Allow me to set the scene…. It was the year 2019, November. COVID-19 wasn’t yet the global pandemic that it would become. I was being given more responsibility in my job and would be managing more than a few workshops and events on my own during a world tour for my client in tech…needless to say…I was beyond nervous. To the point where it was affecting my attitude and Melissa asked me what was wrong and what I needed. I told her I was unsure that I was prepared enough, and afraid that I had made critical mistakes in setting up the events that I wouldn’t know about until we were on site and they couldn’t be fixed. She had me go through all the worst scenarios in my head that could happen (she even indulged my crazy weather and freak accident fears) and had a comment or opinion on them all to help me manage. Then she said the strangest thing- “Just go and fail. That is all I expect from you.”
My gut reaction was confusion and panic. I had grown up in a family where the saying “Practice makes Perfect” was actually '“Perfect Practice makes Perfect”. It was drilled into me that you should do things correctly, perfectly, each time, anything else was not good enough. How else are you supposed to learn to do it properly? My mind went into a spin- “She thinks I’m going to fail.” “I’m not ready for this.” “Why would she tell me to fail?!” “I’m going to fail.” (Plus a few others-but you get the gist, I’m sure) Never in my life has it been an option to not be perfect or succeed. Flaws are failures, failures are unacceptable.
She quickly followed that statement up with “You’ve done everything you can-everything I would have, everything I told you to do and more, if something goes wrong, I have full faith and trust in you and your ability to figure it out. Failing is how you learn; I have your back.” In my 30 years of life and decade of cooperate jobs, I’ve never had that kind of support.
Was I stressed out at times? Oh yes- but just wait till you hear why, and why I love telling this story now.
Pre-Trip:
The workshops that I was managing needed pop-up banners to alert attendees where to check in and where our room was located. Those were supposed to arrive at my house in Seattle before I left for the first event in Paris. I would come home for a day from Orlando (where the main launch event took place), repack for Paris with the pop-up banners and head off 21 hours later. If you guessed that they never made it, you would be correct! The production team then put in an order to a Paris printer, promising they would have them delivered to the corporate office in Paris at 8:00 am on the event day. That meant arriving in time for the 8:30 am check in for the workshop that started at 9:00 am. YEESH!
Pre-Event:
After an uneventful, but lovely, flight (that now has Iceland on my ‘Must Visit’ list) me and the team arrived in Paris. Coincidentally, it was a national holiday for both the U.S and France, but theirs was a much bigger deal. Banks closed, offices closed, parades, memorials covered in flowers - the whole thing. Therefore… there was a high probability that there was no one in the corporate offices that we were using to host our workshop. However, I thought I would take my chances on there being a skeleton crew that would be able to let me into the offices to get my security clearance and to review the rooms for the workshops. My first concern was that I had booked room in the wrong office building. I wanted to make sure that I had sent the correct address to the workshop attendees in the invite (and send out an emergency update if I had). After dropping off my bags and checking in with my client, I jumped in a cab outside the hotel and headed to the office.
Well- the address was the right one! But of course, the offices were locked, and the gates to the main courtyard area had been rolled shut as well. There was a pedestrian opening into the courtyard, so I tried my luck. There were access points on the doors for you to tap your ID card to get in, but since I hadn’t been given access to this location, they wouldn’t open for me. I still tapped my card on all of them, lots of times…(I was expecting to get some sort of security guards attention to be honest). A man was outside a door smoking, so I asked if he worked at the company I needed. He didn’t…he worked at a smaller company that shared the larger complex. I decided to walk around the building, to see if there was a side entrance or service door I could find. I found a side street along the building with a guard box to control entry to the parking lot, but no one was in there, so I just kept walking through. I could smell sawdust and hear woodworking sounds, so I followed that into a workshop with 2 men who seemed very confused that an American lady just popped in and asked if they knew if there was anyone in the corporate buildings or if they could point me in the way of security. “UHHHHH- non…” with some side glances was all I got before I decided to cut my losses and head back to the hotel.
Getting back to the hotel kicked off a whole other set of concerns. There was no taxi’s (no one was working, so why would they be there?! And my Uber app wasn’t finding any cars nearby. The small back streets where the offices and complex are located were deserted- who would need a ride now, today? It was November in Paris, which in and of itself is so lovely-but it was late afternoon at this point. I just wanted to take a nap and eat and shower- I had been on 2 planes,2 custom lines, on site at a trade show for almost 2 weeks before this and the only food I’ve eaten was on the plane or from an airport kiosk. I wanted a glass of wine! Not to mention I was still in my flying outfit essentially, just with a raincoat, so my little ballet flats were useless in the damp, cold and dirt. My whole body hurt. I was almost about to have my client send me a car from the hotel. But! Just as I was about to take the metro that I saw a sign for, an Uber was available, and I was able to get back to the hotel. He got 5 stars and a big tip in app and in cash (I am American- let me give you money when you make my life better please and thank you).
After a room service dinner in my room, with my much desired and earned, glass of French wine, I fell asleep so hard that when I woke up 2 hours later at 9 pm, I thought it was 9 AM! Terrified that I had slept through my alarms and my clients would be furious. I was putting on clothes while trying to put together a text to my client, apologizing, when I realized my mistake. - No missed calls? - Why hadn’t they called me? - - - OH- whew! That was a great 2 hours of sleep apparently. Yes-I slept very well that night, but I set a BUNCH of alarms for the next morning just to be safe….
*What I learned- check the holiday & event calendars for where you are hosting events.
Workshop Day!
We made it to the office- (where I almost got hit by a bike getting out of the Uber with my clients- funny thing, the next time we got out on a bike path, the app warned us….) and there are a lot of people milling around the front doors and in the lobby… Turns out, there are 2-3 other large events happening and other workshops as well in the building today. The receptionists are slammed and can’t help with checking in our people. I didn’t have my pop-up banners yet (remember, they were supposed to be at the offices today by 8 :30 AM), so there wasn’t an easy way to attract our attendees to check in with my team and get escorted to the rooms. Since I had booked 2 rooms (in case we had enough people to split), I re-routed the catering team to place food in the office we selected, set up my clients with the tech and food, then began my search for the pop-up banners…I made good friends with some folks in the mail room. Long story short, they didn’t make it in time. They arrived by 9:00 am, after we had collected our few workshop attendees from the reception area and had started the event. We didn’t even open them, we just kept them in the boxes to be tagged as luggage on the way back home.
*What I learned- don’t trust the mail to get things to you on time. AND check the holiday & event calendars for where you are hosting events- I say this again because it’s important.
We started late, due to the confusion of getting the attendees checked in and into the room, but we were officially started! Halfway through one of the explainer portions, before the attendees had even gotten to the hands-on work portion… the fire alarm went off. Now, if you’ve traveled, you’ll know that different countries have different sounding alarms and sirens. Us Americans all went ‘…whaaa?…’ and I opened the door to see all the others opening doors, putting on jackets and filing outside. So yeah…we had to go as well.
I speak a little French, not as well as I did in college, but enough to get the gist of things. I stuck to the attendees and tried to corral them together. The last thing I wanted to do was lose the small group of people in the huge crowd of hundreds on the streets. I let them chat amongst themselves, listening in to see if I could catch anything helpful, but my vocab is not great with tech terms. Once we were allowed back in the building, it turned out we lost one attendee. Turns out she left and told the clients it was because her company wasn’t using whatever was required for the workshop to be helpful or relevant. We finished up the workshop without any more incidents and then headed back to the hotel to drop off things and to get lunch. The rest of the trip was just wrap up work and then a day and a half to myself to be a tourist while my clients had other meetings I wasn’t managing.
Things may have gone to hell in a handbasket, and there may have been some things that could be considered “failures”, but I feel like I did pretty darn good!!
And because it’s not a story about Victoria without some sort of physical blunder or hurting herself-
I flew Icelandic Air both to Paris and back- (and I loved them! I will fly with them again! This is by no means a comment on them, this is all me). On the way home- we had to disembark on the tarmac and then take a shuttle to the terminal. To do that-I had to walk down the big stairs they rolled up to the door and onto the tarmac with my carry-ons. They said to be careful walking down the stairs, since they were mental and may be slippery. My seat was super close to the door, so I was one of the first dozen or so to exit. I made it all the way to the bottom of the stairs, put my left foot down on the tarmac, and my ankle rolled. I went down HARD. Left ankle gave out, I dropped my bag, fell over the top of it, hitting my knee on the ground and busting it open, massive scrape on my right foot where it was dragged as I tumbled. Backpack went over my head and into a puddle. Don’t forget, this is me we are talking about, so I’m wearing a dress. It’s long and flowy and is my favorite flying outfit (veerrry comfy, essentially a fashionable snuggie).
Back to my senses- I am in a jumble on the ground, trying to get up (and failing due to my left leg), the Icelandic ground crew picks me up and helps me get to the shuttle. I just keep telling them I’m fine…because oh my gosh an entire plane of people just watched this chubby American girl in a floral dress fall face first on the tarmac and is bleeding. I hadn't noticed how bad the knee scrape was until I sat down on the shuttle (not making eye contact with anyone) and composed myself. As soon as we got to the terminal, I took out my first aid kit from my carry on (thank goodness I had packed the GIANT bandages) and set to cleaning and bandaging myself up. A few Icelandic moms and aunties came over to make sure I was ok- I should have told the crew on my next flights, but I just wanted to be home and not cause a fuss. The layover, flight home and the next day was rough, but it’s been over a year and, the scars remind me of a pretty great story…
*What I learned—ASK FOR HELP. I should have seen first aid or asked for ice on the plane. I’m not embarrassed about it now- but I sure was in the moment. Think big picture when things are tough.
But wait- there’s more! While I was falling off airplanes in Iceland, my boss (Melissa) was receiving a phone call from my client, who was still in Paris, telling her how impressed they were with how I handled things during that event. Specifically, that because of my ability to stay (outwardly) calm and handle that crazy situation with (reasonable) grace, he offered me a year-long+ contract!
In summary- things did go wrong, things did fail, but I did not!