A Thought Leadership Piece by Joey Rodriguez
Joey Rodriguez – Manager, Event Planning Services at Meeting Tomorrow
Event planners are leaders. We orchestrate chaos, juggle a thousand moving parts, and somehow make it all look effortless. From the outside, we’re the ones with the clipboard and the calm smile. But somewhere along the way, many of us quietly shift from managing events to managing people, and no one really talks about how hard that transition can be.
Leadership in the planning world isn’t a straight line. It’s a series of behind-the-scenes evolutions, trial-and-error moments, and deep personal growth. And for those of us who’ve made the leap, or are thinking about it, it’s a conversation worth having.
For me, leadership has always been part of who I am. I captained my sports teams growing up and loved tutoring and training others. But becoming a “leader on paper” was a different story. Early in my career, it felt like all the event leadership roles I observed were filled by people who weren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Even as I grew into my career, with all my experience, it was tough to find a role that truly let me step into leadership officially. That changed five years ago when I joined Meeting Tomorrow as they expanded from an AV production company to a full-service event agency. I was lucky to help build and now lead our event planning team. It was the right fit, at the right time, and it let me bring all of my experience to the table in a new way.
Events are demanding work, so it’s important that anyone in the field be truly dedicated. For me, my love for events started with a mic and a music playlist, working in college radio where I fell in love with taking the studio on the road for live broadcasts. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that was the spark, and I quickly discovered that events were at the heart of everything I loved doing. Since then, I’ve built a 22-year career planning everything from trade shows and nonprofit galas to international incentive trips and weddings. I had a great run hosting activations tied to major national sports sponsorships — I even followed the PGA TOUR for a few years. I’ve worked in Vegas, moved to Chicago, and led events with budgets ranging from $1,000 to $5 million. Today, I head up the Event Planning Services team at Meeting Tomorrow, an international event agency, and the part I love most? Mentoring new planners and turning chaos into magic.
My evolution from detail-oriented planner to event leader was not free of personal challenges. As planners, the majority of our work is controlling the holistic big picture, with a process that can be hard to let go of. It’s your responsibility to make sure everything goes right, but what surprised me most about the shift from doing to leading was how fulfilling it is to support others instead of running every detail yourself. Like many planners, I took pride in being a “control freak” — it meant I cared, and that my events ran smoothly.
When you lead a team, the goal shifts. Instead of owning every piece, you start building a structure that lets others thrive. You evaluate strengths, offer guidance, and create space for your team to take ownership.
The first time I really had to let go and trust my team was when I got sick, and I was forced to believe that I had given my team what they needed to run the show without me. I needed to take care of myself, and I knew that I had trained them and was confident they had the skills they needed. I’m happy to say the event was a success. These days, I understand that my biggest wins aren’t just successful events, they’re the moments when someone I’ve mentored hits their stride, solves a problem, or leads a project with confidence. That’s the real reward.
Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Balancing mentorship with deadlines, sales conversations, and the unexpected fires that come with events is still a challenge. And here’s the truth no one really tells you: to excel at managing, you have to be 100% willing to let go of planning. There just isn’t enough time in the day to do both well. If you want to stay deep in the weeds of planning, that’s totally valid, but managing a team requires a completely different focus. You can’t fully support someone’s growth if you’re too busy running your own events. Instead, I focus on providing the right tools, the right check-ins, and a culture where people feel safe to ask questions, speak up, and try new things. Weekly one-on-ones, open feedback loops, and a foundation of kindness, humility, and commitment (our company’s core values) help me stay grounded in that mission.
Through all of this, I can say that I’m really proud of the fact that my employees know that I am an open door, a support system and a resource. They’ve told me that they don’t feel that I talk down to them or feel I’m above them.
There is no substitute for experience when it comes to events,
and we still talk things through and brainstorm. One of the things I’m proud that we do at Meeting Tomorrow is skill assessments with real-life examples. We work through various scenarios, including tricky situations. A stand-out training we do is reverse shadowing, where a new team member sees the first few jobs done by seasoned lead executives, and we always debrief. We make sure our team is knowledgeable and confident when they finally get the chance to run their events. One of the greatest compliments I received was from a newer employee after her first mini program. She thanked me for trusting her enough to let her fully run the program, and being able to take on the challenge and learn with confidence. That meant a lot to me as a leader because that is the point — to create exceptional experiences for our clients while giving our team the chance to grow and learn.
Event leadership is a balancing act because our clients appreciate our attention to detail and strategic recommendations. We help our clients understand how the events they create with us integrate into the work their marketing teams are doing, and can even contribute to multi-year plans. Clients with marquee events spend lots of dollars revamping their events and working with us to create something new and exciting. We work with them on every detail, right down to thought-provoking discussions on the questions we create for attendee feedback. So these pieces are more than just organizing events, which lends itself to a lot of opportunities for those on our team to grow — not just learning events, but learning strategy, and handling all aspects of client work.
There is so much gratification in leading, and if there’s one thing I’d tell planners stepping into leadership for the first time, it’s this: you’re more capable than you think. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to care about the work, about your people, and about learning as you go.
Here are a few reminders that helped me make the shift:
- Trust your team early and often.
- Create more space for questions, not just answers.
- Celebrate wins loudly — even the small ones.
- Focus on developing people, not just projects.
- Let go of perfection. Growth is messy sometimes.
I’m proud of the culture we’ve built on my team — one where planners feel seen, supported, and empowered. And here’s the best part: when you lead with heart, you don’t just build better events, you build better people. And that’s the kind of legacy worth striving for.
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