Personal Experience as an Event Assistant

As an Event Assistant my main responsibility is to provide administrative support and customer service for events in lower mainland, national and international locations. This entails, continuously to be in contact with various alumni from different demographics and be the point of contact. My position also necessitates me to work in conjunction with 5 events managers who have different working styles. Working on multiple events at the same time with similar deadlines there is grave need to develop prioritizing skills and change them at a moment’s notice if need arises.

The most impeding challenge I face in this position is to be aware of the future needs of the managers on different events and be able to strategically allocate the necessary resources. Added to this is the fact that there are many events in different stages of execution and planning and to keep a tab on the varied deadlines is at times quite taxing and might lead to slip ups if everything is not double checked which makes all the process more time consuming. A good hold on transactive and prospective memory can help elude these challenges and make multiple event management a much more efficient process.

Strategy 1

Taking perspective is important for effective communication, especially in an office setting where 2 assistants are serving 5 event managers. The combination of the knowledge held by each team member and the comprehension of what expertise each member has is termed is Transactive memory (Gockel and Brauner, 2013; Prichard and Ashleigh, 2007). It is a cognitive state (Gockel and Brauner, 2013) where knowledge about what the teammates know can make a task much more efficient. An increase in transactive memory should enable a very interdependent team l...

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Prichard, J. S., & Ashleigh, M. J. (2007). The Effects of Team-Skills Training on Transactive Memory and Performance. Small Group Research, 38(6), 696-726. doi:10.1177/1046496407304923

Waldum, E. R., & Sahakyan, L. (2013). A role for memory in prospective timing informs timing in prospective memory. Journal Of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(3), 809-826. doi:10.1037/a0030113