Pat Murray Given Speaker Lifetime Achievement Award
(May 27, 2008) Vistage speaker Pat Murray has earned many honors during his long tenure with the organization. Among them: the company’s 2007 Speaker Lifetime Achievement Award.
The prestigious award is given to a longtime high-performing Vistage speaker who has consistently scored above 4.5 in both content and delivery by Chairs and members. This person continually exceeds the expectations of the entire Vistage community and is an enthusiastic supporter of the Vistage mission: to increase members’ leadership and enhance their quality of life.
Murray, who lives in Oakland, Calif., easily met the 500-presentation minimum, having recently hit the 1,000-presentation milestone that earned him membership in that rare group of speakers, The 1,000 Club. He’s spoken to thousands of Vistage members about how best to build effective teams excel at group leadership.
“It was a complete surprise. I enjoy interacting with the Vistage groups and Chairs so much that I don't pay attention to the years going by,” Murray said. “There is no recognition more satisfying than that which is bestowed by one's peers. Perhaps the most enjoyable part of the award was receiving it from Richard Carr, an old friend and colleague.”
Although it’s being announced now, Carr, Vistage Senior Advisor and Vice Chairman of the Board, actually presented Murray with his 2007 award during Chair Don Riddell’s CE meeting in the Los Angeles area last fall.
“Pat’s had a significant impact in our community by talking about leadership and group dynamics to so many of our members. He’s also had an impact on Chairs through his workshops on the art of Chairing,” Carr said.
“He’s just legendary with some of his concepts,” he added. “He’s had a major impact in the area of getting people to understand the value of and to articulate a mission statement.” In fact, after hearing Murray several times, Carr approached the speaker for help crafting his own personal mission statement, which he’s now lived by for almost a decade.
Murray is the second recipient of the Speaker Lifetime Achievement Award. Earlier in 2007, Bob Thomsonof Niles, Michigan received the same award for his three decades of service to the Vistage community. Thomson, now retired, joked a couple of years ago that he became a Vistage speaker so he had an excuse to visit friends in other parts of the country. “I still recall the first time I spoke to Vistage 1, the original Vistage group in Milwaukee,” he recalled. “Bob Nourse, the founder of Vistage, wrote me a nice letter afterward saying I had gotten all 5’s from the group on the speaker ratings. To this day, I’m not sure that Bob didn’t fudge the evaluation form a bit, but it felt good to get a perfect score.”
When asked what piece of advice has most resonated with members in all of these years, Murray responded: “Without a doubt, the advice that gets the strongest response is: "You stand for what you tolerate. Define and live your intolerables."