Sports
Event Production Leadership: Insights from Poliana Moraes
Producer highlights that team integration, composure in crises, and delegation are the greatest backstage challenges.
In an interview on Stemma na Trilha, event producer Poliana Moraes details the complexities of coordinating teams and handling crises in major sporting events. She explains how professional maturity shifts a hands-on operator into a leader focused on orchestration and people management.
In the world of outdoor sports and trail running, setting up physical infrastructure is only a fraction of what it takes to bring a race to life. During an appearance on the Stemma Na Trilha show with Sidney Togumi, event producer Poliana Moraes emphasized that the greatest challenge in her professional routine lies not in operational tasks, but in integrating departments, aligning people, and managing human expectations under pressure.
Drawing on years of experience with large-scale races, Poliana points out that technical execution does not intimidate those who have already navigated numerous unforeseen challenges. The critical test lies in maintaining a cohesive and synchronized team, especially when crews with varying levels of experience must react to intense stress.
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Technical composure and reading flow during crises
Behind-the-scenes maturity is vividly revealed in extreme situations, such as severe storms that threaten to derail an event stage. While less experienced crews tend to panic over damaged tents or flooding, a seasoned professional acts pragmatically to mitigate risks, call cancellations when necessary, and oversee an orderly tear-down with participant and staff safety as top priority.
This difference in perception also surfaces in day-to-day arena operations. Poliana recalls moments when coordinators grew alarmed by the crowd of athletes in certain sectors, whereas a close read of the flow showed service was moving smoothly without genuine bottlenecks. Pinpointing priorities and moving seamlessly between areas such as check-in and finish-line dispersal requires mutual trust: a leader must know when to delegate and when to step in.
From operational execution to strategic leadership
Career growth in event production requires a clear shift from purely hands-on execution to orchestrating specialists. Poliana shares that early on, she centralized task execution, but eventually learned to build trusted teams capable of running each event sector autonomously.
To illustrate this mindset shift, she cites a compelling reflection shared by race organizer Gustavo Nogueira (behind events like the Indomit circuit and Rei da Montanha): when planning, alignment, and team management operate with surgical precision, the leader's role becomes focused on vigilant backstage oversight—without the constant urge to intervene directly in manual operational tasks.
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