The PPAI Expo 2024: A Trusted, Empowered Team Can Do Great Things EACH YEAR, in the weeks that follow The PPAI Expo, I reflect upon what I have learned. While I always gain countless takeaways about the industry, there are also many things that I learn about myself, about teamwork and about leadership. This year, many of these reflections continue to circle back to the power of empowerment. In my opinion, it’s one of the many things that made this year’s show “The Greatest Show.” While empowering others is not new to me or to PPAI, the empowerment of PPAI employees this year, specifically from a show perspective, was, for lack of better words, elevated and different. As a leader, relinquishing control – a must when empowering someone else – can be an intricate and challenging process, and one that can be even more difficult when the results those individuals are responsible for are public, like The PPAI Expo. But to truly empower an employee, you need to trust them with responsibilities, be willing to grant them autonomy and foster an environment where they feel safe to make decisions and learn from their experiences. This year, we entered the show with more people in the right seats than ever before, but that happened to also mean that we had less year-over-year same-role experience than at any other time in my 10-year tenure at PPAI. As a leader in this type of situation, you have to make a call on how much control Empowering your employees means providing them the tools and training to succeed, then trusting them enough to relinquish control over the details. By Ellen Tucker, CAE, MAS 32 • MARCH 2024 • PPAI Voices | Your Business
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