By Tariq Chauhan, Group CEO of EFS Facilities Services Group.
For sure, awards and recognitions matter for people and businesses in adding up to their credentials. However, these should not be left just for personal or business branding and showcasing but be used to reinforce self-accountability to raise the standards for which these recognitions are given.
These are indeed part of every organization’s wish list and aspiring professional goals to be recognized for their accomplishments. However, in reality, many do it otherwise.
These use these to rise above circumventing its requisite qualifications, trying to squander these for blitz scaling their reputation. These accolades bring moral and ethical responsibility on people and organizations to hold on to the sanctity of these merits.
At very early stages in my journey of building business, I realized that such recognitions must speak for our results, then merely claims and should be purely based on one’s definite results.
I believe awardees should demonstrate their true merits in their work than display these trophies to earn fame. These provide marketing and branding opportunity but also demand continuous innovation and transformation.
Early on in my life, I learned from my Dad, Teachers and through my self-reflections that respect is earned, not demanded. In a reaction to my early success, I remember my father’s comment that always echoes in my ears and greatly influenced me.
He cited a couplet from a great poet, Allama Iqbal:” Your home is not on the dome of a sultan’s palace; you are a falcon, fly on the peaks of the mountains that are rugged with dizzying heights”. This was based on Allama Iqbal’s couplet that reads, “Nahe tera nasheman qasr-e sultan ke gumbad par, tu sahin hain basera kar pahodon ki chattanon mein”.
It is a known fact that it is tough to reach heights and hold on to these levels as this requires resilience, be it leaders or anyone in a position of responsibility. Highs and lows are quintessential to positions of responsibility, but what is essential is our ability to sustain our character, perseverance and resilient approach, so these recognitions do play up in emboldening these values.
A reputation follows whenever one achieves these accolades; it is critical to upholding its sanctity to meet the expectations that come along with it.
In my life, awards and recognitions came in a little bit early, and it took me some time to understand the responsibility these bestowed on me. These introspections helped me as these played a very constructive role in my journey after that in pursuance of impact.
Though I enjoyed its fringe benefits more, it was the journey to make up for these recognitions. Whilst these provided me ecstatic moments of joy and pride to celebrate and showcase but also brought an instant realization to understand its accountabilities.
I saw that the celebrations following these were short-played as people started to judge on its merits, seeking outcome in our core performance. The public put us on strict trial to provide our organizational and leadership accomplishments that merited these recognitions.
I realized that one needs to walk the talk and take these accolades as a responsibility to deliver results consistently. After that, with every recognition, we realized that we must strive for better organizational and personal development.
On the path to achieving excellence across personal and professional, it is critical to set milestones with levels of defined parameters with measurable impact.
In the last twelve years, we received more than 100 shortlists, rankings and awards. Still, with each, we set a defined milestone on related performance output parameters, be it high client satisfaction, retention and service excellence or higher employee motivation and transformation goals.
In our history, emerging as a resilient enterprise, and in my personal life with whatever humble accomplishments I have, the role of awards and accolades have played a pivotal role.
We realized to let the organizational results must precede these to speak for themselves. Over the later years, we tend to become very conservative on the company engagements concerning such recognitions as we set our internal benchmarks for raising the bar.
I strongly recommend that businesses and people must use these as benchmarks to map their business’s sustainability rather than pasting these on their PR and marketing campaigns to blitz scale brand building only.