From The New York Times
The Social Graces as a Business Tool
By TANYA MOHN, November
10, 2002
Etiquette programs have grown
rapidly during the last few years and many managers say that the
cost of the program is well worth the investment.
At a formal dinner a couple of years
ago, Dr. David C. Jones, the president and chief executive of the
InCharge Institute, a credit counseling company in Orlando, Fla.,
was appalled at the table manners of several of his senior managers.
"They took bread and dipped it in the
soup," he said. "I was very embarrassed by that."
Soon, InCharge made etiquette classes
mandatory for all executives. And last week, 16 of them completed
their training at the company's second etiquette seminar, organized
by the Protocol School of Palm Beach. That brought InCharge's total
number of graduates to 45.
"It's well worth the investment — it
pays back in spades," Dr. Jones said.
He has learned a few things at the
classes himself. For important business lunches and dinners, he now
arrives early at the restaurant and pays for the meal in advance
rather than signing the credit-card bill in front of everybody.
Jacqueline Whitmore, the founder of
the Protocol School, says that her business etiquette programs have
grown by 50 percent during the last few years. Other etiquette
experts report a similar resurgence, which they attribute to several
factors: the global economy's demands on executives to be
sensitive to foreign cultures, the decline in human interaction
in the high-tech workplace and the social ineptitude of younger
managers who grew up in households where proper manners were not
encouraged.
In Ms. Whitmore's one-day sessions,
participants learn about many etiquette topics, from the right way
to enter a room to the dying art of hand-written notes: "An e-mail
is just not going to cut it," she said. (Another new-technology
mistake is gabbing on a cellphone during a business lunch.)
She also teaches how to handle
silverware, how to make a toast, how to cope with spilling wine and
how to play the roles of host and guest of honor.
To be sure, some people who go
through the training are skeptical.
"I'm 38 years old; I think I know how
to use a fork," said Beth Viney, a senior account executive at TDS
Telecom in Madison, Wis., which has put sales and service managers
and executives through Ms. Whitmore's program. "Do I really need to
sit for eight hours when I could be out generating revenues?"
Even so, she acknowledges that
because of the course she took in September, she now knows that she
is supposed to sit down and get up at the right side of her chair at
a formal luncheon. And she has memorized the rules for shaking
hands: extend your hand with the thumb up, clasp the other person's
entire palm, give two or three pumps from the elbow, avoiding both
the painful "bone crusher" and the off-putting "wet fish" moves, and
look at the person directly in the eyes, never below the chin. She
has also abandoned her old "Midwest scoop-and-shovel" eating style,
she says.
"I hope I will project a more
polished image to customers," she said.
WENDY LANG, a manager of corporate
events at the Dana Corporation in Toledo, Ohio, enrolled in a
business etiquette class to help her adjust to the corporate world
after working in the more laid-back nonprofit sector. "When I
stepped into corporate America," she said, "it was just a different
mind-set."
She began reading about etiquette and
recently completed a course with Ms. Whitmore, learning the art of
introductions (the person with a lesser title is presented to a
person with a higher rank or title) and how to accept a business
card (give it respect; do not just glance at it and stick it in your
pocket).
"These are all skills we all think we
have, but do not," Ms. Lang said. "It's not an option; it's a
necessity."
Ms. Lang subscribes to Executive
Advantage, the newsletter put out by Letitia Baldrige, the manners
expert who was Jacqueline Kennedy's chief of staff in the White
House, and says office colleagues clamor for it when she is
finished.
When "Letitia Baldrige's New Complete
Guide to Executive Manners" (Scribner) was originally published in
1980, "heads of corporations said, `We don't need this,' " Ms.
Baldrige recalled, adding that they were embarrassed to discuss it.
Today, she said, "C.E.O.'s are well
aware of problems; they have lost business as a result."
Some business schools, including
Florida International University's Chapman Graduate School of
Business and North Carolina Central University's School of Business,
have made etiquette training a part of the curriculum. Alinda Lewris,
the chief executive of the International Association of Protocol
Consultants, says the business etiquette industry has had huge
growth.
Statistics are hard to come by, but
Dorothea Johnson, the founder of the Protocol School of Washington,
who has been in the manners business for more than 40 years and by
her count has trained more than 50,000 people, says there is no
question that the business has expanded.
"I have never seen anything like the
hunger there is today," she said. "I'm hearing more and more from
top executives that the people skills are very important, in many
cases more important than the technical skills."
YET most young executives are
technology whizzes with abysmal social skills, she said. That is
unfortunate, she added, because correct behavior can land a deal.
Much of her focus today is on
training more instructors, as more companies use in-house protocol
officers. Wendy Jones, a senior manager for external relations at
Boeing, is one of five employees who has completed Ms. Johnson's
professional course.
"The opportunity for blunder is
great," Ms. Jones said. "Try telling a 45-year-old man he is using
the wrong fork, or to stop blowing his nose in a napkin, or to tell
ladies not to put lipstick on at the table. It has to be worked into
very delicately."
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