Personal Skills in Event Management: Problem Solving, Conflict & Time

This essay explores the crucial role of specific skills in achieving success in the event management industry. It highlights three essential skills: problem-solving, conflict management, and time management. The essay details the theoretical elements of each skill, emphasizing their relevance to the event industry. It discusses the importance of identifying and structuring problems, brainstorming solutions, and implementing and monitoring chosen techniques in problem-solving. In conflict management, it contrasts traditional and contemporary approaches, highlighting the importance of staying calm, listening actively, and using bargaining techniques. Finally, it emphasizes the importance of planning, scheduling, and flexibility in time management. The essay concludes by reinforcing the significance of these skills in ensuring event success.

Running Head: EVENT MANAGEMENT
EVENT MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Name

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The industry of event has a multitude of factors working together which in turn helps it to
make it a success. Managing and executing an event requires proper understanding of the cause
of the event, the stakeholders involved, the size of its operation, the potential risks or threats and
the overall goal that the event intends to fulfill. Every event is different from another however
there are certain key requirements that every event manager along with other employees needs to
ensure : Understanding the objectives of the event, establishing a specific timeline, selecting a
specific venue, sourcing and managing suppliers, managing the budget, marketing and
communication, managing risk (Rojek, 2014). Thus, this easy will focus on certain key elements
or specific potential skills that are much required to establish a successful career in a dynamic
event industry.
The three basic skills chosen for this purpose are: Problem Solving Skills, Conflict
Management Skills and Time Management Skills. Thus, the following parts of the easy will
deal in details regarding the value of each of these skills pertaining to event management
industry.
The first and foremost important skill that one should build upon to help him or her become
successful in the event industry is the problem solving skills. As already mentioned events
include a multitude of factors, requires a lot of members pertaining to different job field to work
together and is surrounded by a sea of uncertainties there might arise different kind of
problems during the planning as well as in the execution phase of the event (Erozkan, 2013).
Every incident has a specific goal that is some or the other objective it intends to meet and
certain barriers that comes in the way of achieving the same (Oulasvirta and Hornbæk, 2016).
This is exactly where the problem solving skills of an event planner needs to be implemented.

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Thus the main steps involved in solving a problem which must be applied by a person who
intends to develop his or her career in an event industry are: identifying the problem- where the
exact nature of the problem would be analyzed followed by structuring the problem- where the
problem would be carefully observed, necessary facts would be gathered on ways to solve the
same, the third step is looking for possible solutions- this requires a brainstorming approach
where number of ways to solve the problem must be identified and analyzed which one would
suit the best (Top Universities, 2019). The next step is taking a strong decision regarding
which method would be applied to solve the problem weighing the possible pros and cons,
then comes the implementation phase and finally once the chosen solution technique has been
implemented it is very necessary to continuously monitor and seek proper feedback
regarding the same, which is rather the last stage of the problem solving theory. This can be
best justified with an example: for instance there is a book fair event which needs to be
organized and on the day of the event, there is a problem of extreme weather condition and
therefore the vendors and the organizers face tremendous problem. Therefore as an event
manager my foremost responsibility would be to practically deal with the current situation, not
lose my calm, talk to the event organizers if possible arrange for some emergency shelters so that
the books and other consumables can be stored make the risk management team aware to take all
possible measures to lessen the amount of loss that might take place and altogether emphasize on
building up the team spirit to work cordially and give achieve the best.
The second skill mentioned is Conflict Management skill. In a hectic event like a trade
fair or a corporate meet the work pressure and building tension often results in varied types of
conflicts within the team members which need to be tackled efficiently so that it does not affect
the potentials of the specific event. There are two theoretical approaches towards conflict

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management. One is the traditional approach which states that conflicts are bad and should be
avoided at any cost where as the contemporary approach which states that conflicts are
inevitable part of human beings, often beneficial in bringing more innovative ideas and must be
managed efficiently (Thomas, 1992). Therefore as an event industry professional it is very much
important to understand these approaches and react efficiently. Conflict might arise between the
event organizers or between a vendor and a customer, whatever be the reason there are certain
core skills which are very important, which includes: staying calm and not losing the power of
reasoning, listening actively to both the sides of the conflict, using a bargaining approach to
come to a mutually beneficial solution, and designing effective and proper communication
and operational strategy to avoid such happening in future endeavors (Lam and Chin, 2005).
The third skill which needs to be emphasized upon includes the Time management skill. Every
event works on a specific time line and it is of no doubt that every individual related to this
industry must understand the value of time to best justify the goals of the event. Proper planning
and scheduling of each activity is the fore most steps to manage time efficiently (Noe, et al.
2017). One needs to be realistic in his or her approach to understand what needs to be done when
and how, a to do list is often used as an effective time management tool for event planners to
help them remember their activity schedule and remain punctual. It is also important to keep
enough flexibility in one’s panning schedule to help accommodate significant changes in the
functioning and effectively manage deadlines. My personal experience during planning my
college fest was that every member of the team requires a good understanding of how important
is time which must not be wasted at any cost to make the event a success.

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References:
Erozkan, A., 2013. The Effect of Communication Skills and Interpersonal Problem Solving
Skills on Social Self-Efficacy. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 13(2), pp.739-745.
Lam, P.K. and Chin. K.S. (2005) "identifying and prioritising critical factors for conflict
management in collaborative new product development, Industrial Marketing Management 34
(8) 761-772: Available at www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019850104001580
Noe, R.A., Hollenbeck, J.R., Gerhart, B. and Wright, P.M., 2017. Human resource management:
Gaining a competitive advantage. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.
Oulasvirta, A. and Hornbæk, K., 2016, May. Hci research as problem-solving. In Proceedings of
the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 4956-4967). ACM.
Rojek, C., 2014. Global event management: A critique. Leisure Studies, 33(1), pp.32-47.
Thomas, K.W. (1992) Conflict and Conflict Management: Reflections and Update, Journal of
Organisational Behaviour 13 (3) 265-274
Top Universities. (2019). How to Get Better at Time Management & Problem Solving. [online]
Available at: https://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/careers-advice/how-get-better-time-
management-problem-solving [Accessed 9 Sep. 2019].

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