If you always stick to the planned agenda and don’t allow for much change, you might be surprised to find out the #1 quality of a successful event manager.
What is the #1 quality of a successful planner? According to Julius Solaris who wrote the article, ‘Top 5 qualities of the successful event manager’ on Event Manager Blog, it’s…
1. Flexibility
Meetings with flexible planners have happy attendees, but what does it mean to be flexible? When planners treat their attendees like they want to be treated and are advocates for attendees to voice what they would like to do, it makes for a more satisfying experience. Julius Solaris gathered responses from a Linkedin event community trying to identify the attributes that make an event professional stand out. The top 5 qualities from the results: 1. flexibility, 2. people skills, 3. organization, 4. passion, 5. time management.
One example of true flexible planners that even the attendees recognized was at Event Camp East Coast held at our conference center. The attendees mentioned that they would want to watch an axe throwing contest (from a timber group) on property and Adrian Segar and Traci Browne, the planners/organizers improvised with the request. They decided to use 15 minutes of a 20 minute break to bring the group outside and watch the axe-throwing competition for entertainment. During the group perspective/retrospective session where attendees voiced all their positives and deltas for the conference experience, a reoccuring positive was the flexibility of the conference and the planners’ willingness to veer from a planned agenda to satisfy the attendees, rather than becoming concerned about being off-schedule.
As a planner, how do you steer from being too rigid and reinforce the quality of flexiblity? What examples have other planners shared with you about the beauty of flexibility?
Tags: best meeting planner practices, how to be a better planner
I couldn’t agree more! Flexibility is a key skill to have in order to complete any tasks. It is a great quality to have because showing flexibility is a great way to show that the person is also versatile and can handle anything!
Thanks for sharing, Megan Haney