Speaking Truthfully Award

I have created the Speaking Truthfully Award to recognize and honor people who exemplify Speaking Truthfully principles and practices. I will likewise honor organizations who, collectively, embody Speaking Truthfully principles and practices. These award-winners will be listed here, at the bottom of this page, with each name being a clickable link to their individual award page, where you can read about them and see them in action!

I am hopelessly in love with people who Speak Truthfully. Their words and presence quicken every one of my living cells, arouse my heart, and awaken my spirit. I’m not talking about speakers with good stage craft or presentation skills. I’m talking about people who are carrying words from the bottom of their very soul, one by one, with care and intention and love, carrying them up from the very deepest and truest part of themselves and giving those words to us, to me, to you, to their audience; they give us these hand-carried, sacred, beautiful, uplifting and elevating words through the medium of their authentic presence. This is not easy to do.

This is why I am always on the lookout for speakers who exemplify one or more of the principles I teach in my Speaking Truthfully programs. The popular, and misguided, notion of the primary purpose of public speaking — especially in business, government, and media circles — is to transmit information. For me, one of the main purposes of public speaking is to reveal the nature, character, intentions, and integrity of the speaker. I want to know about the speaker, I want to know their true heart, before I will even consider their information. This self-revelation aspect of speaking is what I call vulnerability.

Speaking Truthfully is often risky business: doing so requires courage and heart and conscience and soul — our true humanity. Speaking Truthfully can arouse and anger the status quo of entrenched beliefs and mindsets; it can disrupt relationships, it can shine an unwanted spotlight on war profiteers, corrupt politicians, sexual predators in religious organizations, racism, sexism, and other forms of prejudice and bigotry.

Speaking in this way can expose information special interest groups want to keep secret; it can arouse public indignation in the face of social inequities and political or corporate malfeasance. Speaking Truthfully can challenge demeaning stereotypes embedded in the collective consciousness of people in groups small and large. It can illuminate the hypocrisy gap between espoused values and actual behavior.

But the upside of Speaking Truthfully is greater than the risk of remaining silent. It gives renewed life to one’s spirit, courage to one’s heart, and energy to one’s endeavors. It awakens and alerts others to this way of being, of living, of speaking. Speaking Truthfully can tumble down walls of separation and hatred, it can cause people to question themselves instead of blaming others, it can bring tears of gratitude and forgiveness to hardened eyes, it can bring grace and beauty into even the most forlorn of hearts and places.

Speaking Truthfully is a call from, and to, our individual and collective capacity for wisdom, peace, generosity, and a conscious, caring connection to all living things and to the Earth.

Ultimately, Speaking Truthfully is a healing, unifying, elevating, enlightening, and ennobling way of speaking and of being. Thus, people who embody the philosophy and principles of Speaking Truthfully need to be recognized.

SPEAKING TRUTHFULLY AWARD WINNERS