Meet Boricua brought culture and heart into El Conquistador Resort ballroom
Smart Meetings Leadership Experience at El Conquistador Resort in Puerto Rico set the stage for top meeting professionals to make new connections to improve their effectiveness—and add some spice to their programs.
Over three days, attendees danced, tasted and laughed their way through one of the top resorts in the world.
The Sound of Winning
The festivities kicked off with an empathetic primer from Keynote Rich Bracken. He resurfaced his DJ skills to tap into the audience’s emotional intelligence to help them build skills to relieve the stress of Meeting Prof life. “Emotional intelligence is the most important skill today. More than half of your job performance is influenced by your ability to create a positive company culture,” said Bracken. “Events require creativity and engagement. Emotional intelligence is the fuel that makes that possible.”
His tip for managing your mood so you can manage tough situations? Start with self-awareness. Once you understand how you are feeling, you can move to self-management. Once naming your initial trigger reaction, you can rationally decide if it is a good idea to fire off that email or march over to someone’s office. “Take a deep breath and take control of your reactions,” Bracken advised.
When at an event, he stressed the importance of practicing social awareness: giving people the respect of your full attention. That often requires getting away from our devices. “Just holding our phones makes us feel disengaged and limits our ability to practice active listening,” he observed.
Another way emotional intelligence helps meeting professionals be more effective is in amping up the skill of setting boundaries. Once you have checked in with yourself about your true priorities, then you can practice real time management. “If you say yes to everything, you will drop some things. ‘No’ is a complete sentence,” he reminded the group.
That includes setting aside time for yourself. Create a routine to make tackling tasks easier. And—this is a big one—introduce adult “passing periods.” Schedule five minutes after every 25-minute call to collect your thoughts. Add in 15 minutes after every 45-minute meeting. Doing so will help you to overcome the frazzled state of mind that you might experience after a day of back-to-back Zoom calls, trying to remember your action items from each one.
Finally, leverage the power of music to tap into glimmers of happy memories or empowering vibes. Think about what your walk-on music would be to add some confidence to your day. “You are the DJ of your life,” Bracken concluded.
Live Like a Local
Discover Puerto Rico has a saying to encapsulate the warm, resilient, joyful spirit of those who live on the island. It is called “live Boricua,” and it refers to experiencing the place like a local. Crystal Diaz, the pioneering owner of El Pretexto, a culinary farm lodge in scenic Cayey, Puerto Rico, embodied this spirit in her presentation encouraging everyone to embrace the beauty of where they live. As co-founder of PRoduce (a local marketplace grocery delivery app connecting food producers and consumers), she advocates for sourcing locally and lifting up small farmers and artisans while putting her ideals to work, employing 400 on her biodiverse farming operation.
After overcoming numerous obstacles, Diaz has become a spokesperson the world over for living a natural, balanced life. She believes that food is a natural way to connect people, but only one of many. When leaders embrace their passion, they can perform at the highest levels, but it takes smarts, caring and determination. “You have to use what is in your head, your heart and your pants—or skirt,” she said with a grin.
