Leading a team doesn’t come natural to me, I am aware of my own tendencies to operate as more of a lone-wolf than a leader of an all women team of planners. For years I maxed myself out trying to do it all, and the stress of being a one woman show can really start to pile up on your shoulders.

Instead, I branched out to having an intern or independent contractors who would assist with weddings but still weren’t taking on much of the bulk of client work. So I found myself still planning all of the weddings, spinning my wheels trying to teach brand new staff and not fully trusting anyone to take on tasks. Fast forward to 2016 when I knew that my third trimester of my second trimester was going to fall right in the middle of our busiest season. I was lucky to find an eager assistant who had majored in Event Management and had a passion for events. After assisting and leading month-of weddings we established a great working relationships and her role grew into being essentially my other half when it came to marketing, bridal shows, booking clients and managing weddings.

Despite several industry warnings and hesitations in the business world we charted into partnership territory and for much of the time we were able to work seamlessly - dividing and conquering the tasks that we both felt were our strengths and communicating on those tasks that we needed help with. I was able to pass off much of the staff interactions because I viewed it as more her strength than mine. Of the many lessons that I learned over the year of partnership, you can share tasks with another member of your team but keep a system in place to stay on top of tasks and deadlines.

If you are reading this and can relate with having a few areas in your business that you wish you could just hand-off then this advice is for you. Definitely seek assistance from others and heck, even outsource parts of your business that are time consuming or draining - but ONLY if you have a system in place to have your finger on the pulse of that task. If you outsource social media - then have benchmarks and expectations in place of what your expectations are with that task. If you have an associate team and they are managing client work, have either a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly team meeting that you can stay up-to date on the progress of each of those events.

So how do we run a team? First, my staff are employees rather than independent contractors which means they have a handbook, training opportunities and policies to follow. Second, they have access to Aisle Planner and can see the back end communication of the weddings so they can stay updated with the events. Third we incorporated Trello for team communication, scheduling, tracking staff hours and sharing other details so that each staff member can have their own board to share with management as well as a team board. Our goal is to create a culture in our company where each planner has confidence and support from their team. This will continuously be improved as I learn and receive feedback from the team of how we can do better.

We have to keep working on those areas we see as our weakness and continually ask for feedback. Ask your team questions about their goals, what they enjoy most about the events they have worked on, what do they want to learn more of, and how their experience could be better as a member of the team. You will be surprised how much your team cares about the growth of the company! Next, visualize how you want your team to interact with clients and how this impacts the scalability of your company in years to come.

Happy planning!
Veronica