Stress at Work: ‘Understand When Is Your Breaking Point’

Some common-sense advice for event professionals — who continue to land on most-stressful jobs lists.

Author: Michelle Russell       

two women smiling

Annalisa Ponchia (left) of AIM Group International and Amélie Trémolières of ESAE shared their thoughts on how stressful the job of event planners is in a Convene Podcast.

Event planners have found themselves once again on another not-such-a-ringing-endorsement-for-the-event-professional-role list: Indeed’s editorial team’s “Examples of the Most Stressful Jobs (With the Reasons Why)” article in May. Event planners were listed alongside doctors, nurses, soldiers, law-enforcement agents, and anesthesiologists — for whom a slight mistake can lead to severe consequences, including paralysis, coma, and death.

Without question, event organizers shoulder a burden — a duty of care responsibility when gathering hundreds or thousands of people — but the risks involved don’t seem to consistently fall in the same life-or-death category as anesthesiologists. There are, however, plenty of other factors that contribute to their stress level, including being stretched thin with staff and resources while delivering an event on a budget that hasn’t kept pace with escalating costs, and trying to anticipate growing and changing expectations from participants. We’ll be sharing insights from meeting planner respondents to our annual Salary Survey on what they find most stressful about their jobs in the coming weeks.

One event planner on Reddit shared the way she approaches stressful situations on site: “Stressing to get every puzzle piece in place where it should be and on time is a waste of time. Instead, I plan to have it all perfect and then on the ground I roll with the punches and don’t stress that things move and change. If it all comes together in the end, then the plan was perfect — but there’s always room for improvement.”

In a Convene podcast episode recorded at Convening EMEA in Copenhagen last September, Annalisa Ponchia, CMP, CMM, then director of innovation and customer experience – director of international congress development, and now sustainability manager at AIM Group International — who has three decades of experience in the events industry — also downplayed the stress that comes with the role. Speaking with podcast host and Convene Digital Media Editor Magdalina Atanassova and fellow podcast guest Amélie Trémolières, communications and events operations lead at ESAE (European Society of Association Executives), Ponchia said that the job is stressful “if you are doing sort of a copy/paste of your project every day, but if you do something new, you simply enjoy it. So I would like to encourage anyone thinking of getting into this career not to think it’s too stressful. Go for it.”

Although she is fresh in her career, Trémolières agreed that there are far more stressful jobs and industries in the world. “We need to keep in mind that nothing goes perfectly, and that is true for events.” She added that keeping stress at bay is “a mindset.”

Ponchia offered this piece of wisdom for event organizers: Accept that the role comes with “busy moments,” she said, but then “stop it. Don’t overdo it. We hear from a lot of people that are too stressed and they think that they cannot cope — it is because they don’t realize, really, when is the moment to take a break and rebalance. Understand when is your breaking point and stop before you get there.”

Listen to the full podcast below or visit the Convene Podcast page, where you will find all our episodes.

Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene.

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