In my last post, I talked about an event to celebrate our amazing volunteer production teams at Willow. One of my key learnings was that we needed to put stuff on the calendar for it to happen. As production people, we are so used to others determining our schedule of events, and it is important to take control of our calendars enough to make sure celebrating volunteers, whatever other important thing you need to be about, shows up.
Now it is one thing to put an event on the calendar. It is another thing entirely to make it worth coming to. As promised, here is another thing I learned getting ready for our volunteer event:
Spend the time to make it meaningful. I already mentioned that I am worried about something failing as a reason not to do it in the first place. Just having an event in someone’s calendar isn’t enough, if it isn’t worth coming to. How will you use the time? What is the point of our getting together? What do we want people to feel when they leave?
Our staff team has a super fun Christmas party each year, and every year I know I have to wrap up the evening and say something meaningful in 5 minutes. I spent hours trying to come up with the right thing to say. I have been to enough events where it felt like the people in charge we just winging it, and that feels dishonoring.
Take the time to make something memorable and significant. Don’t waste the gathering by not casting some vision or encouraging your team. What they do is significant, and someone needs to pour into them with words. If you don’t seize this opportunity, don’t waste your time scheduling the event in the first place.
As a leader, invest the time to make each event you plan worth coming to.
