Meeting Planner Careers

Mindfulness, meditation, paying attention, “being here now” is a self-discipline that people develop over a life time. You already ’practice mindfulness’ when you remind yourself to stop worrying and enjoy the play, ball game, movie, book, t.v. program, birthday celebration, or hobby in which you’re currently engaged. (A useful definition of “to worry” is to project yourself into the future and anticipate a negative outcome.) When you remind yourself to stay in the present, you’re practicing a rudimentary form of mindfulness.

But, there are reasons to get better at it. The fact is, you can also risk staying in the present for negative events. Part of ‘practicing mindfulness’ is internalizing the knowledge that everything changes. If you can stay with the present, even the most awful experiences will pass and you can regain an emotional equilibrium that returns you a present filled with innumerable small gifts of grace. You will know that you do not have to project yourself into a future of negative consequences from a current depressing event. But this takes practice.

Why suggest yet another tool a la “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” or Sun Tzu’s “Art of War” to meeting planners? Simply because mindful meditation is at least 2,500 years old and remains as beneficial to the present as when it was first conceived.

You might begin your new practice with exercises at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center .

Everyone has their own private pet peeves, including your clients. Have you ever stopped to think about how or if you are driving them ‘round the bend? Learning a lesson from a client’s frustration with other meeting planners can save you a great deal of headache and earn your company new loyalty points.

Communication is a key factor. Almost every conflict between a meeting planner and his client can be traced back to a failure to communicate. Imagine you are booking a keynote speaker and have asked her to hold a date open. She is excited at the prospect of working with you and complies. Your workload piles up and you forget to tell her your client decided to go with a different speaker. When you don’t send that email releasing the date, resentment and frustration are the natural consequences.

Do you tailor your email mailing list to include only those people who need to know? Sending reminders to people who have complied with all your requests can ruffle a few feathers. It makes them feel that you just aren’t paying attention when, in fact, you’ve just taken the easy way out. Keeping track of the small stuff may be tedious; however, success is often in the small details.