check them out! Maybe even something hosted at a cool venue, if there’s no other reason to go. Let’s see what you can learn and discover not too far from home. 😊
