Now I know I can adapt my communication style

Key Takeaways

As told by Terri Fortner, San Juan County, N.M.  commissioner

I spent most of my career working directly with people. I was a registered nurse, so there was really no other way to do my job than communicating one-on-one with patients.

But when I ran for the county commission in 2020, it was the middle of the pandemic. When I was elected, we weren’t meeting in person, and that took away the kind of communication that helped me get to know my colleagues.

My husband was a commissioner before I was, so a lot of my experiences in county government meetings, either things I saw or things he related to me, took place in our commission room, where people could make eye contact with one another and there was a lot more nonverbal communication going on. And you could bump into people and have impromptu conversations.

In online meetings, it feels like there’s more of a running clock that you don’t have in person, so it seems like there’s less time to say what you want. That means you have to be concise and to the point if you want to cover everything in that short amount of time. You have to make sure there aren’t any miscommunications, either. 

It’s also hard to make sure you aren’t talking over someone else because there’s that little lag in the connection. Sometimes if their internet service isn’t great, they’ll drop off and you’ll have to repeat what you said to the empty end of the line.

I finished my master’s degree online, so I had some experience working on group projects with people in different states, so that was my first time doing that.

But I learned that how you communicate online depends on your audience and the topic. If you’re talking about doing a road project, as long as its funded and straightforward with no opposition, that’s easy to discuss. If you’re talking about doing a project that could disrupt their lives in their neighborhood, then you are going to have a lot more people involved, so public comment would be different in those settings. You must be more patient than you would be in person, because someone’s always going to be muted while they’re talking and there are going to be hiccups.

It’s still not my favorite way to communicate, but there are a lot of cost savings when you don’t have to drive somewhere for a meeting. But I’m always looking forward to being able to look someone right in the eye when I’m talking to them.