Ever been to a district conference where it seemed like everyone got an award?  Some districts have what feels like hundreds of awards.  At one district, I swear, they handed out an award for the conference education chair’s brother-in-law’s dog’s fleas.  Well, almost.

Awards are great things.  It’s the primary form of recognizing and rewarding our members’ accomplishments.  I wish we could give every CC recipient $1,000 like McGraw-Hill does, but alas, it’s probably not in the district budget.  Nonetheless, it’s critical that we do recognize our accomplishments.

Have you ever sat through a Lt. Gov’r of Education droning through a list of 50-100 CC recipients at a district conference, or a list of all the members who sponsored a new member?  Did this do anything to motivate them, or to motivate others to get that award?  It doesn’t seem likely.

Too many awards can dilute their value.  Handing out awards with no explanation for the accomplishments that earned the award has little value.  Reading lengthy lists of names as quickly as possible will bore the audience, and isn’t going to achieve anything useful.

Here are some key tips:

• Recognize major accomplishments in the context of your audience.  Reading out a lengthy list of CC awards at a district conference isn’t helpful, though having them (and other awards) in a printed keepsake “Hall of Fame” booklet is a great idea.  Instead, recognize those recipients at the area or division level (depending on the size of your district).  If you must recognize a large group, ask the audience to hold their applause until all names have been called, and have them stand at their place.
• Explain what the individual did to earn the award.  One of the best examples is a well-done DTM ceremony.  While the new DTM is walking down the reception line shaking hands, the emcee reads 2-3 paragraphs about the recipient, especially including details on their year of district leadership service and their high-performance leadership project.  Be specific with the praise, just like a speech evaluation.  (Yes, it requires some advance preparation!)
• Present awards in a timely way, as soon as possible after the accomplishment.  Rather than waiting for the end of the year to present an “Area Governor of the Year” award, why not also have four “Area Governor of the Quarter” awards every three months?  (Same for Division Governor and even Toastmaster of the Year/Quarter.)

If you haven’t handed out many awards, consider doing the “Presenting an award” project in the advanced manual “Special Occasion Speeches” (this works especially well with someone else doing the “Receiving an award” project in the same manual).  There’s a skill to the “grip and grin” routine for the camera!  For more award presentation tips, TI has a good page on this topic.