Each Friday, members of the event planning team at the U.S. Travel Association use Slack to share a “win and a hurdle.” The “win” is something to celebrate, either personal or professional, while the “hurdle” is an issue or problem they’ve been dealing with.
“It’s an easy way to celebrate the small wins that happen throughout the week that we otherwise might forget about, and if I see that multiple people are posting the same hurdles, it helps me identify issues that I need to address,” explains Courtney Mesmer, vice president of event programming and experience for U.S. Travel.
Creating opportunities to celebrate successes and identify challenges is just one example of how meeting planners can foster positive cultures within their teams—and improve the likelihood of a successful event. Indeed, the business adage “culture eats strategy for breakfast” holds true for meetings, as a well-planned event can be thrown off the rails by backstabbing, lack of engagement or other symptoms of team dysfunction.
“When you’re running an event and making sure everything gets done, it’s not only the operational elements, but also the relational elements that matter,” says Brandon Smith, a.k.a. “The Workplace Therapist,” an adjunct professor at Emory University and author of The Hot Sauce Principle: How to Live and Lead in a World Where Everything is Urgent All of the Time. “It’s important to be clear about everyone’s goals and roles and set expectations. Leaders need to say not only, ‘This is how we work,’ but also, ‘This is how we interact with each other and our clients.’”
Clarifying Roles and Goals
Cultivating a strong team culture is crucial for event planning because there are so many details involved. “For many planners, the reason you’re good is because you’re a control freak,” says Jennifer Minzey, senior meeting planner at Kaiser Permanente and vice president of education for the MPI Southern California Chapter. “You have to have every single detail locked in.”
Minzey sets aside time at the beginning of every project to walk through the plan and clarify everyone’s role. “I make sure that we’re all on the same page before we even get moving, so there is no undermining each other,” Minzey says. “We’ll go through the timeline and say, “What are you going to handle? What am I going to handle?” That way there’s no question as to whose responsibility is what.”
Clear communication can help ensure people don’t have an excuse for “toxic” behaviors, such as skipping the chain of command or going behind people’s backs. “If I had a pharmacy that only gave out prescriptions dealing with workplace dysfunction, clarity is always going to be one of the ingredients,” Smith says. “Toxic people generally try to stay out of the light. They don’t like anything that’s going to drive clarity, because it makes it easy to pin them down.”
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Setting a Positive Tone
Leaders should find time for regular positive interactions with team members, such as sharing words of praise or taking a moment for recognition. “You want a ratio of five positive interactions to every one negative interaction,” Smith says. “Those positive interactions can be feedback, or just things like sharing funny memes. You want to be able to give critical feedback to help people improve, but you need to make sure there’s enough in the ‘bank account.’”
Expressing gratitude is important for both in-house teams and the meeting property’s staff and vendors. Mesmer gives small thank-you gifts in advance to key partners who are working at an event. “Those little things make people feel human,” Mesmer says. “It’s less than $10, but it makes all the difference. We can’t function without our vendors and partners. Including them as part of the team and saying we are all in this together will lead to better service.”
Another key is to remind a team of the impact they’re having by carrying out the event. For example, Teri Jakob, associate director, special events for the UPMC Pinnacle Foundation (part of a hospital system in Central Pennsylvania), reminds her team of the value their work has in advancing health. “I try to lead with what the purpose is, the greater story we are telling,” Jakob says. “The more engaged and valued your team feels, the happier and more positive they are—and that warmth comes through in the event.”
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Chuck Kapelke, a veteran communications professional, is a perpetually fascinated observer of human behavior; he holds a B.A. in anthropology from Harvard College.
This article appears in the March 2025 issue. You can subscribe to the magazine here.
