Probably…

This question comes up regularly for me and when I received the following message twice in two different social media inboxes, I am convinced they probably are.

Hi. I feel honoured and humble that I have been nominated for ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’. The winner is selected by the public and the public vote is now open until 20th July. I would be grateful if you could please vote for me.

Please click the link and it will take you to the voting page then select, ‘the Most Inspirational Person of the Year Award’ and vote for me. Please ask your friends, family and contacts to vote for me too. Thank you for your support.

I was especially astounded with the last sentence.

Ask friends, family and contacts!

What?

Not only are you asking me to vote for you, when I have totally no idea if you are in fact ‘The most inspirational person of the year’ and then you ask me to get my friends, family and contacts to vote for you too?

You really can not be serious, can you?

Totally serious, this is how business awards get awarded. Get yourself nominated and then go after your connections and beg them to vote for you.

I will never believe another business award again. In fact I’ve never believed them or taken part for this very reason. In fact I know of organisations that will even ask you to fill out a questionnaire to nominate yourself. Nominate yourself and then collect votes.

So I have concluded that business awards fulfil two needs, number one, the organising event or organisation needs more publicity for themselves and number two the actual individual needs more publicity for themselves. Basically they both need more recognition and appreciation from the public. In a word they need more love.

By getting complete strangers to vote for you, it actually is no different from wishing that people clap, like, comment or heart your content.

As humans we will never self-actualise on the basis that we’re always looking for something outside of ourselves.

My wish for the awards business is to start awarding teams, not individuals, not for the good they do in society or our communities but for the good they do for themselves. Teams that have successfully reinvented themselves despite the hardships they’ve had to endure in years gone by. Real hardships not some made up award category like ‘The most inspirational person of the year!’.

Just be ‘The most inspirational person of the year to yourself’ and avoid needing other people’s endorsement to say so.

Happy voting!

Michael de Groot