Posted by Freddie Daniells
One of the biggest joys I had as President of Holborn Speakers was giving out the awards at the end of each meeting. It is always great to be able to recognise peoples achievements as Best Speaker, Best Table Topics or Best Evaluator.
However, without question, my favourite award was the Presidents Award. This is an award that I gave at my own discretion and did not have to be awarded every week.
I regularly GE at other clubs and it recently occurred to me that I hardly ever see it awarded when on my travels. Before everyone writes in, I am sure that some clubs do give out this award but many don't. I think this a big shame.
It is similar to the Most Improved award at school. At my school, the same people tended to win the main place prizes but there was always a chance for us all to be recognised as the Most Improved. This immensely powerful tool for encouragement and recognition is available to us as Toastmasters too through the Presidents Award.
I would give out Presidents awards for a number of reasons. They were :
- Someone who had done a role for the first time. We separately always gave out an Icebreaker Speech certificate to first time speakers - does this happen at other clubs too?
- Someone who evidently was overcoming huge obstacles by just standing in front of an audience.
- Someone who had stepped into a role or speech at the last minute.
- Those who had gone above and beyond the call of duty by perhaps taking on a job that they hadn't needed to or excelled at their job beyond what was reasonably expected.
- The silent people without who the club would not operate. For example, it was always good to remind the audience that the room wasn't just set up this way and that every week the Sergeant at Arms made it that way.
It is one of the strongest tools we have for encouragement of the good things we want to see from our members at our clubs.
I take no claim for this idea - David Jones, Deborah Ilott, Atul Patel and prior Presidents at Holborn had instilled it as part of our club culture.
I hope that this post reminds a few people of its value and we see more clubs awarding it in future.
Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below.
Sermon over! ;)
PS Looking at the Toastmasters shop, this award may have been renamed as The Outstanding Toastmaster certificate. Link here: Outstanding TM Certficate. However, the point remains!
PPS If you have good things happening at your club that you think others may benefit from please let me know and I will get an article up here!
