When you’re an event planner, you don’t only manage events. You deal with people, too.
This means building trust with attendees and clients, making your team feel supported, and defusing conflicts. Great event planners know how to pick up on people's feelings and use that knowledge to make event hosting not only manageable but also fun for clients, sponsors, staff, and attendees.
This requires skills that go beyond creating schedules and spreadsheets. Successful event planners need high emotional intelligence (EI) to anticipate other people’s needs and control their own stress. This makes them leaders others turn to for guidance in every event planning stage.
Emotional Intelligence for Better Decisions and Stronger Client Relationships
Emotional intelligence involves the ability to manage your emotions while also understanding how other people feel. Those with high EI have strong levels of:
• Self-awareness
• Self-regulation
• Social awareness
• Relationship management skills
An event planner with high EI makes clearer decisions and fosters good client relationships. For example, having the empathy to realise a client is stressed about certain issues allows your team to address and alleviate their fears early. This builds trust, making clients less likely to micromanage your team since they have confidence in your management style.
Managing Emotions Throughout the Various Event Stages
Every stage of event planning carries its own emotional challenges. As an event planner, you must be emotionally resilient to guide your team through:
• Event planning: Delegate planning responsibilities to those you know can handle tight timelines and unexpected changes. This ensures your team doesn’t burn out in the early stages.
• Event execution: Take a step back and be mindful of situations that trigger your stress and anxiety. Schedule time to meditate. Eat healthy meals during and after your workday. This helps you maintain the focus and energy necessary for tackling your to-do list, including last-minute issues.
• Stakeholder relationships and expectations: Study the needs and values of different stakeholders before meeting with them. Listen to their concerns. Establish
trust through constant communication. Assure them your team can take good care of their event and keep it on-brand.
• Teamwork and communication: Practice active listening to understand your team’s emotional dynamics and any difficulties in your work environment. Communicate, communicate, communicate! By encouraging open communication, you can step in to resolve conflicts before they escalate, keep everyone motivated, and strengthen collaboration.
• Post-event reflection and learning: EI helps you interpret feedback from event attendees by seeing the event from their perspective. Assessing your team's actions from this angle helps improve future event management and create events that appeal more to event audiences.
Better Event Management Through Emotional Intelligence
Stress and anxiety are realities for every event planner. But by employing emotional intelligence, you can manage your own stress while keeping those around you motivated and on task. Being empathetic helps you communicate effectively with clients, vendors, attendees, and staff, creating confidence in your managerial style and enhancing the quality of your events.
idloom provides a registration platform that automates and customises a myriad of processes, including registration, ticketing, payments, attendee communication, and more. This alleviates stress for event planners, enabling them to stay in control while managing the event. Contact us to see how we can support your events.