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What Should I Say To Present An Award?
This is one in a series of posts that uses my ready made speech templates to help you get a start on this type of speech or presentation.
In this one we will look at “Presenting An Award’ – whether this is an internal business award or part of a greater recognition in the business community.
As always, the first step in your preparation is to understand why your audience is there and why it is you making the presentation or speech.
You may not need to adjust what you plant to say but it is always important to understand the “why” before you begin to prepare your speech or presentation.
To start with, we need to acknowledge that all of us are often more interested in ourselves than others so you will need to make the presentation match the needs of your audience (as well as the recipient) to maintain interest in your speech.
For me, I prefer to prepare it as two speeches – one is the actual announcement, the other is the “support” speech which is structured to enable it to be adjusted for any required length of time.
Here is a template I use to help me write this type of speech.
- “Today marks the announcement of…..”
- “ Firstly I would like to share with you a little of the history of this award and how the winner is determined. …….”
- “It is now my privilege (or honour) to announce ……”
- “ Please join with me in congratulating …..”
Taking this one section at a time, section 1 simply needs the name of the award to be inserted. The value of starting this way is that it gives the audience time to focus on you and the occasion.
Section 2 is where you can adjust your time to the time allocated for your part of the presentation. The content of this section should be structured as you would for any speech – tell them what you are going to tell them ( ” Firstly I would like to share with you a little of the history of this award and how the winner is determined”); tell them the information keeping it relevant to the audience; then conclude and lead in to section 3.
Section 3 then becomes a direct announcement of the award name and the recipient name. Make sure you pause before you say each of these.
Section 4 is your opportunity to complete your presentation and exit the stage.
A word of warning about using “but”, “however” or “because”. My experience shows that an audience remembers what you say after these words not what is important ly said before them. e.g. I am pleased to be announcing this award BECAUSE it has taken such a long time to finalise it. You could still express this sentiment by saying I am pleased to be announcing this award AS it has taken such a long time to finalise it.
Always keep in mind that the most important part you are presenting is the award (or making the announcement), not the history of the award or how it is determined. By being prepared and having a structured presentation you run less risk of being side tracked during your presentation.
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