Inspiration Hub

Every successful leader knows ongoing professional and personal development is the pathway to continued success. Which is why people pay big bucks to attend leadership workshops. While it’s important that your workshop provides leaders with a new perspective on an old problem, there’s also fun to be had. Let these five leadership workshop activity ideas inspire you to strike the balance between strategy and play.

The cost of education—from college all the way to professional development throughout one’s career—can be significant. Knowing this, groups throughout the meeting and event industry have banded together for years to help ensure knowledge and advancement is a reality. The result is that there is now an incredible supply of scholarships to be had, thanks to generous donations from your planner peers, industry suppliers and professional associations.

Having a chronic illness while pursuing a career can be difficult to navigate. Every chronic illness manifests itself differently, and learning how to balance health with a full-time job takes time, effort, and trial and error. While it may feel impossible at first, juggling the two can be achieved.

It’s a harsh reality: No matter how skilled in event management you are, you won’t get your dream job if your resume doesn’t stand out. But when so much of your event planning work has to be experienced to be understood, how can you prove your prowess in writing? The key is to make the typical elements of an effective resume work to reflect your skills. Here’s a checklist of the essential elements that should be on your event manager resume so you can stand out from other applicants.

You’re a week from the event. The caterer wants to change the menu. Sponsors are requesting data that will take hours to pull. And your boss wants you to pitch the theme for your next event — today. You need to learn the art of saying no — whether to chaotic vendors, over-eager attendees, or your own staff. Giving in to every request can end up with you stretched too thin, making careless errors, or burning yourself out.

You do it all. As the owner of your own third-party planner business you are the captain of the ship—and the crew. To help you navigate the sometimes rough waters of running your own business, we put together this handy resource guide with tips for everything from marketing and taxes to technology and negotiating. Feel free to bookmark this page as we will continue to update it with new tools for managing and growing your company. Until then, we wish you fair winds, following seas and full agendas.

For many professionals, work/life balance is elusive. And even while off the job, people view leisure activities as a means to improving work performance — like practicing mindfulness or learning new productivity methods — instead of a way to genuinely relax and disengage. In fact, highlighting the professional benefits of leisure activities has become one of the only ways to trick people into taking up a hobby, according to Brigid Schulte, author of Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has the Time.

I define leadership as a person or organization that is always looking for ways to innovate, that is not afraid to push important and sometimes controversial issues ahead, that digs in to solve or build without waiting for others to do so, that doesn’t look for individual kudos, but rather for collective progress.

Fear has been described by the acronym FEAR: False Expectations Appearing Real. We know that change is often accompanied by fear, as well as a sense of risk, uncertainty, and excitement. It’s also true that if we change the way we see things, the things we see change. 

Along with the numbers that we crunch for the annual Convene Salary Survey, we ask a handful of open-ended questions. Including this one: What do you like least about your job? Although readers singled out problems including attrition and room blocks, cuts to hotel commissions, managing shrinking budgets, and dealing with inefficient work processes (“So. Many. Emails.,” was one response) the overwhelming majority of the answers to the question weren’t focused on logistical challenges. 

“Should I get a master’s degree or a certification?” It’s a question I’ve been asked a lot over the years. And my answer is usually an ironic, “Yes.” Asking, “Should I get a master’s degree or a certification?” is like asking, “Should I have an apple or should I have turkey and dressing with giblet gravy?”

Event planners are a special breed of hard-working, hyper-organized adrenaline junkies. Consistently named as one of the world’s most stressful jobs, the role of event organizer is uniquely challenging — yet equally rewarding for some. Think you were born to be an event planner? Check out these must-have event planning skills to see if you’ve got what it takes.

Feedback is a positive thing. It helps us identify ways we can improve our personal and professional lives, and yet we dread the idea of receiving any form of criticism. Why? According to a New York Timespiece, “Why It’s So Hard to Hear Negative Feedback,” it’s all about how we think — and feel — about it.

For meeting planners, being interrupted by competing priorities is a way of life. But did you know it takes, on average, 23 minutes to refocus your mental effort and energy on a task after being interrupted? (According to a study by the University of California.)

People or organizations who are passionate about something and put their hearts and minds into it, typically also want to leave something behind after their work is done: a best practice, a new approach, a better future for others or the earth … or maybe even create a building, a song, or a work of art. Something that says “I/we were here” and “ I/we tried to leave things a little bit better.” In other words, passionate people and organizations often want to leave a legacy.

Think event planning might just be the perfect career for you? If you love meeting new people, handle stress well, and pay attention to even the smallest of details, then yes — it totally could be. Whether you’re an experienced professional looking to make a change or a student wondering what type of degree to pursue, there are a number of paths you can use to break into the events industry. The first step? Getting the event planning education you need to excel as an event creator.

Breaking into event planning with little to no experience can be a challenge. And it’s REALLY hard to get experience if no one will hire you. Or is it? Hey, I’ve been there. I know the challenges. But they can be overcome with a few tactics, tools, and strategies. In this article, we’ll navigate this event planning career path together and give you the kind of jumpstart to your career you’ve been looking for. This guide will walk you through everything you need to know about landing your first event planning position and making the most of an incredibly rewarding career.

When Mark Lipton started researching executive leadership effectiveness decades ago, he came upon an alarming trend: A large number of the founding entrepreneurs he read about had a distinct, unfortunate personality trait — meanness. Many of us have heard stories about cold-hearted behavior of leaders such as Steve Jobs or Henry Ford, but Lipton, an adviser to major corporations, start-ups, government agencies, and not-for-profits, feels that the aggression in leaders — in particular, male leaders — goes beyond a handful of examples.

Have you ever noticed how you may be on your way to your dream job, body or relationship and somehow, you’ve sabotaged yourself? Why would we consciously or subconsciously derail efforts that are bringing us towards what we believe we want? While a few reasons may be that we’re afraid of change, afraid to put ourselves out there, and afraid to shine, there are many other reasons too.

Are you presenting to colleagues, customers, or are you on a stage in front of a large audience? Then you should definitely read this. Why? Because the following 5 mistakes are made by a lot of presenters, even by the most experienced ones. I often see professionals falling into the same traps when it comes to presenting… And although your charisma, your posture and a flawless delivery are the ideal conditions to ensure a successful delivery, if the presentation, which is designed to improve the speech by adding visual impact, is not at all impactful, the audience’s attention will quickly wander around.