Three Essential Roles for Any Event

There are many "roles" in an event, some more passive while others are more active. A majority of people at an event should be those participating rather than a majority of leaders leading, because who are they going to lead if nobody follows? So of course, most will be followers and participants, but it is obvious that there is a need for leadership in order to make an event happen. That is we are talking about here.

Active leadership roles can oftentimes be divided up into three separate responsibilities: the Host, the Leader, and the Facilitator. Of course any and all of these roles can be fulfilled by a singular person, or by more than one person per role, but the idea is that typically the responsibilities of these roles are present at any well-run event.

The Host is, would you guess it, the person who is hosting the event. The responsibility of this person or persons is to welcome all who come and make those present feel at home. Perhaps they are hosting the event at their home, or at their church, or they may be the "host" by reserving a place in a park. Wherever they are, think of this as the "parent" role, or the greeter.

The Leader is what you would call "the face of the event". This individual does the talking, the guiding, and the organization of the event so that people aren't just milling around and ensures that the event actually takes place. This role may be the one making the announcements, keeps everyone on task, guides the people to where they need to be, you get the idea. He or she leads the thing. For this you have to have a level of assertiveness, or you must learn it. Essentially you are the manager of a bunch of toddlers and you need to keep them on task and moving along to whatever the next thing is.

And finally, the Facilitator. This role has some overlap with the other two roles, seeing as it's more of a background role. This role helps helps with logistics, plans out the details, learns the number of people coming, possesses or acquires the resources needed for an event, and does the advertising and reachout for an event. As the name states, the Facilitator will facilitate the opportunity for the event to happen. It is the responsibility of this individual to get things in order for your event so that what you're wanting to do can take place. And this will sometimes be the role that is really in charge of the event, and the Host and the Leader are the ones delegated with the front-facing responsibilities of the event.

Each role is essential, and none are greater than the other. If you want to make events happen within a community, or have events in order to create a community, you will need all three. For a community in the fledging stage it is common for one person to take up all three of these roles in events for for a while, but eventually it should be delegated out so that the load is shared. At the beginning of anything it is often the case that a lot of work is asked of individuals before it can be shared. And, when doing events do not think that these are hard lines where if you are a Leader you will only do the things mentioned for a Leader - it's more of an outline to give you an idea of what's needed to make an event successful. This is simply a guide on how to approach an event that you want to make happen. Over time certain people will gravitate towards certain roles, and you can use this to your advantage by leveraging their strengths.

An article for the VME Catholic Society, by Ethan Hall