TIME Magazine
Etiquette Lessons
By Michael Peltier
January 23, 2005
As anti-Americanism has grown in a post-9/11 world,
firms that teach good manners to U.S. businesspeople have
flourished. A once fledgling industry of protocol schools and
etiquette consultants now serves a growing list of corporate clients
that pay $10,000 or more a day to learn the cultural sensitivities
of far-flung regions. "Increasingly, it's about building
relationships, something American businesses are just beginning to
understand," says Jacqueline Whitmore, director of the Protocol
School of Palm Beach, Fla., who has seen her business triple in the
past three years. Faux pas often begin, etiquette experts say, with
an overly familiar, laid-back style in locales where "business
casual" is an oxymoron and first names are reserved for family and
close friends. Polo shirts aside, the minefields are everywhere:
skipping tea drinking in Asia, for example, and forsaking small talk
to rush headlong into negotiations. In some parts of Asia and the
Middle East, guests should never clean their plate; if they do, it's
a sign that they are still hungry, and their host will serve them
more. "We have somehow been tabbed with the term Ugly Americans,"
says Roger Axtell, author of eight books on business etiquette.
"It's a bad rap. I don't think we are Ugly Americans, but we are
often Unprepared Americans."
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