Case Study: Mentoring

All in one day!

A need to develop new skills

Lucy was a PA in the financial services sector. She had been a PA for over 10 years and had a career break to raise her children. Within her role she was finding the amount of event management was increasing. No longer was she just organising business meetings, but now it was breakfast events and networking drinks receptions. With no formal training in the field of event management, Lucy took the decision to learn more and to develop her skills in this area.

Lucy was undertaking an online event management course. She chose this style of learning and development as it was something which was flexible, convenient and cost effective

The course structure and content were good but she felt that she was lacking the opportunity to talk through what she was learning. She wanted the opportunity to validate some of the concepts, models and methodologies she was being presented with. Furthermore, she felt she wanted to discuss how she could craft her own approach, implement her own ideas and design her own tools and templates. So who did she call? Sarah Halfpenny Events of cause!

Key objectives

After an initial meeting with Lucy, we set out three clear objectives which helped to define the structure and topics for discussion. These were:

To validate the online course content
Build upon her learning on specific elements of event management: These were around venue souring, content creation and supplier selection and management
To help create event management templates which were bespoke to her style of management.

"Sarah was supportive, encouraging and lovely company. Thank you!”

The approach

Due to Lucy’s commitments juggling both work and home life, we decided we would cram 4 sessions into 1 day! Although intense, it provided an opportunity for Lucy to truly amerce herself into her learning and development.
Lucy and I met at a hotel which provided an environment which was both quiet and comfortable. It had a variety of spaces available for us to use from a coffee lounge, business suite, restaurant and outside seating too.

The first part of the day was mainly focused on validating what she had learned from the online course. She had lots of questions already prepared which enabled us to get through a lot of topics. The afternoon session was centred around the topics that she had a particular interest in or that wasn’t included in the course. The last session of the day was centred around Lucy’s personal approach to event management, looking at what she could adopt, adapt and utilise when organising her own events./p>

The result!

I will let Lucy tell you herself…

“1 day with Sarah made all the difference. She was knowledgeable, informative and full of ideas to help me carve out my own way of doing things.

I certainly feel more confident with what I know. I have expanded my knowledge in the areas that I am practically interested in and Sarah gave lots of hints and tips as to how I could manage my events going forward.

So where my objectives met in just 1 day? Yes, they were. Would I recommend Sarah to anyone who wants to develop their knowledge in event management? Absolutely.