Top Traits of Outstanding Event Planners
In the competitive events industry, event planners need to be at the top of their game to beat out the competition and be recognised as the very best.
The world's most successful event organisers develop winning mindsets and strategies, so they can deliver amazing events with enviable consistency.
To uncover this winning formula, we looked at the industry's most respected event planners and found that they shared these winning traits (which you can implement into your own career as an event planner or conference organiser).
1. The Best Planners Have a Contingency Plan (Or a Few of Them)
Even the most meticulously-planned events can go wrong. Whether it's bad weather that disrupts your outdoor activities, Wi-Fi issues at your venue, technical problems, or last-minute cancellations by important guests or speakers, there's one thing you can always count on in this line of work - somehow, somewhere, something could (and probably will) go wrong.
This is where the best event planners separate themselves from rest. Outstanding planners have contingency plans for possible problems well planned out - so when these issues show up, no one on the team is surprised. Everyone simply switches to "event plan 2.0", and the show goes on.
2. Outstanding Planners are Open-Minded and Constantly Improving
The best event planners in the business don't see their professions as jobs, they live and breathe their personas as event professionals. For these individuals, the learning journey never ends - and as many of us have seen, even today's most successful event formulas, will soon be outdated.
To innovate, event planners need to be open-minded to opinions and feedback from both clients and participants. So if you're not already collecting feedback via an event app or voting system, it's time to consider making this valuable, game-changing investment. It's also important to keep an eye out on what your competitors are doing.
Even if they're running different types of events and conferences from you, or are reaching out to entirely different audiences, there's always something you can learn from observing your best competitors - all you need is an open mind and attitude.
3. Amazing Planners are Superb Communicators
More so, they're multi-faceted communicators who can connect with people in face-to-face situations, be impactful when speaking to teams, chat effectively over the phone, and get their points across with emails.
Just as importantly, great planners have the ability to communicate well with people of all levels and backgrounds - from the event crew, to clients and partners, keynote speakers, international guests, CEOs and everyone in-between. If you're lacking in any area of your communication - for example,
if you believe that you communicate especially well over the phone, but not over email - it will be worthwhile to spend time improving the areas of communication that you're lacking in. After all, your clients or partners may not always have time to speak with you over the phone. (Or they may simply prefer other modes of communication.)
4. Successful Planners are Obsessed with Productivity
While every event planner understands the importance of productivity, the industry's best are obsessed with it - optimising the minutes they spend on individual tasks, every single day.
These planners do more than "strive to work faster" or "get more things done in a day".
They develop time management systems, keep track of the time they spend on action items, and have specialists they can outsource time-consuming tasks to - so they can spend their hours focused on higher level planning and event management, while trusting that everything else is under control.
