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| Sunday, 23 June 2002 |
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This is 2002. Hobo behaviour is out and civility is back. And more and more people are beginning to realise that learning how to behave with people makes them more successful than being a hot-shot executive with no manners. An etiquette expert, relates the story of the businessmen who came to her for help after losing out on a plum assignment. At a lunch meeting with a senior executive in the company, he sat down and immediately started eating the salad in front of him. He looked up to see his boss, who hadn't picked up his fork yet, staring at him. "I knew right then, they weren't going to send me out," he said. If only he had taken a dining tutorial before his lunch, he would have known to wait until his host started eating. In this era of take-out food and dressing down, etiquette is making a surprising come back. There is a growing sense that bad manners are strong evidence of - or perhaps, the first step toward - societal breakdown. Most people today believe incivility has contributed to violence, divided national communities and eroded values. Business has never been brisker for etiquette classes. Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of rupees on seminars and workshops with names such as 'Business Basics for Professional Polish' and 'Customs and Protocol for Doing Business in the Global Market Place'. Colleges and universities have jumped the bandwagon to give their graduates a competitive edge in the job market. Some universities in the USA offer Corporate Etiquette Dinners to seniors who want to learn the ins and outs of power dining. A human resources specialist who is also a career counsellor who organises such dinners, explains: "Recruiters do not offer jobs to candidates who salt their food before tasting (it shows a tendency towards hasty decision making) or who orders filet mignon (they think such a person would go wild on an expense account)." But why now? Why does it suddenly matter, again, to so many people that we don't know when to send handwritten 'Thank you' notes and need someone to tell us what gift would be appropriate for the host or hostess at a dinner party? (A handwritten 'Thank you' note is always proper. Don't bring cut flowers, because the host will have to stop preparing dinner or greeting guests to find a vase.) No one is quite sure why good manners are relevant again - or, at least why etiquette experts are making a lot of money on classes, tutorials and books - but there are some contributing factors. We may know the right fork to use, but still are unsure about the etiquette of modern technology. A new rule: - Don't write e-mail in capitals (it is the equivalent of shouting). Today's parents are realising that, while good manners will help their children get along in life, they aren't the ones to teach them. "Two generations now haven't been taught manners," writes columnist and author Letitia Baldrige, whose latest book is "More than Manners - Raising Today's Kids to Have Kind Manners and Good Hearts'. The rebellious '60s and '70s, the greedy '80s, may be cliches, but clearly etiquette wasn't a top priority in the last few decades. If family meal-times are a thing of the past, when are children going to learn not to butter all their bread at once, or more important, how to hold a polite dinner-table conversation? In fact today, experts in the field suggest that success in a job depends 85 per cent on 'people skills' and only 15 per cent on technical knowledge and skills. It is no wonder that companies, hungry for some competitive edge, have started in-house training programmes for their executives, or are hiring etiquette consultants. Business people learn such basics as the proper way to shake hands, not to make introductions and where to put one's briefcase or handbag. While shaking hands for instance, shake 'web-to-web'. It's the one acceptable physical contact between sexes in business situations. When making introductions mention the most important person's name first. When visiting someone else's office, put your briefcase or purse on the floor beside you, not on a table or desk. |
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