Carol:
Hello, hello, and welcome again to another episode of The People-Forward Leadership Podcast. I am just beyond thrilled today because I have a very special guest, one of definitely a part of the catalyst team of influencers and leaders in the industry who has blazed a trail and has done some amazing things within her industry. And I'm so excited that she has agreed to be on our podcast today to share a little bit about her journey and a little bit about how she sees and is implementing the people for leadership within not only her career but also in her work that she does within the transit industry. So let me just for a moment introduce this amazing catalyst. This woman, her name is Tomika Monterville. She is the chief of the South Central Region of the Federal Railroad Administration's Office of Regional Outreach and Project Delivery.
Tomika has held various transportation roles in Florida and the Washington metropolitan area, and she has been the associate director for transportation with Prince George's County Department of Public Works and Transportation. She's been with the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, and District of Columbia's first rapid bus service. She has also been the first executive director of H Street, Main Street in Washington D.C. So if that introduction give you a little insight of the trailblazer that this woman is, you will find out more as we go through this particular interview. So with that, Tomika, thank you so much for taking the time and being on the podcast today.
Tomika:
Thank you, Carol. I'm so excited to be here today. Oh my gosh, I love you so much. You're part of the reason why I'm okay with listening. So I just thank you so much for having me today. It's a pleasure.
Carol:
I appreciate that. Thank you. So I shared a lot about your journey, but I would love for you just to encapsulate that for the listeners to share a little bit about your journey and all the way that's led you to the C-suite and the Federal Railroad Administration.
Tomika:
I like to say that I'm one of those fortunate people who actually fell into something that I love and didn't know that I loved it. I was born in Tennessee and Memphis, Tennessee, raised in Los Angeles and went to Howard University, HU, you know, and love Washington D.C. Graduated, moved back home to LA. Oh my gosh, did not want to do anything in finance, have an undergraduate degree in finance. My uncle actually got me a job at Metro in LA as an intern, and so I knew nothing about... This is what I knew about transportation.
I knew if the bus was late, you got mad at the bus driver and complained to the bus driver. I was bussed in the yellow school bus from junior high to high school. That's what I knew about transportation. But later after I had that job, it just piqued an interest in me. I worked on, this is how old this year marks my 30th year in transportation, which is super amazing. It's my ministry. I've been blessed by it. I didn't know it was a blessing, but I fell into it. I worked on the South Bay Area planning team and one of my first projects was planning for streetcar or light rail in LA on Crenshaw Boulevard. So this was 25 years ago, like 30 years ago.
And fast-forward today, there's the green line, exposition line, all of these things, but I didn't know what that was. So I knew I loved transportation. I was there for a year, hated traffic in LA, went back to D.C. And I said I found out what transportation planning was and I needed to go to school to get a degree in it in order to actually do the work that I was doing.
So went back to D.C. was looking at logistics. I didn't quite know what this transportation thing was. I looked at colleges, I looked at Embry-Riddle. People said, "Oh, go there for planning, transportation planning." So I knew it was planning and I knew I loved airports. So I said, "I'm going to go to graduate school and be an airport planner." Went to graduate school, Florida State University, got my master's in transportation, got hired by HNTB, a large transportation company here, 9/11 happens, laid off, no more airport planning. They're doing security planning. And so I just went on this journey of subsequent jobs that led me to my next job and it's really about relationships. So when you talk about people-forward, every career decision that let me move forward, there were so many amazing people on my journey who opened up doors for me and introduced me to things in the industry that led me to other jobs in the industry.
So that is really how my career began in transportation. But I like to say it's my ministry and I didn't even know it because my first bus ride, I remember with my grandmother, she was a domestic in Memphis, Tennessee. I remember riding the bus and then my aunt, my great aunt would tell me about riding the red car. If you look behind me, you see all this transportation nerd stuff. But my great aunt rode the red car from Long Beach to downtown LA. So all these stories kind of come together and I feel like my steps were divinely ordered in this field. And my mom had me as 17. She was a teenage mom, but her first job was at FedEx, transportation. Go figure. So that's kind of my journey and that led me to FRA. I spent most of my career in public transit and several years ago with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Federal Railroad Administration became a grant-making agency.
And so what we do is we support cities and states in making sure that our rails are safe, making sure that passenger rail is safe and accessible, and also making sure infrastructure, the rail infrastructure is safe, is quality, and it represents economic development for so many communities. When you look at that Amazon package, it probably came here on a freight train. So I feel privileged because many years ago I wanted to work at FRA and didn't get it hired, but I feel like this is where my career is supposed to be right now, helping communities, helping with the priorities of the nation and moving people and goods and making sure our communities have safe and quality and efficient transportation.
Carol:
Wow, that is an incredible story and I love how you talk about it as your ministry and I love the connection between your mom, your grandmother, your aunt, just your family and their connection to it and how you fell into it and the passion you have around it, which I think is so incredible.
Tomika:
Girl, I can talk to you. Well, I have talked to you about this stuff, so there's that part too.
Carol:
I think it's awesome. I think it's awesome. You and I, in the journey of your career, we connected around doing some executive coaching and I would love for you to share a little bit about how the coaching process specifically helped you in shifting your leadership mindset and your approach to really digging in deeper into a people-forward leadership focus.
Tomika:
Okay. So I think the first thing I have to say is most people are introduced to their career coach through a referral or through website or LinkedIn or something like that. Oh, I'm a coach. You need a coach. You're trying to level up and I found you because of fashion, okay? Because this is how I found you. I was scrolling, going down a rabbit hole, and I love feng shui and I saw you, your book on feng shui and fashion. I was like, "This lady looks amazing. How can I be Carol when I grow up?" And so the funny thing is there was nothing about your gift and your ministry of coaching. It was about fashion. That's how I found you. And then went down this journey, it was almost six years ago now, I had just completed the American Public Transportation Association's Leadership Program.
And so like I said, my journey has been very blessed and people, Edward Johnson, Tiffany Homler Hawkins, CEO of LYNX now, the transit agency in Orlando, they supported me and funded my leadership journey. Through this particular program, you learn how to lead within the public transit industry. It's a highly, highly subscribed program. Everyone doesn't get in. So I felt very privileged. And after I completed that program, I still felt that I needed some support to identify what my path should be because what I was doing, and thanks to you, I was selling myself short. I was saying, oh, six years ago I had almost 20 years in the game, but I was still thinking, oh no, I should not be a CEO or a deputy or any of those things.
I was reaching small, I was doing the baby monkey bars. Honey, we need to be up here on... You know, right? No. No, no, no, no, no. You need the big girl monkey bars now, girl on the playground. And so what you did is all the things that I learned in the transportation industry. I mean, I've done service planning, I've done operations, I've done all of these things, but I needed to level up in my ability to sit at the table and be confident. And so I had the technical skills. And I think a lot of women, and I think a lot of marginalized groups, you always feel like you need that extra thing.
And so what I learned my time with you was I had everything I needed. I mean before I met you, I was about to go to law school. I was about to go get my three more degrees and you said, "Pop the brakes, sis. You don't need all that. You have everything you need. You just need to walk in your greatness." And so I think with a coach, you are given the tools, you're given the confidence, and you're also given the space to kind of navigate and figure it out and brainstorm about what is the path that speaks to you? What is the path that is going to get you to your north star? And that's what people-forward is to me. When I talk to my teams, I always say, when you take a role, no matter what it is, what's your north star?
What do you want your legacy to be? And that's how I try to lead with my teams is it doesn't matter where I go, what matters is how I lead this team because they won't remember to make a Monterville, but they're going to remember if I left them with work that wasn't done properly. What do you want your legacy to be in the workspace? Because people are going to leave, but the work stays the same. And one thing I also learned from you, which has helped me tremendously through this phase of my career is generations in the workplace. You have spoken to many of the people in my field about generations in the workplace, but I think we do not harness the importance of we have, what, six generations in the workplace now leveling up and upskilling. When you work with people who are new in their career, it challenges you, you learn from them.
And when they work with you, they learn some of those soft skills that are necessary to understand how people communicate. Some people text, some people pick up the phone and call. Some people send emails, some people are in the field, they [inaudible 00:12:10] none of that. So I think working with you helped me to identify those gaps in areas that I was not aware of. Those blind spots in being a leader and I focus on those things that you taught me and they've helped me to focus on my people more and to understand that they're all unique and in my current team the skills that each of those individuals have thinking people-forward, how do I move them forward? It's allowed me to build a dynamic team, a team that has so much versatility, but each of them has a unique skill that adds value to the whole team.
And that's the people-forward, right? We want to keep them moving. And I tell them, I said, "I can't teach you how to be a better project manager. You've been doing it for about a decade. But what I can do is I can help you facilitate to get to that next stage in your career. I can help you navigate those difficult conversations because I've learned from you and other leaders I've had the privilege of working for is to speak plainly, like the old folks say, tell it like it is."
And that's something that's been a challenge for me with being a catalyst, being people-forward. People are not always ready for a direct approach from a woman, from a woman of color. But I'll let them know, this is what I got to give you, baby. You could take it, these are pearls I'm going to give them to you today, but they might cost you next week. So you could take them now or you could take them the hard way because I recognize, and because of you, I recognize I have a unique ability to communicate about transportation. I've had that. I've been fortunate enough to have that. And everyone, you're not everyone's cup of tea, but that's okay. You could be somebody's cup of coffee, cup of Joe, you could be somebody's sparkling water. You are not for everyone. But the main thing in being people-forward is you respect the diversity of your team.
You respect that, you're not going to always agree, but you know what we do? We discuss it, we figure it out, and we come to a solution that's going to help us be a catalyst in our organizations and to adapt to change. And I think that is what is missing today is that people think because we don't agree about the leadership goal or the leadership approach, that we just got to be enemies. No, we got to figure out how to make this work, how to keep these trains moving safely, how to keep our consultants working because if you work in consultant, then I work in government. If you work in government, consultants are working, and if we're all working, we're moving the nation forward. And that's something that I think people lose sight of. And that's what I think when we talk about people-forward, we have to continue to navigate the difficult conversations.
And I love a difficult conversation, Ms. Carol, let me tell you. I love it because that's where I get the breakthroughs when we don't agree and I don't understand, but we communicate. It's not going to always be roses and sunshine. But what I appreciate on my team, my team will come to me and say, "Tomika, you are out of pocket in that meeting, girl, I think you came a little too hard for them." But you got to create space. When you're people-forward, you create space for those who don't agree with you.
And more importantly, with your subordinates, with generations in the workplace, you have to be able to allow them to communicate when they're not comfortable. Because if they're not comfortable communicating with you, they're going to go somewhere where they are. And so I want to keep people, I want to grow people and develop them. And those are things that I've learned through coaching. If I hadn't met you six years ago, I honestly couldn't tell you where I would be today. I would still be in transportation probably, but I wouldn't have the confidence to really show up as I am with the knowledge that I have and make myself small in spaces that I previously didn't think I belonged. And that's what people-forward is.
Carol:
You have dropped so many nuggets. And I just want to unpack it a little bit because from the people-forward leadership framework, the way I look at it starts with there's three pillars. There's leader awareness is that gaining that confidence, knowing your gifts, knowing your strengths, knowing how you need to show up. And when that amplifies, it elevates. Then the next is what I called empowered ecosystem. And that's about now how do I now take my team and elevate my team, help them see their strengths, help them see what they bring to the table, how do I bring them together so that we can have intellectual friction without social friction that we can have, as you said, the difficult conversations so we can respect that different generations are showing up in communicating differently. And how do I make those adjustments because I'm aware enough as a leader to be able to be aware enough about how to support my team at the highest level.
And then we move into collective learning, I like to call it. And that's when we are looking at the larger opportunity to create spaces of safety and of trust and of learning. Right? Now, how do we figure this out? Or we took this path earlier, now let's figure out what didn't work, what does work so that we can meet our ultimate goals and ultimate objectives. And you articulated that so beautifully in your journey from starting with yourself and your focus and your vision, leaning into your team, helping that vision come alive and empowering them to step up in their brilliance and then creating a system, a space for them to be able to flourish so that they can learn, they can challenge, they can have the difficult conversations and they can grow and learn as the organization and the industry is growing and learning.
So that's the foundation of that framework that I'd like to think about and roll out when I work with organizations and leaders. And you have articulated what that looks like and what that means so beautifully and a lot of nuggets that you shared in there. So hopefully, people-
Tomika:
Thank you, ma'am.
Carol:
-rewind, take notes. This is exactly how it's done. So fabulous.
Tomika:
And it's a privilege. I have to say, when I look at my teams, I learn so much from them. And it's a two-way street, Carol, and this is something you've talked about in our work together, is that it's not always just what you can do for that organization, but what can that organization do for you?
And I think that's where a people-forward leader comes in to say, "Hey, hey, that's wonderful that you have all these degrees. That's wonderful that you've been here for a while, but what do you really want to do? Because I noticed you haven't been showing up 100% like you used to. What's going on with you?" And people-forward for me means I focus on the people. The work comes second because if you are not right up in your head, if something is going on with your family, you are not going to show up 100%. You might get 65% today if my babysit. You might get 75 today if my husband me off or my partner me off. You might get 85% if traffic was bad. And so I think when you talk about people, you got to be human first. You have to recognize that I listened to Tony Jones inspiration and she has a song, these are affirmations for a grown woman.
She has one that says, "I'm a human being, not a human doing." so if you are doing things-
Carol:
Love that.
Tomika:
-at home, that take you away mentally at work, you're not going to be 100%. So I could give you another responsibility, another task, another project. But if you are not in here together or something is going on, your mental health ain't 100, we're not going to get no work done. And who does that impact? The whole organization. So I try very hard to build rapport and build relationship and build trust with my team members so that they are comfortable sharing those things with me because then in turn, that helps me assess their performance. But it also helps me identify is this a coaching opportunity? Is this a counseling opportunity or is this we need to sit down and get you some certifications because you're not able to complete the work.
And you have to focus on people because if you get to know their patterns, you get to know the process and then you get to progress because the people are going to tell you who they are. If they not telling you, they showing you, and we know how that shows up at work, not performance, poor performance, but then you can develop a process of how you lead that individual. And then that's how you get that progress that you talk about.
You get progress, you get promotion. All those piece come from that. When you focus on the people and their needs, the work is going to get done. And I've been fortunate enough to have space and have leaders who have empowered me, that ecosystem, that empowering ecosystem has been fortunate. I've been fortunate enough to have people who create that space for me. They say success is you. When they talk about pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, I ain't had no day. I got no bootstraps, honey. I had people in my corner saying, "Tomika, hey, do this. Tomika, hey, you playing DC Streetcar project, but you ain't managed nobody." And I was like, "I don't want to manage anybody." Little did I know my blessing came and being open to managing. That supervisor, [inaudible 00:21:46], said, "Tomika, you've done really great projects. You started DC's first bus rapid transit, you worked on, I'm probably one of the last planners alive who planned DC Streetcar, but you haven't managed anyone, so you don't challenge yourself. You're not going to grow."
And I think that right there in 2009, she said that to me and I was like, "Girl, I just want to make as much money as possible without managing people. That's a headache." And I think most supervisors say that, but then I just fell into it and I love it and I'm pretty good at it. I know, like I said, I'm not everyone's cup of tea, but I look at the people who I get a boot, it's blessing, some blessings when I get to talk to people and help them navigate like you've helped me navigate, it's a privilege. It's a privilege to manage and help people navigate because how they navigate their career impacts their lives.
And so I think how we show up at home is often how we show up at work, but creating a people-forward mantra with the leadership knowing yourself, creating that ecosystem, and then we can collectively build and grow organizations. And that's something that I think is missing in the transit industry, in public transit is there is no ladder unless you go through leadership APTA. But we have to start creating that type of people-forward conversation when someone is a staff level person. I talk to my team, I say, "Everybody's a leader, you put your clothes on in the morning. You are leading something, so you can be a leader. It's just a matter of having someone who helps you navigate and get a coach like you Dr. C."
Carol:
Yeah, and I love that because what I hear you saying is how you were so open to opportunities and you like talked about being blessed and having people who poured into you and really being open to that support. But I want to have a conversation about that, about the industry itself and often the focus, strong operations, safety, which are important things to be trained on and to have a focus on within your industry. But you started talking about this, but why do you think investing in leadership training and coaching is crucial for the industry's future success?
And what do you think are some of the challenges, right? And like you said, you have APTA, but only as you said, the elite few can have that opportunity and it's not available to everyone. And so there may be, unless you're looking for it, I think you use the term you have to create your own ladder because there's not one very obviously available to you if you are new or young in transportation and you want to step into something more and embracing this kind of people for a leadership progress or process. I would love just to hear your thoughts about the importance of investing, developing this kind of people-forward approach for the industry's future, and what do you think are some of the challenges to doing that?
Tomika:
I think for the public transit industry specifically, I think the biggest challenge is creating a culture where skills related to supervising and leading are paramount. So what happens on in public transit is you might be a bus operator and in order for you to grow in your career and in the industry, you become a rail operator if the agency you works for has a rail program. But if you're in a small mid-sized medium urban community or small town that has public transit, you don't really have a ladder and that ladder is lacking because there's no need for it. But the reality is, and that's the perception that there isn't a need to provide leadership skills and training and supervisory skills. So in these types of industries, it's really a, "Oh, you've been there 10 years, you have 10-year, let's promote you to a supervisor." That's typically how it happens in public transit.
You have a operator pick every quarter you get to pick which routes you want. That's based on seniority, that's based on bargaining unit status, all of those things. But these are people who create risks for you too, because if they're not aware of federal and state and local hiring laws, those types of things you don't learn. So creating a people-forward program within our transit agencies is going to reduce risk for you.
If you look at public transit agencies and just ask CEOs, how many personnel do you have related to supervisors and bus operators or lower level administrative staff and their supervisors, typically I would venture to say if you did a survey, looked at the number of lawsuits and the types of lawsuits, they could have been prevented. We talk about preventable accidents or preventable crashes, things that are preventable from a physical vehicle perspective. But where are the preventable lawsuits that we could have if we just spent a week giving a supervisor training on federal laws? What you don't say, I tell my team, I tell supervisors, I say, "If someone has leave, let them use it. Don't ask them any questions because it's not your business, supervisor. All you have to know is they have leave, it's available to you, they notify you and that's it."
But a lot of times little questions such as reasonable accommodation. If you've never been a supervisor, but you have 10 years as a bus operator, you get promoted to supervisor, but you've never even heard of what a reasonable accommodation is unless you had one, you don't even know the process. So half the battle is just teaching them the process, teaching them minefields, things to avoid, things you don't say. Many times in the public transit field, you have people who are supervisors, not because they've gone through any type of requisite training, but because they have tenure. And so if we took the time to create a program specific to those first line supervisors who've never ran anything before, who've never managed people, you reduce the risk for your agency. And I think a lot of public transportation agencies could reduce the amount of payouts that they've had or the amount of time.
When you look at the fully allocated cost of the time for a bargaining unit employee to be off from work for whatever injury, illness or lawsuit or complaint. Think about the fully allocated cost of the time of all of the staff who have to respond to the complaint, who have to be in the hearing, who have to do all those things. If you had taken a week, 40 hours and just trained that supervisor on things to avoid, you probably could have avoided, I would say, about a thousand hours of fully allocated cost of several employees time dealing with that issue.
Carol:
Which could turn to millions, millions of dollars of wasted time. Yeah.
Tomika:
Over transit to millions of dollars from your work representing people, representing companies. And I think if you have that mindset, but it's transactional. And this is what I talk to my supervisors about. I talk about managing, there's tactical supervision and there's relational supervision.
So I explained to them that when you're a supervisor, you're tactical, but I said, "When you become a manager or a leader, you're relational.? So if you think it's, "Oh, do this because I've said it and you didn't do this and I told you to, and that's your supervisory skill, you're going to lose out every time."
So I focus on the relationship, focus on the person, because when you build a relationship with an employee, they will come to you as many of my team members have come to me and said, "Tomika, I'm looking for another job because A, B, C, and D." So that gives me time to do my succession plan, but I'm always succession planning because it's only a matter of time before someone leaves or get promoted. And that's what you want. You want people to leave because it's a testament to your leadership skill and your people-forward approach if they leave. If everybody stays, that means you probably ain't helping them stay.
Carol:
Well, you're helping to develop other people. I mean, I love how you said that because that is a testament. I mean, if you're developing people where they've reached the pinnacle underneath you and now you have prepped them and they're ready to go to the next level, that is an incredible legacy. But I love what you said about the tactical and the relational because that's the piece that I have seen so often. And even in conversations with other leaders in the industry, just things like not having enough emotional intelligence, not having the ability to have conversations with people, not knowing how to develop your people, like you said, is it a coaching conversation or is it a skill building conversation? And not knowing the difference between the two.
Being able to have those hard conversations and to be able to deal with conflict and other issues like those, what we used to call soft skills, which I know Simon Sinek calls them human skills, which is foundational in a people-forward leadership process. As a leader, you have to understand how to do that because as you said, if not, your people will leave. And then now you're trying to replace people and we're celebrating subject matter experts, but we're not necessarily equipping those subject matter experts with the relational skills and tools they need to lead effectively.
Tomika:
Exactly, exactly. And I love public transit. It's been a blessing to me. So it's difficult to look at the lack of resources organizationally to focus on that because we are focused on meeting that schedule for that train or for that bus or whatever it is we're doing. We got to account to our boards of directors. But if we just took that time to equip our supervisors, first time supervisors, not with how you complete a time sheet, but what is emotional intelligence? Having the language and the words to communicate really could change the course of so many relationships in the workplace.
Carol:
Absolutely.
Tomika:
But if you don't know what it is, you can't identify, you can't censure yourself when you recognize, "Oh, I'm crossing that line." It's like my husband would say when he's a retired deputy sheriff, but he would say when he became a lieutenant and his sergeants would have a conversation that was inappropriate, he had the stop sign. So if you don't have the skills, you don't know when to put that stop sign up, and there's a transition period when your peers are now subordinates to you. Having a conversation with someone about, "Yeah, no, you can't go to lunch every day with Johnny who used to go to lunch with every time, but now you're supervising him." But if you don't know, like the old folks say, when you know better, you do better. And I think taking that time to really focus on that, we wouldn't have such a difficult time filling positions and taking a long time to fill them because we're doing that succession planning.
And that's always been a part of my leadership style. I teach my supervisors or whoever is subordinate to me or my backup, I include them on a lot of things because what often happens is you become a supervisor. You never sat at the table with people from the C suite, you don't know what to do. So what I do is I sit them at the table, I send them the emails, I say, "This is what we're discussing because we used to say, if you get hit by the proverbial bus, who's going to be able to pick up where you left off?" So equipping people and not limiting them saying, "Oh no, it's just the big wigs in this meeting," that limits your ability to go on vacation and not have to pick up your phone because that individual who's left in charge knows nothing about what to do or how to do it.
So I think when you use the people-forward approach, it gives you freedom. People-forward equals freedom. When you are a supervisor, you're sitting in the C suite and you are trying to go on vacation, but your phone keeps ringing. You miss something and that people-forward in those pillars, you clearly miss the part where you got to bring them along. And I think one of the challenges is a lot of times many people who are placed in leadership positions, but they aren't coached and trained to get there, they are micromanagers because they still believe that if I'm not in the room, no one else can do the work.
And that's the big mistake we make I think in leadership is that we believe that we have to be the smartest person in the room. I have a picture of my team up here on my other monitor. Those people are a hell of a lot smarter than I am, honey. I know a few things, but these people around me, they fill the gaps. They fill the gaps, and you have to be comfortable in a space to let people fill the gaps because a leader doesn't have to know everything. And I think that's something...
Carol:
What you said there is so powerful because it's the vulnerability, right? As a leader, being vulnerable enough to know that I don't know everything, but what I do know I'm fabulous at, but I'm smart enough to fill in the gaps with those people who do know what I don't know so that we can move forward and chart a new course. I mean, what you're sharing is so critical, and that's why that first foundation of leadership awareness, you have to know these things about yourself so that you don't get intimidated or frustrated or micromanage, that you don't know how to delegate or you're afraid to delegate, you have to do that first, that self-awareness piece, right? That legal awareness piece that allows you to be an effective leader so that you can delegate and uplift and support other people. It's incredible.
Tomika:
Yes, vulnerability. Vulnerability is number one. That was something, and you know my journey and you know my past positions in one of my past positions that you are very well aware of, I had a team member tell me that I was the worst supervisor they had ever had and that I was so horrible. No one wanted to come to work because of me, and I let her, honey, as my mother would say, she told her draws with me, honey. She told me I was everything but a child of God. I was crying. Let me tell you why I was crying. This young woman in attempting to help her and coach her, she had never had a supervisor do those things with her. And she took offense to many of the things that I was trying to instruct her in because that's-
Carol:
Emotional intelligence. People don't know how to manage their own emotions, but please go ahead.
Tomika:
They don't. [inaudible 00:36:50] brought her into my office, sat her down, she told me all these things, and once she told me the one thing and I said, "Well, what else am I not good at?" I just let her go to town, honey. She told me I was horrible. And I started crying because I said to myself, if I were her five years into my career, first of all five years into my career, I didn't have any supervisor who I felt that comfortable enough to tell them how horrible they were, even if they were.
But number two, if I had to get up every day and come into a place and work for someone who was as horrible as she described me, and they still kept coming, I said, "That has got to be the worst position to be in in the world." And I felt so bad for her. And that was one of my moments in my leadership journey where I said, "You know what? You're going to be okay." Because what I knew for certain was that that particular team member did not have the emotional intelligence to recognize their limitations and where they needed to actually draw upon some of the things I was sharing with them to be more successful.
Carol:
They were projecting.
Tomika:
The number two, I recognized they were clearly projecting, but I also recognized, and this was my first time being in a workspace actually with employees who are neurodivergent. And so that was a lesson for me. Those were gifts to me. The fact that I allowed that team member to share all of that with me and my peers were saying, "You better than me, girl, because I would've been like something else." But it helped me grow because I began to recognize that a lot of times when I have a team member with a challenge, it may be coaching, it may be counseling, it may be something I have no control over. And so when you're working with employees and you get to build relationships and you observe them as humans, you learn if there is a neurodivergent component of their behavior that they may not have control of.
So I think as leaders today, we have to recognize all of the different gifts and skills. And many people, I've had employees in this role who were neurodivergent, who had what I like to call different abilities, not disabilities, but they had different abilities. And I later learned that same employee who told me how horrible I was, they had made an employee with different abilities feel so horrible. And that employee later shared that with me and I felt so confident at that time that eventually that employee did resign. We allowed that employee to resign. But that's a cancer. And I think as a leader, you have to recognize when there are cancers in your work environment and when you have the ability to actually manage that relationship because how you manage that relationship is going to have a cataclysmic effect and impact on your team. If you don't-
Carol:
Yeah. And you did a phenomenal job of feedback loops are instrumental in a collective learning environment because, and as hard as maybe to listen, listening to that person gave you insight to that person. And when you're securing yourself and confident in yourself, you can hear those things and they may sting, but you can still utilize them as a tool for learning and growth. Now listen, Tomika, we could talk all day, but-
Tomika:
Yes, we can.
Carol:
I just have one final question.
Tomika:
Yes, ma'am.
Carol:
Pull things out. And that is how do you see people for leadership evolving in the transit industry, and what role do you hope to play in that evolution?
Tomika:
So interesting that you asked that, ma'am. I believe that the people-forward leadership model is critical and essential to the public transit industry going forward. I think if we want to continue to be able to move people, we have to have people who understand the value of people. And we have to have a workforce that is equipped to manage everything that's coming at us. And that's what public transit. I call bus operators, they're the workhorse of the industry. They got to be a cartographer. They got to be a customer service agent. They got to be a safety expert. They got to know CPR.
They got to do all the things to get you to from point A to point B safely. And that's a lot of stress on someone. But once they get to that point where they've managed to navigate it, driving people all over a region safely, and they want to move forward, we have to create an environment for them where they can get those lessons so that when they are 20 years in the game and become a chief operating officer, that they have the emotional intelligence, that they know the value and the gift of vulnerability in leading.
Because if they don't learn it early in their career, it's really difficult for them to have that shift because they may know operationally how to manage a transit agency, but do they know strategic priorities? Do they know how to read the tea leaves and see where the industry is going and sit down with your staff and help them prepare for that? And what types of retooling needs to happen within your agency so that you can withstand that? And so when I look at some of my mentors in the game, Deborah Johnson, Katharine Kelleman, they're leading transit agencies, but they've done it with the people-forward approach. But they are quick to say, "We got to change the game. We need to look at what we've been doing, see what is not helping us, and identify a space so that we can continue delivering these services, but also make sure we're bringing people along with us as leaders."
And for me, that means eventually I see my career once I'm done with FRA and no longer doing the work that I'm doing now, I really would like to be a coach in this industry because I think that it's been such a blessing to me. I think on the other side of my career working, I would love to be a coach and following your footsteps, Dr. C and do the things that you're doing because I think our industry is essential. It's critical. We learned during the pandemic that people still need to get to work, and we're going to always be here. But what that looks like is going to evolve and change and coaching and being people-forward is going to help us sustain whatever that next iteration of public transit looks like. And I know you're going to be there too, helping us, coaching us, coaching these leaders.
Carol:
Absolutely. Side by side with you. I think that is phenomenal and the industry will be blessed, elevated, and go to a new level with you stepping into that role to really coach and support the next generation of leaders stepping into running the organization. Listen, Tomika, thank you so much for your wisdom, your insight, your examples. I mean, you were very generous in this episode, just sharing so much.
Tomika:
Thank you so much.
Carol:
I think giving people a practical view of what it looks like at the ground level when you're leading with the people-forward leadership mentality. So thank you so much.
Tomika:
Thank you, Carol. I appreciate you.
Carol:
Yes. And that's it for this episode. Thank you so much for joining us. And remember, when your people thrive, organizational success is inevitable. I'll see you next time.
