Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#108 Event management tips for comms pros (ft. Sally Porteous)

• Mel Loy • Season 1 • Episode 108

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As professional communicators, team leaders, change managers, and even project managers, we can often be tasked with managing events. Whether it's a CEO town hall, a conference, an expo, or anything in between, there's always some kind of event we will be called in to help organise, if not manage, entirely.

Though that doesn't mean we know what we are doing. In fact, quite a few of us have no idea what we're doing, which is why event management professionals should be on your speed dial. Because how do you make sure the event you run gets the outcomes you want? And that's what today's episode of the Less Chatter, More Matter podcast is all about. 

Featuring the expert, Sally Porteous, who is a passionate advocate for creating remarkable audience experiences where she has created three pillars of support for her event community. Red Lanyard is the production company supporting people and organisations to create their best work. Event Planner's Workshop is about creating space for people to learn, play, and test their work.

And the Event Manager's Network that encourages connection, collaboration, belonging, and support. Still a self described work in progress, Sally continues to create meaningful event experiences, give others the confidence to do the same, and connect a vibrant community to make magic in the world. 

In today's episode, we cover everything about how to organise and manage quality events because events are a solid communication channel that we should be using.


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Mel:

As professional communicators, team leaders, change managers, and even project managers, we can often be tasked with managing events. Whether it's a CEO town hall, a conference, an expo, or anything in between, there's always some kind of event we will be called in to help organize, if not manage, entirely. I know over my career, especially in internal comms, I've been involved in a huge variety of events, whether I liked it or not. But that doesn't mean I knew what I was doing. In fact, quite a few of us have no idea what we're doing, which is why event management professionals should be on your speed dial. Because how do you make sure the event you run gets the outcomes you want? And that's what today's episode is all about. Hello, friend, and welcome to another episode of Less Chatter, More Matter, the communications podcast. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, Brisbane. And today I am Excited to bring you an interview with the one and only Sally Porteous, event manager extraordinaire and all round awesome human. Sally has unwittingly and unknowingly been involved in planning and coordinating events since she was a teenager, coordinating local fairs, school fates, real estate roadshows, sales conferences, and community engagement activities. But it wasn't until Sally was well through the first act of her career journey that she realised the activity she had always managed to incorporate into every job was actually a career she could pursue. So in 2011, Sally embarked on a journey of curiosity to see if this thing people called event management was indeed something that could hold her attention for act two of her career. Volunteering for a year, then securing community festival production gigs, Sally discovered that this was in fact something she could do forever and had in fact already been doing most of her life. Sally is a passionate advocate for creating remarkable audience experiences. Experiences are worth remarking on. And so she has created three pillars of support for her event community. Red lanyard is the production company supporting people and organisations to create their best work. Event Planner's Workshop is about creating space for people to learn, play, and test their work. And the Event Manager's Network that encourages connection, collaboration, belonging, and support. Still a self described work in progress, Sally continues to create meaningful event experiences, give others the confidence to do the same, and connect a vibrant community to make magic in the world. In today's episode, we cover everything about how to organize and manage quality events because events are a solid communication channel that we should be using. Sally shares some of the common challenges to look out for, and she has a special little offer just for you, the podcast listener. So make sure you stay tuned for that and check out the podcast notes. Without further ado, here's Sally. Sally. Welcome to Less Chatter, More Matter.

Sally:

Thank you so much.

Mel:

It's lovely to be here. It's lovely to have you here. So, before we get into it, let's tell us a little bit about you. What do you do and how did you come to develop your expertise in this space?

Sally:

Excellent question to start me off. So, Sally Porteous is my name. And I actually own the title Event Manager now, which is something that I didn't own for a long time. Jack of all trades for many, many years. And, uh, so a few years ago, I decided to put my hand up and say I can do this. And, yes, became an event manager, which was back in 2011. Which, you know, probably to the youngins in the audience, that sounds like a long time ago for me. Um, it wasn't too long ago. Um, retrospectively realising now that I did events in every single job that I've ever had, and I obviously just gravitated towards that task naturally, and, um, I had an opportunity to do a major event, a very high profile, um, event for, uh, an organisation, and through that process realising it's actually a skill that I had, and it wasn't something everyone could do. So I decided to study it, um, volunteer in it, dive right in and hope that maybe this is something I might like doing and I do. I love it. I've been doing it ever since.

Mel:

That's awesome. And look, I totally agree with you on, in terms of, you know, it's a skill that not everybody has, but not everybody is good at. I like, I'm not an event manager. It's something I've had to learn how to do, you know, as part of my roles over the year as well. Um, and under duress a lot of the time. So I take my hat off to event managers. I think you are all amazing people for what you put up with quite honestly, a lot of the time, like wedding planners.

Sally:

I would say the same about comms management, Mel, seriously. I think one of the things I learnt trying to write effectively in that government job that I had was learning how to take feedback without taking it personally. I don't know how you do those.... 15, 000 rounds of revisions.

Mel:

Yeah, that's, uh, that's a story for another day. So you've now owned your own business. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Sally:

Yes, indeed. Thank you. Um, so it's, it's a multifaceted business. It's evolved over time. It merch company. I worked in the music industry for a while and loved that. And so, um, when I left the music industry, I decided I was going to be a merch company, and so that's what I set up. Unbeknownst to me, I have no idea how to, you know, source product, et cetera, from other parts of the world, uh, so that lasted all of five minutes. But I still loved working with the music industry, so I stayed in there, and um, I worked with artists and bands to create project plans to send themselves on tour. It was at a time when the music industry was changing and everyone was having to become a lot more independent. And so learning those skills, um, was quite difficult. So I was sharing that with, um, people I knew in the music industry. And I was running these workshops and I absolutely loved doing them. And so that was, it's been a side hustle for a long, long time. Um, and it's had iterations of being a full time business, and then a side hustle, and then a full time business, and then a side hustle. And one of the things I talk about a bit is, it's okay to have a business and a job as a side hustle. So if anyone out there, you know, berating themselves because yet again they have to go and get a job, please don't, because, just flip it, right? Just flip it. It's just, that's the side hustle.

Mel:

I love that reframing. I love it.

Sally:

Yeah, it's just temporary. So, like I said, it's multifaceted. Uh, I have, I produce events for other people. I, uh, create events for myself, and I have a networking, a network, um, of event managers that I produce events for, or people that produce events, really, not even just event managers. And then I also coach and train people in the art of event management and event planning. So, I'm pretty passionate about that. Building other people's capacity and capability to, um, produce their own events and events for other people, people they work for. So, lots of facets to it, but essentially it's, it's all in the space of creating for you, creating with you, or helping you do it yourself.

Mel:

Love that. Okay, so So now that you've got all this experience behind you, question number one is why is quality event management so important? So I think, you know, there are those people out there who think anybody can do it, but we know that's not the case. So why is that quality of event management so important?

Sally:

Yeah. Yeah. Um, the quality of, of the outcome that you give your audience is the important part. What happens when You're not experienced, or it's not your zone of genius, or it's not your wheelhouse, or you haven't done it very often, and you're kind of winging it along the way. The thing is, when you're creating an event that has an audience, you can possibly get so caught up in the logistics, so caught up in the booking of the venue and the choosing of the menu and, um, you know, am I putting notepads on the table or am I putting pens down? Am I putting minties down or jelly beans or do I need to have a healthy option? If you're not experienced in this space, leaving that to somebody else allows you the space to focus on the audience. Because if the audience doesn't have a great experience, they're never going to come back to your event again. They're not going to get the outcome that you were hoping that they would get. Um, essentially, You need to create an environment for yourself where you can constantly focus on the audience. Does the audience care about this decision that I'm about to make? What's the impact on my audience about this decision I'm about to make? And if you don't have the brain space, you know, if you don't have the brain capacity to think like that, your audience won't get what they expect to get, and they will leave the room, and they'll walk away going, That was a waste of time. So that's, that's why I think a professional event planner or knowing how to do the event professionally is the key skill.

Mel:

Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, Sally, I love what you said there because our ethos aligns really strongly here on putting the audience at the center of everything you do, whether it's comms or events, which are, you know, an event is a communication channel, right? It's you're imparting messages on people. It's two way communication a lot of the time. So if you're not putting the audience at the center and thinking, okay, what do I want them to know, feel, and do after this, then of course it's going to fall flat. So I really appreciate you honing in on that. Thank you. Um, my next question then is what are some of the common challenges with organising events?

Sally:

Common challenges organising events is, um, funnily enough, people don't start with the audience in mind. Uh, your, your community probably does because as you say, that's your ethos and that's what you bring to the table all of the time. That's the first hat that they put on. I'm the audience member, what is my expectation here? Most people though, they don't, they start with the venue in mind. They go, oh where are we going to have this? When are we going to have it? One of the challenges, um, your community might experience, similar to mine, is we are often at the disposal of the person who has booked us to do the thing. And so we need a, we need a framework to help people understand why it's important to follow our process and not theirs. So I think, um, for me, for example, I have a process that focuses on purpose, audience, objectives and outcomes. That's the first four things I talk about. And that every decision comes from that. If the client I'm talking to wants to start talking about a venue, I can pull them back. I can, I can pull them right back and go, let's just do these four parts first. And then through that process, they will often realise, Oh, actually, this is completely the wrong venue, or location, or time, or, you know. So, um, that's probably the biggest challenge. So, just helping clients through those conversations, I guess, through those... lots of good questions I start with, um, and that can be a challenge sometimes. Sometimes they don't want to go through those questions with me and, you know, we can't make people do things, can we, but yeah.

Mel:

It does. Yeah. And if what it sounds like is, um, you know, the challenge, I think if I'm surmising this correctly is. helping people understand that you've got to take a strategic mindset to events, not a tactical mindset. And tactics are the things like booking the thing, you know, organising the menu, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the strategic mindset is that level up and you've got to start there before you can get to the tactics.

Sally:

Yes. What a great way to put it. Love that Mel.

Mel:

Excellent. So you touched on this just a little bit before around people, you know, having ... not having the capacity to, you know, attend events. And many of the people who listen to this show will be involved in organising internal events like CEO town halls, leadership forums, you know, leadership conferences at their organisations. Apart from that capacity piece, what do we need to be on the lookout for when organising internal events?

Sally:

I guess the point I made before about trying to understand what else is going on in people's daily work to give them the headspace to come and pay attention. Again, just focusing on the audience, focusing on what do you expect from the audience here. And this comes down to your comms strategy, obviously, but it kind of ties in a little bit like it's, it's what I talk about with clients as well is what do you want people to do when they leave here? Um, are they just coming to listen? Could this be done as a webinar? Do we all have to come together? Like, what is the, what is the, the setup, of this activity that we're going to do in the first place. Thinking about those kind of, what do you want people to do? As you said before, um, and behave. And what change are you looking to make?

Mel:

One of the things you raised you were talking about there too was you know thinking about okay? Well, what how do you want people to behave and think one of the things I always say is Uh, especially for things like CEO town halls and those sorts of things, don't ignore the elephant in the room, you know, if there's something going on in the organisation that everybody's talking about and leaders are uncomfortable with talking about and they just ignore it, that helps nobody. So I think, you know, leaders need to step up in these events too, and actually be brave and talk about the things that again, audience mindset. What's on their minds? What should you be talking about? And sometimes that's going to be hard. There's going to be hard conversations. But there's ways to, to make that still a really meaningful interaction where people walk away feeling positive too.

Sally:

Exactly. I think, I think you hit the nail on the head, and I actually mentioned it, I sent my newsletter out this morning and I mentioned it in that, um, it's, it's important to tell people, even if you don't know anything. So one of the, one of the, it was a post actually, not in my newsletter, um, I did a post about one of the top three things I've learnt about clients and that is that it's okay to say I don't have an update for you right now.

Mel:

Yep. Absolutely.

Sally:

Because that makes them happy. That makes them really happy. Even if you know nothing, tell people you know nothing.

Mel:

That's it. And it's okay to say, I don't know, but I'll find, as soon as I found out, I will let you know. I one

Sally:

of the things I've learned in the last year and a half, which comes from, um, a great author called Priya Parker, who has a book called The Art of Gathering, which is a phenomenal book. Um, she talks about priming your audience, and then you have your, you know, your event, and then the post event, um, activity with people. And I think this is a, this is something that's worked really well for me in the last year and a half, I've taken this on board. I've worked really hard to talk to people before my event. So, when I, when I get to the event, they know me pretty well. I've taken the time to go and search their LinkedIn's and, and, you know, kind of do a bit of research there as well. So, I've got something to talk to them about when they come. And then that post event as well, making sure that they do the follow up that they said they were going to follow up. Or, in my event labs, for example, I test different ideas, um, we try all sorts of disruptive ways of doing things like name tags and things that we do in the stock standard way all the time. But I like to follow people up and go, did you do that thing? Did you test out that idea that we threw out there? And so her, um, she's got a lot of amazing ideas in that book, but that, that has been a game changer for me for the last 18 months.

Mel:

Yeah. And what you're referring to there is, um, from behavioural science perspective is the primacy and the recency effects. So we tend to remember more the first thing we've seen or heard or experienced and the last thing as well. And so all that stuff in the middle often gets lost. But if you can start strong and finish strong with, you know, the key things you want people to know, feel and do, you're in a much better position to get the outcomes you want from that event. And the other thing that plays into that, is what's called the peak end rule. So, um, there was some experiments done around this. Some of them are a bit nasty, so I won't go into it. But, um, essentially we tend to judge an experience by the very last moments of it. So if you have an amazing holiday, but then, you know, the plane ride back is a disaster and blah, blah, blah. You actually, that actually taints your whole experience. So if you can finish an event on a high with a really good something, then that's more likely to get much more positive outcomes as well. So you're just tapping into all the workings of the brain. I love it, Sally.

Sally:

It's true though. It's true. Yeah. I mean, I often say like when it comes to like food selection and things like that, and people really don't. They really don't pay enough attention to that part of their event planning. At the end of the day, if the people didn't get fed what they thought they were going to get fed or really enjoyed it, that's all they will remember. They won't remember what you said.

Mel:

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yep. Uh, now, on that though, obviously, this all comes at a cost, right? And we are in a world where organisations, whether it's internal events or external events, have to be really mindful to about the optics of having events in the first place. You can't be seen to be splashing cash around. There's a cost of living issue, all sorts of things. And people are getting much more conscious of sustainability as well. So how can you balance, though, that the optics and the costs and the sustainability portion of, you know, an event with letting people have a really good time and those memorable experiences?

Sally:

Yeah, yeah, that's right. Um, I think it's, it's, it's coming together as a group. I would, I would build subcommittees into your events. I mean, I could give ideas, obviously, but every event's different. Every meeting is different. Um, one of the things I recommend, though, is that people bring subcommittees together who are interested in those things and get them to come up with the ideas of how you can bring that in to your organisation. So that would be my advice, is that I would, um, I would bring people in to talk about; and as far as. Doing things differently and being a bit disruptive, um, get the creative people in your organisation, get your graphic designers, get, get those people that are, uh, working the creative side of their brain all the time, ask them, can they come up with... you know, 10 ideas, for example, that, um, they can implement into their normal standard meeting structure that they would love to see be done, right? So if you normally walk into your town hall and there's an agenda on the screen behind you, how would we do that differently? How do we share the agenda with people? How do we tell people, because people want to know what's happening, right? They want to know there's this first and then this and then that. Maybe trying to build some things like that into your internal events, into your town halls, into your workshops, to let people know what occurs when. But as I say, grab other people from your organisation and get them to brainstorm. Let them know what you're doing and that you want to do things differently. And I think, you know, number one, you get five new advocates for your event, your meeting in the room, right?

Mel:

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Co ownership. That's, you know, it's such a powerful tool anyway, whether it's change or comms or events, like having that sense of ownership really helps to drive people. Yeah, that's brilliant. Thanks, Sal. Um, I have another question before we get to our last question, but it's around AI. Now, it is infiltrating everything we do now, and it's only getting smarter and better. And there's, there's some really cool tools out there. Are there any AI tools? Uh, that you're starting to use in events or that you think have potential to be used to help make the event process better. So,

Sally:

so I do have and I'm happy to give it to your audience for free Mel; I've actually done a workshop on how to maximise your events using AI. So I've got a little 4 part workshop. It was done. I did it. A little less than a year ago. So obviously there's new and fabulous things out there since then. But what is in it is still very good and even better than it was when I did this workshop. So I'm happy to give that to your audience for free because what it is is you still have to ask AI the right questions, you still have to give it the appropriate prompt. Now, here's an example. I, I was asked by someone, I hadn't signed the contract on this conference yet. Um, I was still going through the pitch process, they hadn't chosen me yet, but they sent me. They sent me four speakers, four presenters, and said, we're thinking about these as MCs. Um, and as you can imagine, there's a whole evaluation process that goes around choosing an MC. You don't just look at a website and go, Oh, yeah, they look nice. Let's choose them. And so I thought, I'm going to, I'm going to create a checklist for them. on how to choose the right presenter and I'll do a little short video and this will be, and I'll be able to give that away to other people as well. And then I went, actually, no, I'm going to get ChatGPT to create this for me. So I asked it the obvious question, but I had to keep going. But what about this? And what about that? And if I wanted the person to be able to do this, what kind of questions would I need to ask them? So I had to, like, I had to know. the answers to those questions before it could give me what I wanted, if that makes any sense. So what it gave me in the first instance was pretty basic. It's a bit like when you're trying to delegate a task to someone but you've never done the task yourself. If you've never done it, they're just gonna, gonna keep coming back to you going, Is this what you want? Is this what you want? So, I think it's a phenomenal tool to save time. Um, I've just, I've just signed up to something called Sintra, which I'm not quite sure on yet, um, but it's a bit of fun to play around with. It's actually got 12 assistants in it. There's also tools, so for those of you who, who don't want an event planner, which would make me very sad, there is, there is tools that, and I know ChatGPT has this task Aspect to it now. Um, I tried it. I didn't like it because all it did is just send me more emails. Um, and I don't need any more emails, but there's one out there called agent GPT, which I go through in that AI workshop and you can tell it to go and email. Like, I asked it to go and find me up to 5 vegan restaurants on the Gold Coast. So then it comes back with links, with references, um, and it had found me the vegan restaurants on the Gold Coast. I could have then continued on and said, can you email those restaurants and, um, see if you can get a booking for me on this date and this time. So it's a task doer, which is pretty phenomenal.

Mel:

Hmm. Well, Sal, we've covered a lot of ground today, so thank you so much for sharing all those insights. I have three questions that I ask every guest on the podcast. Are you ready for those?

Sally:

Yeah, I am. I am.

Mel:

Yes, she is. Okay. First one, what is one of the best communication lessons you've ever learned, and how did it change the way you approach communication?

Sally:

So, I had a job in a government department, and I never ever thought, you know, that, that working in a government department would actually give me the majority of the lessons that I carry with me today. Um, but, that's where I discovered event planning as a skill, as a, as a, you know, shingle that I hang over my shop. Um, but it's also the place where I discovered brevity, um, getting to the point, but also at the same time, being able to give someone the whole picture. And I was alluding to this before when I said about people coming back with, you know, 15 takes of the same document. I remember the person I worked for, I remember his red pen and it drove me nuts when I first got this job; um, I first got this job and he first came into the role, he was probably the first person that kept going, red pen, do it again, red pen, do it again. And, and, In the beginning, it was horrendous, in the beginning I took everything personally, I hated it, you know, but it actually made me a much better writer. So that's probably the best communication lessons I got was about brevity, and that was working for the government.

Mel:

Love it. Uh, next question. What's one thing you wish people would do more of or less of when communicating?

Sally:

I've probably done it through this whole podcast, but I try really hard not to say, I think. I think is a way to buffer any pushback. It's almost like we, you can't berate me for just saying, oh, I think, because it's just my opinion instead of stating a fact, right? So, I think is, is number one. And the second one is, um, do you understand? Am I, am I making sense? When someone is presenting and they are asking if they're making sense. I just feel like they should be able to read a room, you should be able to read people's face. Are they nodding? Are they engaged? Are they, you know? Do you know what I'm talking about?

Mel:

Yeah, it erodes a bit of confidence in the speaker, I think, as well to say, Oh, I just said it myself. I think, I think, uh, but also to check on, there are other ways to check understanding. As you say, are people, do the people look engaged? Are they nodding along or ask some leading questions? So you could ask questions like, can anyone give me an example of this from your own experience?

And that's a good way of just testing:

Did that actually get through rather than saying, does it make sense? That's great. Okay, last question. Who do you turn to for communication advice?

Sally:

Well, you, obviously. Um, look, it, to be quite honest with you, it's not, um, I've always drawn on, on that advice, obviously, that I had from that employer that I had. Um, I have done the, IAP2, I've done the Essentials of Engagement, um, and a couple of others there, and I tend to refer back to those, so I'm, I'm someone who loves to keep my notebooks, I go and print them. Um, and I tend to refer back to those quite often, but having now, um, spent some time with your International Association of Business Communicators, I think I'm going to build myself a, quite a nice little pool of people that I'll be able to tap into. Because it's, it's really interesting. I love it. I love it. Other, other than that, I get a professional, like I've had a professional copywriter before. Um, I've engaged, I engage, yeah, I engage professionals to do what I need to get done.

Mel:

yeah, oh that's a great idea. Well on that Sally, thank you so much for bringing your professional expertise to Let's Chatter, More Matter today. If people wanted to find out more about you, how could they get in touch?

Sally:

Easiest place to find me is on LinkedIn, uh, so it's just Sally Porteous on LinkedIn, which is P O R T E O U S. . But yes, on LinkedIn as Sally Porteous is the best place to find me.

Mel:

Brilliant. And we'll put that link in the show notes as well. Sally, thank you so much for your time today and sharing your wisdom so generously.

Sally:

Thank you, Mel. It's been a joy. I love chatting with you, as always, and I look forward to seeing you at a IACB event soon.