Awards season is upon us. LinkedIn is plastered full of images in flashy surroundings of smiling, well-groomed people – it is a beautiful sight. These awards identify the best and the brightest in a field, an industry, a role, or whichever. Awards seek to highlight and promote those who have outshined the rest and have progressed to a position of prominence in their arena. Bravo!

I am fascinated by the love we have for awards, rankings, person of the year, voted best of, and the slew of variations on awards. The pleasure that being on top of the food chain provides to the awardees, the hierarchical social status it instigates among peers, the distinction it bestows on them as the best person – for a season anyways. It is fascinating and interesting to me.

Before I go too deep into the conversation, I’d like you to know that I believe a lot, if not most, of the awards and awardees have the best intentions and are inspiring great work. Don’t get me wrong, by no means is this a call to cancel awards or to lose faith in the processes… How would that help? This opinion piece is focused on the various issues that I have been privy to in the last few months (and reiterated yearly)  related to awards. Read on, and give me your views in the comments!

We seem to have an inherent need to be better than the rest, which we know social media is both using and instigating, but that is another issue. I find that individuality is praised by awarding recognition to just one person, or a 100 or scaled into a ‘bronze, silver, gold’ kind of thing. This is something that makes me particularly uneasy, as I believe there is not one person who is able to achieve their grand status by themselves. Community is never a part of the award but always a part of the path to reach awardee status. I personally do not like when individualism is reinforced, considering we have proven again and again that the means forward for climate, social, economic and other improvement and success, is community. Just saying.

But even more enticing and curious is the issue of how awardees are chosen. Sadly, I see the “illusion of transparency” and an evident, almost machiavellian, objective driving the choosing of some (no, again, not all) of the winners. Awards can easily be used as very effective tools for lobbying for contacts and contracts, networking with influential people, and of course self-promotion up the wazoo! Is that a bad thing? Well, I think it depends on how you do it of course, but remember we are within an awards framework:

Would you choose to award a prize or recognition to your direct competitor, professional mortal enemy, or persona non grata, if they deserved it, had all the correct accolades and achievements? I have never seen it happen, have you? I am unaware of any industry awards or recognitions that benefit those who are contrary to the awarding organisation or that organisations’ leaders.

On the other hand, would you be comfortable leaving out or rejecting a VIP client, or person/company whose good grace could potentially facilitate the path for you to achieve your goals? You probably would at least lobby to have them be part of the winners, be honest! I have seen it done over and over: “let’s put this person here (more prominent position) because they are important for x project”, of course displacing someone who may deserve it more but is less relevant in the professional food chain. In fact, I’ve done it – there I said it. Yuck but true.

A third, but no less relevant issue I need to note is how relevant are awards when they promote people who are not good to others. Awardees can be prominent in their professional fields, but they could also be bullies, intimidate and belittle people, and even outright abuse their teams or any person who defies them. Most us us say that we are against violence, harassment, racism, bullying… I would go as far as say some of us dislike people who are stuck up, elitist, social climbers, not to mention egotistical. So then why do we award and celebrate them? A little due diligence would go a long way to avoid misrepresentation of values when awarding to certain individuals.

I can’t tell you how many times I have heard from people who personally know awardees about how “that person is a bully to their team, she chews them out if they share ideas she is not comfortable with”, or “that person used to make me shut up in meetings by squeezing my leg under the table so she’d be the only one speaking”, and “that person steals ideas from their team members and uses them as their own.” Oh la la! Can of worms anyone?

It makes me a bit sad that my brain will not let me fully enjoy awards season. I rather like celebrating other’s achievements and commemorating their wins. I do! Ask some of my past colleagues and friends. However, I am unnerved knowing we are possibly blind sighted by great pictures, happy faces and great fluffy feel-good speeches, when in reality there might be not-so-good things happening in the background.