Here's how you can harness assertiveness and confidence to excel as a live events professional.

In my experience, confidence comes from personal verification of the content— if I know, that I know what I’m speaking about, my approach to the topic is less timid and I can exercise freedom in my approach. Assertiveness is often a product of preparation; when I feel that I’ve taken the time to not only understand my topic BUT to also understand my audience, I can fully invest in impact because there are no knowledge gaps. Assertion to me, also means: articulate, clear, concise, factual, firm but NOT aggressive. Ensure that you are creating balance between emotional intelligence and delivery of the intended point, effectively. Create a journey map, run through talking points, asses for knowledge gaps, review, request feedback and reflect.

In my opinion to excel as a live events professional, harness assertiveness by clearly communicating your ideas and needs, ensuring everyone understands their roles. Confidence helps you make decisive choices and handle unexpected challenges calmly. Together, they enable you to negotiate effectively with vendors, inspire your team, and create a positive experience for attendees. Practice active listening and maintain a positive attitude to build trust and respect. By balancing assertiveness and confidence, you can lead efficiently, solve problems swiftly, and deliver successful events.

You need to lead with what you know about an event: ask probing question to get at the heart of what they want to accomplish for the event. Is this event about a new product or is this damage control post mishap? Get to know the stakeholders and what's important to them to make sure their needs are met.

Understanding assertiveness is such a vital quality you need to have as a live event professional. There will be times where as a professional in your respective field, you must put your foot down. It is a difficult quality to fully incorporate, it takes time and practice to understand how to cater to these different situations with an assertiveness that is effective to the plan.

Assertiveness can help you earn other people’s respect. It can also help you increase your self-esteem and reduce anxiety and stress. A study on assertiveness showed a significant reduction in anxiety after students received assertiveness training. When using assertiveness, you respect the other person. You rely on mutual respect as part of a communication skill that gets your point across. Plus, you respect and stand up for yourself. But, you still respect others and show that you want to resolve a conflict without being hurtful.

One thing that took me a lot of time to realize is that the team, the people that you work with can play a vital role in your perception of yourself, and can affect your confidence. High levels of criticism and sometimes competition and jealousy can challenge us, and create fear that we are not capable. You need to be very self aware to not fall in this “trap” and shape your beliefs based on others’ negative views. Filtering the feedback we get can be very helpful, as well as, being true to ourselves and own our feelings and thoughts, and express in a way that radiates genuine character. A quote that I love and often run to is “Confidence comes not from always being right, but from not fearing to be wrong” from Peter T. McIntyre

You will not be perfect or right in every situation. Take those opportunities when you're not perfect as a a learning moment to draw on for future events.

In my journey, the reason I showed up with confidence was at the start of my career I was a server, bartender, and manager of restaurants and banquets. I had seen a lot of events from the operations side of things so then planning and executing became easy and I was confident in my ability.

Remember when client comes to you for help with an event, they see you as the expert. You have to truly understand their expectations and objectives as well as communicating your ideas in a creative way so they can envision your proposal. Once you come to an agreement, your confidence takes over in the producing and executing!

Managing stress is my favorite topic. I wrote a book about it in 2022. We have to understand that our brains need a break in order to be creative and productive. I used to think I was driven and a workaholic and was proud of working 18+ hour days... I was doing my clients a disservice because I was not always at the top of my game. We must take care of ourselves in order to create our best products!

A gest?o de crise/estresse, em um evento ao vivo, é fundamental para solucionar eventuais problemas de forma assertiva e objetiva

Are you a leader or manager? Ask how you can push aside roadblocks for your teammates to what's causing them stress in the workplace.

Leading by example is key, but you also have to give your people and vendors the training they need to be successful along side your expectations.

A lideran?a é uma habilidade a ser trabalhada, para tomar atitudes assertivas e ser referência de exemplo para a equipe gerenciada.

Some people say, 'you are only as good as your last event'... I am not sure I agree with that statement, but I will say that when things go wrong, it is the way we handle it that matters. If we dive into what happened and 'how can we make sure that doesn't happen again', then you will learn and never forget that valuable lesson.