A Passionate Leader | Paola Federico

Paola’s biggest takeaways which she has aligned into the company, are the sense of beauty she has witnessed while growing up that culminates into harmony, attention to detail, and pursuit of perfection.  From a managerial point of view, she wants to work towards motivating and guiding her team and challenging them to reach greater heights, and she wants to do all this while simultaneously challenging herself. She wants to lead by example. “An effective manager, in my opinion, is someone who is willing to put himself or herself in a perspective of continuing education in a constantly changing market. Ready to reinvent himself/herself,” says Paola. “A leader may have a more directive style or a tendency to seek consensus: it is important to have the ability to adopt a different leadership style than one is naturally inclined to use if the situation calls for it. To succeed in this, one must, first of all, be self-aware. Assessment is the starting point for setting long-term personal goals.”

The pioneering leader has been inspiring and empowering her team constantly. A strong believer in a phrase by Adriano Olivetti, “The factory cannot look only at the profit index. It must distribute wealth, culture, services, democracy. I think factory for man, not man for factory”, Paola has great respect for her co-workers. “I treat all my collaborators as I would like to be treated in the workplace, it is a principle I have adopted since I founded Event Planet Ltd. in 2009, in the midst of the economic crisis, I have a strong sense of duty, inherited from my father, and fairness, transparency, reliability, in a single word REPUTATION, are the founding foundations of the company and are all qualities I look for in my collaborators,” explains Paola. “It is my opinion that professionalism is not measured solely and exclusively by one’s skills, but by a set of qualities such as efficiency, ability, and ethics, in addition to doing one’s job adequately according to one’s skills and the demands of the role, it is essential to be respectful and attentive to others.” Paola has been taking her company to new heights with such a brilliant mindset. “To lead people, walk beside them. As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence … When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves!’” Lao Tzu—is what inspires Paola. “This sentence is the basis for explaining my attitude in general leadership.” To better understand Paola’s leadership, one has to go back to 2020 when the pandemic struck. Her inner leader came into being as she guided the company through tough times with vision, empathy, and optimism. “We had over 20 international activities that would have involved thousands of attendees stranded because of the pandemic. Initially it was very difficult to figure out how to proceed, indeterminacy and fear characterizing all global production activities,” explains Paola. “But after the first two months of total uncertainty we had, in the process, we accelerated on the potential of the Web and converted most of the activities into online activities.” This instance displays how Paola’s steadfast leadership dealt with sudden challenges while maintaining a positive attitude toward oneself and the team.

Event Planet is a group of professionals who believe in the power of teamwork and love to work in synergy with clients, making their goals a part of the team’s own and pursuing them with commitment, passion, and creativity. Thanks to decades of experience, Event Planet has developed a flexible methodology that adapts to every event but remains steadfast in some fundamental respects: a director is chosen for each project which monitors and facilitates the work and becomes the single point of contact for the client. The director is responsible for providing the client with constant updates, checking that the budget is adhered to, and intervening should something unexpected occur.

Since the company’s founding, Event Planet has followed the market trends, new trends, and new changes very closely, and they will continue to do so. The company’s medium and long-term goal is to find new strategies to support companies, to become a single point of reference for companies that need a reliable partner in the field of MICE (Meetings, Incentive, Congress, Events), Scientific Communication, and Strategic Consulting.

Event Planet Group has several divisions:

• DMC – for those who want to organize meetings, conferences, and corporate events in Italy.
• PCO – for those who want to rely on us to organize international meetings, conferences, and corporate events.
• Scientific Communication
• Strategic Consulting to Companies in Pharma

Also, a new division focusing on corporate training is being created; in 2023, they will offer a package of online and in-person coaching courses by organizing “road-tour-courses” internationally. “For the road ahead, we want to work towards establishing ourselves internationally while maintaining consistent quality and reliability while always trying to safeguard our reputation,” elucidates Paola. “We consider our clients partners. Their goals are our goals, the economic aspect is important but secondary to the end result.”