As a New York City event planner, your goal is always to ensure events go off without a hitch and everyone has a good time. But the reality is sometimes things don’t go as planned. And your future success as an event planner depends on how you handle those hiccups. That’s why it’s best to have a plan in place to address problems before they happen. When event mishaps do happen, explore these six methods to graciously handle them, keeping cool under fire and diffusing frustration with your event clients and guests.
1. Accept Responsibility
The first way to graciously handle event mishaps is to accept responsibility for them. It doesn’t matter whether a vendor bailed on you, a pipe burst and flooded your venue, or multiple staff members all called in sick at the same time. As the event planner, the best thing you can do to uphold your professional reputation is accept responsibility for the mishaps, apologize, and get to work right away on doing whatever you can to get the event back on track.
2. Communicate
Unless the mishap is so minor that you can fix it instantly, it’s best to communicate with your clients, staff, vendors, sponsors, and other stakeholders during and after the event. Let them know what went wrong and how you intend to fix it. Keep an open line of dialogue, and listen to their ideas and feedback. Clear, open communication helps keep everyone satisfied as you work to overcome your NYC event mishaps.
3. Follow a Contingency Plan
Having a good contingency plan is essential for dealing with event mishaps. If you take the time to develop a thorough contingency plan, you’ll be able to graciously handle most event mishaps simply by following it. So, what should be in your contingency plan? You should include as many details as possible, but definitely address these common NYC event mishaps:
- Staff shortages
- Backup performers and vendors
- Emergency expenses
- Weather changes and other external factors
- More or fewer attendees than anticipated
- Problems with technology
- Safety concerns
4. Tap Into Your Emotional Intelligence
Everyone has a lot riding on the success of your events. So when mishaps arise, it’s all too easy to become anxious or flustered, particularly if clients or attendees are angry. Unfortunately, you’re not able to think and respond clearly if you’re too upset–and neither are your clients and other stakeholders. That’s why you need to tap into your emotional intelligence.
When mishaps occur, it’s best to acknowledge negative emotions and use active listening skills to paraphrase what stakeholders are saying. This shows that you are listening and care about rectifying the problem. And don’t forget about your own emotions, too. You’ll create better solutions if you’re not feeling overwhelmed. So take a few deep breaths to calm your nerves before acting, and don’t be afraid to ask for help from your team if you need it.
5. Use Humor to Diffuse Tense Situations
As an NYC event planner, having a mishap during the most critical part of your event is one of your worst nightmares. But it happens, especially when technology is involved. Remember, everyone in the room with you is human, too. And often, humor is a great way to diffuse such tense situations.
Take Steve Jobs, for example. He once experienced a mishap as he attempted to demonstrate FaceTime to a live audience. Instead of being able to wow them with new technology, he couldn’t get the demo to work at all because the WiFi network was overloaded. Rather than become flustered and tank the event, Steve Jobs joked with the audience, asked them to disconnect from the network to lighten the load, and went on with his demonstration. As you’re aware, Apple didn’t suffer any long-term negative impacts from the technical glitch.
6. Protect Your Relationships
Relationships are everything in the event business, so when mishaps occur, it’s important to protect your relationships. Don’t point fingers or hide from your responsibility. Instead, have an open discussion with your stakeholders about what went wrong, what you have learned from the mishap, and how you will prevent something similar from happening in the future.
If the mishap was minor, simply acknowledging the mishap and demonstrating your commitment to preventing a recurrence may be enough to preserve good relationships with your stakeholders. However, if the mishap was greater and involved significant financial loss, the cancellation of the event, or blunders that lost audience engagement, it’s important to discuss solutions, including compensation, that will protect your relationships. This will go a long way toward maintaining your professional reputation as an NYC event planner.
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As an event planner, it’s always best to avoid mishaps whenever you can. But mistakes and mishaps are, unfortunately, part of the territory. So, the next time you experience a mishap in your NYC event, try the above ways to graciously handle it. Your clients and other stakeholders will appreciate your professionalism.
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