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Who Deserves The Award?

Posted on March 10, 2007 | Filed Under Articles of Interest 

accepting plaque.jpgThe essence of any award and recognition presentation begins with the question of who will be the recipients of the awards. While in most organizations, both professional and volunteer, the choices may at first glance be obvious based on pre-determined criteria or an undeniably outstanding achievement, but the question often overlooked is “Does obvious choice = only choice?”

A perfect example of what we mean can be found in a common award presentation used frequently by volunteer fire departments known as “Volunteer Firefighter of the Year.” This is an award often presented to the firefighter who has shown above average performance relating to such things as calls made, dedication to duty, contribution to the betterment of the department, or community service, over the course of a given year. The winner of this award is no doubt a “doer”, someone who has invested a great amount of time and effort to the department – an “obvious” choice for the award. What needs to be considered in this case is whether or not this “doer” has had the assistance of an “enabler” and if so, whether or not the enabler is deserving of an accompanying amount of recognition. In many situations as described above, the spouse of the honoree is indeed the “enabler”.

Unrecognized enablers abound in our society and can be found in all shapes and forms. In the above example would not a “Volunteer Firefighter Spouse of the Year” accompanying award be a great addition to the presentation? A truly thoughtful and purposeful recognition program should consider the “enablers” of the world and whether or not to recognize them appropriately.

Gary Barber - www.FireAwards.com

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Comments

2 Responses to “Who Deserves The Award?”

  1. Mike on March 11th, 2007 3:48 am

    This is soooo true. Great Article!!

  2. TJ on March 13th, 2007 2:59 pm

    I do agree with the Mike and the author of the article. I love this work. But, if it weren’t for the support of my wife and family, it would be a much harder job to do. Everyone knows there are good times which are always easy to take. There are also bad times and having an “enabler” makes those a lot easier to deal with.

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