Planners on Purpose Podcast

As event leaders, we know how to balance our lives perhaps a bit better than that of our teams, but do we model work-life balance? Do we share how we are managing our lives so that those who are coming up behind us have an idea of how to move forward in a high-pressured environment like the event industry?

This episode is going to provide some areas where event leaders can model work-life balance to their event teams. Work-life balance is a word that really just represents how well we balance the ebb and flow of our lives and focus on what really matters at any given time. It can be an art form and many people can struggle with having a sense of balance in their lives.  

There are four areas in that we cover in this episode and go into great detail on how event leaders can model work-life balance. Those areas are:

1. Communication
2. Boundaries
3. Being a Wellness Advocate
4. Standing Up for Your Team

Modeling is important because your team needs to see how work-life balance is managed, especially in an environment where there are so many moving pieces and client demands.

After listening to this podcast you'll have some great ways to model work-life balance, to support them, and be a wellness advocate in your organization.

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose.

Kele Belton joins as a guest on this episode of the podcast to talk about how we can communicate to lead. She also provides some great insight for women in leadership.

About Kele Belton
Kele Belton is a Leadership and Communication expert and the founder of The Tailored Approach. She is a former corporate trainer and coach, where she collaborated with notable companies like Bank of America, BioMarin, Facebook, and Netflix, contributing to their leadership and communication growth. Kele now empowers leaders and their intact teams to communicate confidently, navigate feedback, and have difficult conversations. She’s a published author, keynote speaker, and host of the Communicate to Lead podcast. Kele specializes in leadership development, communication skills, conflict management, navigating feedback, Everything DiSC assessments and coaching, personal branding, and more.

Episode Summary
When you communicate, it's important to understand who you are speaking to, and what your message is. Is your message communicating to that person in a way that they need to receive it?  Kele speaks about this and how important it is for messaging and your audience to align.

In addition, Kele discusses how women struggle in leadership in many areas. One is having the right amount of flexibility at work which allows them to take care of any home matters. Also, Kele touches on how women can display more confidence in leadership. 

Kele shares her proprietary BOLD framework which stands for:

• Breaking Through Barriers
• Owning the Leadership Narrative
• Leading with Authenticity
• Driving Continuous Change

Kele also shares more about the DISC method and how it is an assessment that measures your personality in the following areas: dominance, influence, steadiness and conscientiousness. She also helps the listeners to understand how this method intersects with her BOLD framework and can help you lead stronger.

Finally, in this episode, Kele shares a bit about introversion and how introverts can focus on using their strengths, to listen. When as an introvert, you listen, you can then lean into the relationships because you've built the relationship up front.

Links and Resources
Tailored Approach
Own Your Worth, Free Guide

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose!   

In this episode, I explore the neuroscience of kindness with special guest, Janet Sperstad, CMP-Fellow and Faculty Emeritus for Madison College.

Janet Sperstad’s professional history reflects her lifelong vocation: driving excellence in meeting and event management execution and education. She has dedicated her career to defining the competencies and career pathways that articulate meeting planning as a design discipline requiring skills in the social sciences, executive leadership, and the cognitive sciences. Her contributions are global in scope and rooted in over 25 years as a meeting professional and executive leader in the corporate and non-profit sectors.

This is part two in a series where we unlock some more areas of neuroscience and how it can apply to our lives as event professionals. If you missed Part 1, where we discuss the neuroscience of stress and resilience, you can check it out here.

The fine print of this episode comes down to: kindness matters when we are planning events. As we lead our events, it's important to understand how kindness plays a big role in helping you solve problems, deal with stressful situations, and even become more creative on the spot. 

In this episode, Janet shares how 90% of the conversations that we have are social in nature. She shares how our brain is a very social organ in which its natural set point is to commune with others. Additionally, kindness is a neurochemical and a culture. It can ignite the reward center in our brain and it is pro-social in nature craving community with other human beings. Thus, our brain cultivates commonalities, it wants to look for belonging and collaboration and is wired to look out for differences.

Furthermore, Janet teaches us that there is a language of kindness, and how every word we use to portray kindness can cascade across people. As event professionals when we get into a period of frustration or stress or just solving a problem, responding in kindness can help to minimize the stress and frustration that is being emitted in the moment.

Lastly, we unpack that great ideas come to us best when we are relaxed. So when we are solving problems onsite ensuring that we are responding in kind ways that will produce more ideas for creative problem-solving can be helpful.

Stay until the end to hear some personal fun tidbits about Janet and her sharing the time when she was shown kindness that shook her to her core.  

If you enjoyed the first episode, you'll love this one too.

Links and Resources
Janet Sperstad Linkedin
The Neuroscience of Stress and Resilience - Part 1

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose!

In this episode, I explore the neuroscience of stress and resilience with special guest, Janet Sperstad, CMP-Fellow and Faculty Emeritus for Madison College. 

Janet Sperstad’s professional history reflects her lifelong vocation: driving excellence in meeting and event management execution and education. She has dedicated her career to defining the competencies and career pathways that articulate meeting planning as a design discipline requiring skills in the social sciences, executive leadership, and the cognitive sciences. Her contributions are global in scope and rooted in over 25 years as a meeting professional and executive leader in the corporate and non-profit sectors. 

As you listen to this episode, you'll learn that Janet grew up with the philosophy of "a rising tide rises all boats.", and that has been how she has lived a life of helping others and in turn, it helps her in some way.  

Through curiosity, Janet started finding out clear connections in what we do in our events around education and saw the connection in social science. On this personal journey, Janet was able to go deep and see things about how we work as event professionals.

Two of the main things Janet has learned in all of her studies that she wanted to share in this episode are this:

1. With threat, we run from danger. We look for threat and we respond to threat.
2. We love happiness. We feel good and love laughter and relaxation.

The brain goes towards threat, and it wants to keep you safe. So, enter the conversation on how stress can have an impact on your brain and how you can lessen the impacts and become more resilient.

Because in essence, we run from threat, and we walk toward reward. 

If you're feeling stressed out as an event planner. It doesn't have to control you. Let it go. As soon as you let it go, it loses power.

"We can't handle the externalities that come for us, we can only handle how we react to them." - Janet Sperstad

Janet gives us a brief solution on how you can relieve stress in the moment, whether you are at your desk frustrated at an email or onsite having to deal with a high-stress situation

Wash your hands with warm water, take three big breaths…pull your shoulders back and walk away.

It's as simple as that. This episode is full of lots of hidden gems for you to use to help you not only understand how your brain works, but give you tangible tips on how to combat stress, and tough times in this industry so that you can stay in the game.

Links and Resources
Janet Sperstad LinkedIn

Thank you so much for listening, until next time, stay on purpose!

When you can reduce attendee stress at an event, you can decrease the stress you have too. If an attendee feels comfortable, taken care of, and relaxed, they can be at their best for learning and are happier, which in turn means you can feel a little bit more at ease as you are planning. 

This episode covers 6 different areas to reduce attendee stress at your event. As you listen to this episode, it's important that you understand that implementing all of these ideas isn't necessary. However, these ideas may make you aware of some small tweaks you want to make at your event in the direction of stress relief and wellness.

The six areas that we unpack in this podcast episode are:

• Building longer breaks
• Encourage networking
• Create convenience
• Provide rest opportunities
• Give space for physical movement
• Create healthy opportunities

There is a wealth of ideas in each of these areas, and several of them are mentioned in this podcast episode. When we think about our attendees' well-being it can be meaningful to know that you have a unique opportunity to bring wellness to them while they are experiencing your event.  It's an honor that we shouldn't take lightly.

However, as much planning as you do for your attendees, make sure to also take care of yourself. Make sure that while you're onsite,  you're making healthy choices for yourself and that uplifts your well-being too.  

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose! 

This is an invitation to attend the Banish Burnout Challenge. This challenge will be held at the end of the month and it will focus on tips and tools for you to prevent burnout.

Burnout is costly. Costing over 190 billion in healthcare costs, with the event profession is one of the top industries that suffer from burnout. Paying attention to prevention strategies that you can leverage to reduce burnout's impacts is crucial.

In this episode, Naomi gives you more information about the Banish Burnout Challenge, what it will cover, and how you can join.

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you for listening, stay on purpose!

If you are in the event profession, there are aspects of your job that you love. This episode is all about what we love about doing the great work that we do in planning events. 

Our work touches more than just the attendees of a meeting. Our impacts of what we do touch companies and the experiences that we plan for them can change the world. Listen as I share with you 10 areas of event planning that I love and compare them with your top 10 list to see what we have in common with loving events.

Here is what I love about events:

• Expressing Creativity
• Travel and Culture
• Meeting New People
• Solving Problems
• Sense of Accomplishment
• Inside Scoops
• Variety of Duties
• Personal Growth
• Personalized Experiences
• Collaborative    

Do you see a few areas that you love? I would love to hear from you what you love about events. Let me know in the comments as you give this podcast a high 5 rating!  

Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose. 

There is a hidden cost of burnout that affects the events industry. With over 76% of American workers experiencing burnout, it isn't surprising that this is an area where organizations now need to take the helm. 

Helping to decrease the effects of burnout in the event industry starts first with organizations implementing a burnout strategy. This strategy could cover how burnout will be prevented within their organization. It is a crucial piece of burnout prevention and can keep organizations in front of their competition.

Managing burnout can retain top talent, create a happy workforce, and will eliminate costs associated with employees taking time away, or leaving the organization.  

This episode unpacks some of the areas that aren't necessarily looked at for causes of burnout, in an effort to bring awareness.  Here are some of the areas that we cover:

• Communication
• Community
• Skillset Alignment 
• Company Mission/Goals Alignment
• Career Pathing/Growth

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose!

Many of us don't realize that we are in toxic jobs until it is too late. So this episode will provide you with 5 signs that you should be aware of to check and see if you are in a toxic job that may be headed downhill fast. 

This episode comes with the understanding that we are in the event industry, an industry that has an immense amount of pressure, high-touch clients, and high amounts of stress. It is meant to highlight situations that go beyond what's acceptable.  However, maybe if we find that this is a standard, then what is 'acceptable' may have to be adjusted to save many of our treasured talent people from burning out and leaving the industry.

The 5 signs that are discussed on this podcast episode are:

1. Being sick and fatigued to the point of exhaustion
2. High amount of turnover at an organization
3. Stagnancy within the organization - no growth
4. A clear and consistent lack of the respect of boundaries 
5. Harrassment and bullying by co-workers and event clients

One thing is for sure. These situations in their most potent form are not okay and do not support overall well-being and mental health of the person impacted. If these signs are experienced, then bringing awareness through conversation is a good first step, allowing for resolution. However, if these situations persist, then moving away could be the best outcome.     
 
Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge

Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose!

There is a segment of burnout that isn't typically discussed. It has to do with how diversity impacts the burnout experience, and in this episode, we dig deeper into the black experience with burnout.

Black people have a different experience than many others when it comes to burnout. Much of the reason why they experience more burdensome impacts of burnout is due to the marginalization, along with other systemic challenges in the world.

More specifically, black women experience burnout more than any other group due to these same challenges. Additionally, black women experience things like black maternal mortality, weathering, glass ceilings, and tokenism that all contribute to the continued battle that they face daily.

This episode uncovers many of these insights and also offers to the reader what they can do to not only support this community but also to elevate the conversations in their department and in their organizations so that we help make changes that impact us all.   

Links and Resources
Fast Company Article
Banish Burnout Challenge

If you enjoyed this episode rate it a high 5! Thank you for listening, stay on purpose.

In this episode, Bill Hansen, an industry celebrity and veteran joins us to share his knowledge on building a caring culture, one that is built on and for its people.

Over the last four decades, Bill Hansen has hosted four U.S. presidents, championship Super Bowl teams, and countless celebrities and athletes. He has catered events for everyone from Pope John Paul II, to The Bush family, The Reagan family, Michael Jordan, Usher, Kim Kardashian and the list goes on.

During our conversation, Bill talked about his roots in entrepreneurship from selling door-to-door and operating concessions, and how the spirit of entrepreneurship is engrained in him and fueled how his company got started.

For Bill, culture is the number one goal, and is an ever-evolving situation as his company aims to build the ultimate family culture. Building this culture is important and one of the key elements that are needed is engaged workers because engaged workers are happy workers, Bill says.

Bill also discusses trends he is currently seeing in the catering space. How highly customized menus are a trend that will stay. He says that more people are using social media to fuel their vision for their events, and how food may now be the last thing that people tend to think of when planning their event experience.

We hope you enjoy this chat with Bill Hansen.

Links and Resources
Bill Hansen Catering Company

If you enjoyed the show please give us a "5"! Thank you for listening, please stay on purpose!

As we are planning events, we can experience overwhelm and burnout from all different directions. Many times, we triage this ourselves, but when the going gets tough it can be helpful to take our situations to an event leader to get feedback and perhaps collaborate on the best way forward in our work.

So how do you talk to your event leaders about burnout? One of the first steps before talking to your event leader is to reflect on your situation. Think through all different areas of your situation, specifics on what the true challenge is, and work out any recommendations for resolutions so that your event leader knows that you've thought things through.

After reflecting on your situation, create a few opportunities for enhancement that you can present during your conversation with the event leader. This will open up the conversation in the direction in which you see an effective resolve, but then also allow the leader to collaborate on the solution alongside you.

This episode shares ideas on how to approach your leader and gives key questions that you can ask to really analyze your challenges in a way that is supportive of you and the business.

At the end of the day, put yourself first, don't suffer from burnout in silence. Do the big thing, and talk to your leader to get the help you need.

Links and Resources
Banish Burnout Challenge - coming soon!

Thank you so much for listening, until next time, stay on purpose. 

Client relationships are very important to businesses Yet, what happens when those relationships struggle? How can you maintain a healthy client relationship, one that thrives, not just survives?

Our clients have a stake in the success of the work that we do for them. It's understandable that they oversee, critique, and even hover over the process, however, it doesn't have to feel so tough to navigate.

In this episode, I unpack 4 tips that will support you in having healthy relationships with your clients. Relationships that are founded on communication, transparency, follow-through, and care. Implement even one of these four tips and watch your relationships grow.

Links and Resources
Planners on Purpose Newsletter

Thank you for listening, please stay on purpose!

With all of the AI tools popping up on the scene, it should encourage professionals to action to learn and utilize these tools to make the job of planning an event easier than it was before.

We are living in some exhilarating times where we can essentially work virtually, use artificial intelligence to help us brainstorm content for our attendee emails, and help us with a site search for an event. 

This episode will open you up to just the simplest application of adding AI to your work. It's important for event planners to explore and see what options are available to them. If these tools are applied and can make our jobs easier, then we are able to utilize our time to really finesse the skills in which AI isn't useful.

The inspiration for this episode came from a really great article that I had some help in contributing to. To learn more about AI, and grab some recommended AI tools, please visit the article by Wisconsin Meetings on AI tools below. 

Links and Resources
Wisconsin Meetings Article - AI Tools for Event Planning

Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose!

Event planners are talented individuals who can put some pizzazz on events, however, to make it all come together it also takes some soft skills.

If you're a new event planner or an event planner wanting to brush up on a few soft skills to enhance your career, this is a great episode, as we'll be diving into 7 soft skills that every event planner should have.  

Soft skills are those skills have have to do with personality, or skills that aren't necessarily tangible or able to be measured like knowing Microsoft Excel. The soft skills that we will dive into in this episode are:

• Ability to work long hours (when necessary)
• Communication
• Patience
• Initiative
• Service Mindset
• React under pressure

Because of the nature of the nature of the industry, these are important to have, and in having them can ensure that their event or event career will have a level of polish that can guarantee its success. 

Thank you so much, stay on purpose!

Workplace stress can be tough to work through because there can be many causes of it. The key is to understand some key areas to look out for that cause much stress and to work diligently to reduce it. 

In this podcast episode, I share 4 ways for you to reduce stress in the workplace. No matter if it is at the beginning of your planning process or at the end, we all experience stress. Although the stress is inevitable at times, this episode talks through these four areas to reduce it:

1. Great Vision
2. Good Communication
3. Taking Breaks
4. Create Laughter

There are plenty more areas to help you to reduce stress, but if you really pay attention to these four, you'll find your stress significantly reduced from where it was before. Let us know how these have helped you in reducing your stress in the workplace by commenting below! 

Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose!

Casey Davidson from Hello Someday Coaching joins the Planners on Purpose Podcast to discuss the dangers of drinking and how not drinking contributes to the event planner's overall wellness. After Casey spent 20 years climbing the corporate ladder at a Fortune 500 company, she gave up her daily big glasses of red wine after profoundly realizing that the alcohol was not serving her.

Event planners are surrounded by messages that drinking is a part of our lives. From socializing after work to catching up with colleagues during the events and conferences that we attend, all are laced with a heavy drinking culture that can be hard to let go of.

Casey touches your heart with her story and journey to sobriety. She shares about her 3 am wake-ups where she woke up with a racing mind and a racing heart. She unpacks how she mistook these symptoms as stress and overwhelm for a while. The symptoms that she suffered from headaches, and stomach aches, to bloodshot eyes - Casey shares it all.

After a while, being dependent on alcohol can slowly take over your life as it did for Casey. However, after years of attempts of trying to stop, Casey hired a coach to stop drinking which ended up being the opening of the door to healing.

This episode will unlock some understanding of how to differentiate your stress and overwhelm from the pressures that you experience from an evening of drinking. Many of the stats that Casey shares are unbelievable. Knowing how one glass of wine can impact your quality of sleep, and how it contributes to stress and burnout can be life-changing. 

We hope you enjoy this episode and by watching it, that it will help you to be a little more mindful on how alcohol can make an impact on your overall well-being.

Links and Resources
Hello Someday Coaching
Hello Someday Podcast for Sober Curious Women
The Huberman Podcast
Introverts Guide to Socializing Without Alcohol
Sober Curious by Ruby Warrington
Athletic Brewing Company
Gruvi Non-Alcoholic Procescco

Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose. 

When it comes to change, many times we try to make changes happen in our lives, but there are times when change is hard to grasp. When this happens, it can be hard to not take it personal, but the fact that change isn't happening isn't always what it appears to be at the surface.

In this episode, we unpack 5 specific areas of behavior change and try to understand that becoming more aware of these stages it may help us determine if we are actually ready for the changes that we seek.    

The 5 stages that we unpack are:

• Precontemplation
• Contemplation
• Preparation
• Action
• Maintenance

Once we are able to maintain our goals, we may think that we are golden. However, things do happen, and many times unforeseen setbacks to occur. This is known as a relapse phase.  The key to getting out of a relapse phase is to understand the trigger, or the setback in detail and how perhaps the barrier was broken. Then develop a strategy to prevent it from happening again, and continue to move forward in the maintenance phase. 

In working through these phases, we are more apt to meet our goals.

Links and Resources
6 Stages of Behavior Change

Thank you so much for listening, stay on purpose.

It's been said that if you do something consistently, you'll tap into a superpower and gain momentum. And with that momentum, you'll start to realize that you are absolutely capable of changing your circumstances and behavior.

Now, this is absolutely true when it comes to your event planning career. The changes that you want to make, the behaviors that you're willing to work on, and the dedication that you want to give, requires making big changes. To make those big changes, it starts with the little things done repeatedly.

And it matters…the consistency that you put in, can do nothing but stack up, one small step at a time, you rise higher….however inconsistency can ruin it all. Being inconsistent in your event career can kill your confidence, and it can mess up your ability to succeed for that matter.

Everyone struggles with the need to be more consistent in some element of their career. Hopefully, this podcast episode will help you  see that the small steps you take are what will eventually make the biggest impact. All you have to do is start.

 Thank you so much for listening, please stay on purpose.

It's still the top of the year, you've created goals, but have yet to share them with anyone else. Is this you?

Well there are advantages to sharing your event goals with others, and in this episode, I unpack 5 key reasons that you should consider it this year.  

The goals that event planners carry can be pretty heavy to carry on our own. By sharing your event goals it allows you to share this load with others. It's understandable that you may not be ready to share it. However, you'll find that if you keep it to yourself, you also could potentially shoulder most of the work.

I'm a big advocate for sharing your goals and here are my reasons which I unpack in this episode:  

• For accountability
• For encouragement
• To get them done
• For assistance
• For celebration

I hope you consider sharing your event goals this year, to bring others on this amazing journey with you.
  
Thank you so much for listening, until next time, stay on purpose.