Why Professional Awards Don't Reflect True Success
And an a new award that does! 🏆🎊
Welcome to Rule Breaker, a newsletter that challenges conventional thinking in business and society.
To get all the new posts in your inbox, subscribe!
I have 58 days until I turn 40
Judging by my current trajectory I won’t make it to being a Top 40 Under 40. Womp womp.
That has gotten me thinking about the norms we incentivise with these types of professional awards.
Naturally, I have an idea of how we could do it differently.
Today, my Rule Breakers, I’m going to cover how our most prestigious awards could better encourage healthier individuals and society.
Also - keep reading to find out something new I’m launching related to this topic 🎉👇🤗
Incentives are powerful influencers of our decisions and actions
Financial and nonfinancial incentives are incredibly powerful motivators.
If a mortgage broker gets a better commission for selling one mortgage over another, guess what they are going to recommend to clients? If your family always comments on how cute your cousin looks, it's likely that you'll focus on your appearance before the next family dinner.
There is no dispute that incentives shape the decisions we make and the actions we take, often without us even realising it.
We *should* reward well-rounded lives
Doctors, LinkedIn posts and your nosy neighbour down the street will all tell you that a well-rounded life that includes work, self-care and care for others is the key to a healthy life.
My therapist (bless her soul) once described it to me as a three-legged stool. Each leg represents an essential aspect of our lives, and if one is missing or not stable, the whole thing topples over.
Let's break it down:
Work: This is the productive activity that gives us a sense of purpose and allows us to use our skills and talents to pursue our goals.
Self-care: This includes any activity that promotes our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, such as exercise, meditation, hobbies, and getting enough sleep.
Care for others: This refers to our social connections and relationships with others, which give us a sense of belonging and meaning.
When we find a healthy equilibrium between these three areas, we can live a more harmonious and fulfilling life. Too much focus on one area at the expense of the others can lead to burnout, isolation, and unhappiness.
Professional awards encourage narrowly focused lives
Our most prestigious awards focus solely on professional achievement or wealth.
These awards mostly are variations on a theme of either being the best, the most powerful or the wealthiest (think: “Women in Engineering Award”, “Top 30 Under 30 in Richmond” or “100 most powerful executives in finance”. There is often a small mention of community impact but that is typically achieved through a role in a non-profit board or some other semi-professional position.
However, encouraging everyone to gun it for peak professional success isn’t a sustainable way to run our society.
For those that win, it has likely come at the cost of self-care and community involvement. The well-known Harvard Grant Study followed a group of men for 75 years and found that fulfilling life is characterised by good relationships, adaptability, resilience, and self-care, rather than just career success or wealth. Even well known figures such as Barack Obama, Paul McCartney, Martha Stewart and Usher, regret not spending more time with family.
For those who don’t win these awards, we’re just reinforcing this unrealistic notion of success. I’ve spent more years feeling inadequate than content because I didn’t value the self-care and community elements in my life. Instead I only focused on the fact that I hadn’t achieved absolute-best-in-the-country kind of professional success.
The truth is it’s next to impossible to be a CEO AND pursue your hobbies AND get 8 hours of sleep a night AND be an involved parent. So why are we only giving out awards for professional success when we know it’s an unsustainable and unfulfilling way of life?
Public recognition for self-care and care for others shows up only in obituaries
Okay, so this section header might be a little dramatic but it’s not that far off.
Any recognition of the effort we put into our relationships is done in private. Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are family celebrations. National Caregiver Day (first Tuesday in April - mark your calendars, peeps!) recognizes those paid to do this work and family and friends that care for their loved ones.
As for self-care, only your Fitbit group will know if you hit your daily steps goal and only your friends will praise your pickle making hobby. Self-care activities are recommended and heavily marketed but they aren’t given the status through public awards the way we do professional success.
Once we’re gone, a newspaper will publish a glowing obituary of the full life we lived and the caring mother, father, friend, etc. we were. Until then, the newspaper isn’t making much fuss about people who build an epic model train set or move across the country to care for their elderly parents.
My Rule Breaker proposal: An Award for Well-Rounded Lives
All these norms and rules about what we think is praise-worthy are just made up. So my thinking goes… if it isn’t working, let’s fix it!
Enter The Roundy Award that celebrates well-rounded lives beyond the career hustle.
The Roundy is for people who prioritise their professional pursuits alongside their well-being, relationships, and community involvement, recognizing that a well-rounded life is more fulfilling and sustainable in the long term.
Roundies (as I lovingly call recipients of a Roundy) often challenge traditional notions of success and reject the idea that professional achievements should be the sole measure of a person's worth. They may take unconventional paths that involve challenging and financially rewarding work alongside the curation of hobbies, self-care practices and connection in relationships. Roundies are also intentional about creating a well-rounded life, making time for self-care, hobbies, and relationships.
At the same time, someone with a well-rounded life is not a rebel for the sake of being rebellious. Roundies are driven by a desire to create a life that aligns with their values and priorities, and to make a positive impact on their communities and the world. They may inspire others to question societal norms and expectations and to pursue a more well-rounded and fulfilling life.
The Roundy Award provides the much needed celebration of people who have crafted a definition of success that is admirable and enviable by many who feel worn out by the existing models.
Nominations are open (in fact, they will always be open ;) and if this resonates, I’d love it if you nominated yourself or someone you know.
So there you have it. My soreness of nearing this age milestone has waned a bit. I better understand the goodness I have achieved in my life and didn’t need a Top 40 Under 40 award to do so.
I feel fulfilled by the work I do AND I wouldn’t trade the time I spend caring for my family. Self-care needs to be improved but I’m cutting myself some slack during the two-kids-under-five stage of life.
My hope is that you find it meaningful to celebrate what excellent lives *actually* look like too.
Sending goodness,
Jess
Ps. I have intentionally not used the word “balance”. I don’t believe in balance. There is no day or hour that I feel completely stable in all aspects of my life (cause my kid’s fever doesn’t wait until work deadlines are achieved!). I don’t think we should hold that up as an achievable standard and so I’m trying to avoid that term altogether.
PPs. With thanks as always to my Junior Associate, ChatGPT-3.