#561 The Importance of Events: What Every Business Leader Gets Wrong | Niels Brabandt
The Importance of Events: What Every Business Leader Gets Wrong
In a working world that has moved decisively online, a growing number of executives are asking whether the corporate event still earns its place on the budget. Video calls are free, travel is expensive, and hybrid working has trained entire organisations to collaborate without ever sharing a room. So why do some of the world's most successful companies keep investing in bringing their people together in person?
Leadership expert Niels Brabandt addressed this question in this week's episode of The Leadership Podcast, arguing that events are not a nostalgic add-on but a strategic signal. “The importance of events is not up for debate,” Brabandt explains. “The question is not whether you should run them, but whether you know how to run them properly. Most companies that fail here make genuine beginner's mistakes.”
Timing and Location Are Never Neutral Decisions
According to Niels Brabandt, the first and most revealing decision a company makes about an event is timing. Scheduling a mandatory conference during the one week employees would otherwise use for a family holiday sends an unmistakable message about whose time actually matters.
Location carries the same weight. Brabandt cites a real client example: a company that quietly moved its flagship US conference from New York City to Lexington, Kentucky, purely to cut hotel costs, then wondered why attendance collapsed. “Less people turn up when the location is not desirable,” he says. “You are sending a dedicated message of appreciation, or non-appreciation, to your people.”
The lesson for decision-makers is not that events must be extravagant. Brabandt describes a mid-sized company in Milton Keynes that holds its Christmas party in the same local pub it has always used. Because the choice is authentic to the team, it lands as a strength rather than a compromise.
Why Cutting Corners Costs More Than It Saves
Budget-conscious leaders often default to cutting catering, venue quality or speaker fees to reduce the cost of an event. Niels Brabandt warns that this logic backfires. “When you go for a low fee, you get low results. No investment return. Very simple.”
He points to a cautionary example from the conference industry: an event in Monaco that pre-sold every available exhibitor slot, generating hype and 1,100 pre-registrations, only for 254 people to actually show up once attendees realised the event had been reduced to a sales floor. “There are certain market rates,” Brabandt notes. “If you go below that, you simply dent the experience. No exception.”
A separate example is more stark still. A well-known automotive supplier, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, converted its year-end party into a self-pay event to protect profit targets. Fewer than ten per cent of staff attended. “When you are a multi-billion euro company, your profit goals are not determined by the Christmas party,” Brabandt says. “If they are, I have to question your management and executive skills.”
What Employees Actually Want From an Event
Strip away the agenda, the keynote speakers and the branded lanyards, and what employees are really seeking is straightforward: a good time, spent with colleagues, outside the constraints of the office. Niels Brabandt calls this social connectivity the single strongest driver of retention. “Even when leadership is genuinely poor, teams that say ‘we love working here’ are usually describing a strong social bond, not a strong org chart.”
He offers CloudFest, one of the largest events in the cloud technology sector, as proof of what is possible when this is taken seriously. The organisers rent an entire amusement park in southwest Germany for a week, including every rollercoaster, and build the event around it. The result is a loyal community so committed that some professionals now negotiate CloudFest attendance into their employment contracts.
By contrast, a mid-sized IT department turned around a demoralised team not with a lavish budget but with a simple, well-timed go-kart afternoon on the new leader's first day, framed as optional rather than mandatory. “It didn't cost a fortune,” Brabandt notes. “And this leader turned things around.”
The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong
Niels Brabandt is equally clear that events must reflect the audience attending them, not the personal preferences of the executives commissioning them. He recalls a department head, an avid cyclist, who designed a sixty-mile team cycling event that alienated most of the department. “Events need to appeal to the people who go there, not to the managers who organise them.”
He is similarly direct about high-profile keynote spending. Paying a well-known public figure a substantial fee for a single motivational speech sends a message about where the organisation's priorities lie, one that is difficult to reconcile with resisting staff requests for a pay rise. “People very quickly notice when corporate money is spent on the personal preference of the management team.”
What This Means for Decision-Makers
The through-line of Niels Brabandt's argument is that every event, regardless of budget, sends a message. Executives who treat events as a compliance exercise, cut to the lowest viable cost, should expect disengagement, low turnout and a quiet erosion of morale in return. Executives who treat events as a genuine expression of the organisation's culture, matched to what their teams actually want, build the kind of loyalty that shows up in retention figures for years afterwards.
“You can choose whether the future is a motivated, happy, team-oriented one, or just another dull, stiff event people feel obliged to attend,” Brabandt concludes. “If you do it right, you will have tremendous results.”
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast's and podcast's transcript, read below this article.
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Podcast and Videocast Transcript
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
The end-of-year party, or the summer party, or maybe just a day trip. Remember these days when you did this with your team and you still do that, probably? I address this topic because I received a couple of emails, and that's fair. We had a couple of really tough topics in the recent past, so this one is a bit more of a lighthearted one. However, we have to see: are events still that important? Because some people raise the question, "Are they important?" We're all sitting online, aren't we? Are we still sitting together? Is this still a thing? So our topic of today is the importance of events: why you need events, but also what you can do wrong. Because some companies still do events, but they don't do it very well. They make real beginner's mistakes. So we have to talk about how to do it properly. The importance of events.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When we talk about events, of course, most people think about the annual end-of-year party, and that's not the only thing. That's not the only thing. When we talk about events, we have to talk about absolutely anything. And the first thing you have to choose well is timing. I'll give you an example of how not to do it. One of my clients said, "Oh yeah, they always, during the summer break, they make this annual conference in their organization because hotels are cheaper then, and they usually go to somewhere where it's pretty hot in the U.S., like Phoenix, Arizona, because it's cheaper there as well."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Okay, two things at the same time here. First things first: timing is crucial. When you tell people, "The best time of the year to have vacation," I forbid you to do vacation because we have a corporate event there, and at the same time you say, "Oh, we basically do it somewhere where you wouldn't like to go." These are two beginner's mistakes at the very beginning. So first, timing needs to be right. So look at what's your season. When people are not too stressed, but also not so relaxed that they want to take their personal time off, so what is the right timing? Timing is crucial.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
On top of that, on top of that, the location is one of the most important things and decisions you have to make when it comes to a proper event. We now, because we also in my industry have annual events, and we have certain annual events, for example, in Hamburg where we have a large expo, in Stuttgart, which is a bit further off, somewhere at the airport, already a B location, I'd say. In Cologne, massive A location, very central, with a big party next to it. A Munich one, which is a bit far off at the moment, but also the international ones in London or in the U.S., some of the event organizers now have suddenly shifted. And they suddenly say, "Oh, we leave New York City, we now go to Lexington, Kentucky. You just kind of take a couple of hours' flight there, and hotels are also cheaper there, and the event can be sold cheaper." And then they wonder why less people turn up. So here are the news. Less people turn up when the location is not desirable.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When someone tells you, "Do you want to go to a place where you don't want to go to?" your answer, of course, is, "No, I told you I don't want to go there, so please don't force me to." And then the employer says, "Well, I do force you to. I mean, at least I pay for it, but also on a cheap level." So timing and location is so crucial. You're sending a massive, a dedicated message of appreciation and non-appreciation to your people. And you probably know these phrases when people say, "Oh, it's all about appreciation. People are everything we have. You are the most important thing we have in this organization. We only care about you. It's all about you. We all have to do this together."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Maybe you heard these phrases, and then suddenly you end up in a B or C location, in a cheap hotel, and probably—and that was the worst so far—one fitness chain, which probably anyone would do here, expected their people to share rooms with work colleagues with whom they have no private connection to. I don't even know where I should get started on how unacceptable this invasion of private sphere is. So the message you send starts with two aspects: what's the timing, and what's the location? And don't get me wrong, the location does not necessarily need to be expensive.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I'll give you a very simple example. Let's say an IT leader takes over a really frustrated team, and the frustration comes from a very good point: the leader that led the department before wasn't too great. So you're taking over a team that is not motivated and basically is hanging there thinking of, "When should I leave this organization?" And you want to turn things around. And that leader said, "Look, on day one when I took this, this is the new job. Day one, tomorrow, we all go to a go-kart range. We have a good evening out, a good day out, and if anyone wants to stay later, we have some food. However, if someone wants to go to the evening, we have an evening event, but that's not mandatory. So you can leave at 5:00. If you want to stay later, stay later."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And you know what? They all stayed later. And by the way, it didn't cost a fortune. And this leader turned things around. So you see, it doesn't need to be the Monaco private yacht event that you need to pull out there. The situation, however, is that often people today say, "Oh yeah, we need events, but shoestring budget, right? Shoestring budget." So who is going to show up for a really low fee here? And when you go for a low fee, here's the hint: you get low results. No investment return. Very simple. Leaders should actually know that. It's pretty much your job to do that in your daily business.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So the situation really is when you cut costs. When you say, "We take the B location, the C location. We're cutting the breaks. We're cutting the food. We're cutting the speakers. We expect anyone to either show up for free or whatever else." These events are a harrowing experience. I'll give you an example where one company started right and then took the wrong turn. They had an event in Monaco, and people were hyped about that.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
However, when they saw, "Oh, so everyone appearing at your event are exhibitors, so you're selling off every single slot? Mm-hmm. Interesting." And from the hype, and pre-registered 1,100 attendees, 254 showed up. So there you are. So if you cut costs, anyone can be reasonable. We need to be wise with spending our money. There is no question about that. But there are certain market rates. If you go below that, you simply dent the experience. No exception.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
Because what people really want to have when they go to a conference, they say, "Yeah, maybe I can learn something. Maybe I can see a couple of people I haven't seen for a while. Maybe I meet some clients. Maybe X, Y, Z." However, they say, "Please, please let this be a good time." That's the first thing that people actually want to have. They want to have a good time. Because now, with their friends, with their colleagues, with absolutely anyone in the room, they finally can have some time together which is purely focused on social connectivity.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And by the way, the number one reason why people stay together in an organization is because they say, "Even if leadership is really bad and the team says, 'We self-organize, we ignore our leader, but we love to work here,' people stay together." I'll give you an example for the social aspect. If I were to tell you, "What about going to a tech conference?" most people would say, "Ugh, please save me from that. All these nerds and geeks talking about their tech stuff." Yeah. And most events in that space, most expos, most fairs, most events are exactly like that. They're a bit dull. They're a bit stiff. Often the content is pretty good, but the time around that is rather, let's say, debatable. Debatable in its value.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And then someone showed up, and that was CloudFest. C-L-O-U-D, the technology. CloudFest. The largest event now in that space. So what do they do? They rent the whole roller coaster park in Rust, which is southwest in Germany. There's the so-called Europa Park, the Europe Park, a massive roller coaster park with an event space next to it. They rent the whole thing, including all the roller coasters, one week before that officially opens. And for a whole week, they have their tech events. And they now build such a tribe around that that people now make it obligatory in their contracts that they say, "I only work for your company when you pay for my travel and my hotel and for the conference ticket at CloudFest." That's how you build events.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
However, when you say, "Yeah, let's go for a cheap time to a C location and make anyone show up for free," then you shouldn't be surprised that your event is a massive flop. Or people only go there to either get drunk, which they shouldn't, to an unreasonable amount, or they simply say, "I hang out here because I have to," and then they spend time on their room doing anything but attending the sessions they should. So very important is, you need to know how to implement this properly.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So when you now think, "Where do I have to go?" And by the way, you do not always have to go to Monaco, New York City, Berlin, London, LA, San Francisco. When you say, let's say you are a company, mid-sized, 50 people, and you're in Milton Keynes in the U.K., and you say, "Hey, we always go to that pub every couple of weeks, so we have our Christmas end-of-year party there," people probably love that because they say, "It's totally on brand. It's authentic. It's really you. It's really us. It's an amazing time." So step number one for the implementation always is, what does your target audience, in this case, the team, really want?
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I'll give you an example of how not to do it. With one of my clients, the boss of a department was a really good cyclist, and he loved cycling. So their event was a massive cycling event of more than 60 miles of cycling. And of course, some people tried their best, and some people really tried to smile their way along there, but many people simply said, "I'm not going to go there. Just because you love cycling to an extreme way, I don't." So the events need to appeal to the people who go there, not to the managers and executives who organize or tell others to organize them.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And by the way, always be aware which message you send. When you, for example, "Oh, I want to have this world-famous referee from soccer," or football, as we say in Europe, "from football, having a keynote speech at our event. £25,000, sounds fair." When you spend that money on a, let's say, probably motivational, inspirational 45-minute speech, you can't say no if anyone afterwards asks for a salary raise. People very quickly get when corporate money is spent on personal preference of the management team.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So the team are the people who do the work. Focus on what do they want. What is it they like to see? Because as soon as the team is up for it, the organization will massively benefit. One thing you should not do, a certain Kalman effector in Germany in 2009 after the banking crisis, the financial crisis, successfully made an end-of-year party a self-pay event. They rented a restaurant. Better to say, they said, "Restaurant, you give us the spots, and we send people there." Well, and less than 10% of the organization showed up after they heard, "It is self-pay." Just think of which message you send.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
By the way, the reasoning for that by management was, "We have to meet our profit goals." Hear the news. When you are a multi-billion euro Kalman effector in Germany, the yay and woe, the achieve and not achieve moment of your profit goals is not determined by the end-of-year party. And if so, I really have to question your management and executive skills, to be fair. So for the organization, it's a massive benefit when people say, "Hey, I'm really motivated after this. I love to work with these people. Even when not everything's great, this event drove me forward."
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
When you have companies that have quarterly events, you often see how it teleports. When suddenly the line hangs through, the next teleport, the next event comes up. So be sure that you organize it well because the organization will benefit from great events. Because you want people in the future to be motivated. However, when everything you send out there, every event you do, simply says, "You know, I had to do something, and it just got the cheapest thing I could ever get there," that will have an impact on your future.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
You can choose if the future is going to be a motivated, happy, and team-oriented one, or just a little bit of dull, stiff, "I have to go there" event. If you do it right, as we just discussed it, then you will have tremendous results. And I wish you all the best putting that in your organization. And when you now say, "I think I have a couple of questions here," I know this is a very complex space because many people only see this as a side effect of organizations. As someone who's also a professional speaker, I am now in the event space for decades, and I can tell you, I've seen everything from brilliant events to absolutely everything going wrong.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
So by the way, if you now watch me on YouTube here, please leave a like here, and of course, you can subscribe to my channel or leave a comment here. I'm always happy to discuss with you. When you now listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, thank you very much in advance for a review. Five stars, very much appreciated. And of course, you can recommend this channel to your friends, colleagues, online, offline, anywhere you like. We're growing strongly, so thank you very much for keeping this whole thing going. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more content in the future.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
By the way, as promised, I promised you there will be Shorts, not Reels on Instagram. We decided to go for YouTube, the so-called YouTube Shorts. When you subscribe to my YouTube channel, please put a little bell in there so you get a bit of a notification when new content is online there. I promised you one leadership day per day every year. We kept the promise, so it will be there in the future as well. The YouTube Shorts, I look forward to seeing you online there as well. And of course, you can also follow me on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, so thank you very much for doing so.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
If you now say, "Hey, we need very specific kind of help. We need a trainer, a speaker, a coach, a mentor, a consultant, a project, an interim manager." Very happy to help. Go to my website, nb-networks.biz, so you can see what I do there for a living. And of course, you can also drop me an email, nb@nb-networks.com. And no worries. I answer every single email within 24 hours or less, meaning if you don't receive an answer within 24 hours, your email probably hasn't reached me.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
I give you my social media name as well. Of course, we also have live sessions. When you go to expert.nb-networks.com, then you can see live sessions there. By the way, when you put your email address in there, you receive only one email every Wednesday morning. It's 100% content at free guarantee. In the email, you get full access to all the articles, all the podcasts, all the video cards, all of that with no paywall, nothing, via other channels that might be paywalls, not via this one. Full free access. And of course, only via the leadership letter, we communicate date and time and the access link for our live session. We just had a brilliant one last week. Next one's coming up very soon. One per month is guaranteed.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
And on top of that, of course, you can connect with me on social media. Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn. You can, of course, also follow me on Instagram or leave a like on Facebook or subscribe to my YouTube channel. The most important thing, however, is always the last thing that I say. Apply, apply, apply what you learned in this podcast and video cast, because only when you apply what you heard, you will see the positive aspects that you obviously want to see in your organization. I wish you all the best doing so. Feel free to get in touch anytime. Looking forward to hearing from you. And of course, any answer will be provided within 24 hours or less.
Niels Brabandt EMBA MBA MSc
At the end of this podcast, as well as at the end of this video cast, there's only one thing left for me to say. Thank you very much for your time.