Last week, we completed our 6th annual Build IT LIVE conference. We had 400+ MSP industry professionals join us for three incredible days of learning and content. Those of you who have hosted your own event know that while everything may look smooth on the outside, behind the scenes, there’s always a bit of chaos. Things don’t always go as planned—something doesn’t arrive, the venue makes unexpected requests—there’s always a plethora of “unforeseen issues” or moments that didn’t go as planned.
So, what do we do as leaders? Many of us have been taught to handle these issues in the moment, but I disagree. When your team is already working hard and dealing with stress, it’s better to hold your tongue in the heat of the moment. As the saying goes: praise publicly, coach privately. Perhaps start a list. That’s what I did. During the event, whenever something bothered me, I just wrote it down. It’s a learning opportunity for next year—what can we improve? For all the last-minute issues, I had someone on our team update our project plan in real-time, so we can avoid these surprises next year.
Here’s an example: every year, we bring in a training institute to teach leadership principles. This year, we invited The Table Group—the makers of the Working Genius framework. The day before the event, I learned that we still hadn’t received their slide deck and their flight was delayed. Needless to say, it caused some anxious moments. Why didn’t we have the slide deck? If it wasn’t ready in time, it should have been escalated. But rather than focus on the “could have” or “should have” in that moment, we looked at potential solutions. We had our friends from The Strategic Coach, who were also presenting the next day, and we could have easily slipped them into the agenda. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end, but this is just one instance where an external issue could have become a problem for us.
We also had Navy SEALs running a boot camp for our attendees, but there were no bullhorns, making it difficult for people to hear directions. Thankfully, I’m a mom of three and can project my voice (a strength, though Sunster may disagree 😊), but not everyone has that ability. It wasn’t something we could have planned for, but it was a challenge we had to manage.
Even within our team, we made a small error with the time of our sponsor dinner communicated to attendees versus what we had communicated to the hotel. We caught it before dinner, but it was still an additional expense because staff had already arrived. Things happen, and that’s OK. The point is that it’s easy to lose your cool when you are in the heat of stressful situations, but we have to remember to keep ourselves calm. How can we do this?
- Remember to never communicate your displeasure in the moment. Take it in and reflect on it.
- Create a notes list in your notepad, or on your phone, where you can write down your challenges and then go back after the situation and discuss them.
- Always better to communicate with details, so make sure that you are clear about what was wrong with the situation and provide an alternative to what could have been done better.
- Most importantly, identify the learning and determine if there is a project plan or an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) that needs to be updated.
- Take a moment to breathe; walk away from the situation if you know that you won’t handle it well. Ask for a few minutes to get back to them.
- If you’re really struggling, ask someone else for their opinion. Always have a go-to person who can act as your sounding board and has knowledge of the situation—for me, it’s Sunster or someone from our leadership team, depending on the issue.
- Trust your leaders to make decisions as well. You don’t always have to have all the answers (this was a hard one for me, as a wife of 25 years, what do you mean I don’t know everything); let the leader responsible handle the situation and trust that they will do what they think is best. If you have a clear direction you want it to go in, communicate that as well, or you will be unhappy regardless of what they do.
I would say I handled the stress of this year’s event better than I ever have before. While our entire team was prepared, we were also able to lean on the right people to ensure that we had a seamless event. Your team is your family; you work together to accomplish a behemoth task. Remember, you are all working together for the greater good. It’s OK; mistakes happen, learn from them, and stay calm. We can’t always control the chaos, but we can definitely control our reaction to it.
