We were interested in how preparing for a national teaching award influences those who subsequently receive awards and whether these influences expand higher education's exploration of teaching excellence or limit it. We explored these interests by conducting semi-structured telephone interviews with 10 awardees from five different countries and used an inductive approach to identify key themes from the transcripts. Three themes significant to our research interests did emerge relating to: variation in the how awardees conceptualised teaching excellence and of how they became excellent teachers; the nature of the changes undertaken by awardees during their award process; and awardees' perceptions of their particular award process, of its description of excellence and the extent to which particular award processes may elicit particular changes in awardees. We conclude that one award process may be better designed than others to enable higher education to explore teaching excellence but even those award processes that appear to impose particular notions of excellence on awardees do not necessarily succeed in doing so. We discuss the implications of this research to institutional learning and teaching policies.