Business Etiquette: 101 Ways to Conduct Business with Charm and Savvy

Introduction

Why You Need This Book

When this book first came out in 1998, electronic and wireless communication technology was, in most settings, an occasional business tool at best.Today, it’s the way we do business.

In 1998, cell phones were still called mobile phones, and they were usually found in vehicles; today, they are personal accessories that leave us feeling unprepared when we forget them or misplace them. In 1998, e-mail was something you checked once in a while, or perhaps two or three times a day if you were really compulsive. Nowadays, people spend the entire workday sending and receiving e-mail, either at work or via a smart phone, and e-mail has all but replaced snail mail as the primary means of written communication. In 1998, voice-mail systems were attached to office and home phone lines rather than to cell phones; they served as a backup means of communication. These days, voice mail seems to be the main vehicle by which we hear our customers, clients, and (for the ever-larger groups of people who work at home), even our coworkers.

There have been other changes, as well. For instance:

○ Because face-to-face contact seems, for many workers, to have become rarer and rarer, there’s a higher rate of what I call minglephobia—an apprehension of interacting with business contacts in informal social settings.

○ Today,some businesspeople travel abroad about as often as they fly from coast to coast. As a result, questions of sensitivity to international customs and cultures have taken on greater importance than ever.

○ The business casualstyle of office attire—which many organizations offered as a perk to employees—has, in many offices, morphed into business sloppy. As this book goes to press, there is a renewed emphasis on a new style of business attire—business ready—that may be the new standard for 21st-century business dress policies.

Let’s face it—proper behavior in business settings can be a scary topic. Being unsure of what move should come next in a work-related situation is often quite unnerving. When we’re scared, we don’t think very well. That can make successful interaction with professional contacts seem almost impossible.

Like most of us, you’ve no doubt asked yourself plenty of questions about conduct in the workplace, questions that don’t seem to have easy answers:

○ What, exactly, am I supposed to wear on dress-down day?

○ How do I handle people who come across too strong during meetings?

○ What’s the best way to compose an e-mail to my most important prospective client?

○ When I’mconducting business in another country, what should I say—or avoid saying—to my host?

These are the kinds of questions that can keep people up at night. I know, because I work every day with professionals who’ve lost sleep over matters of business behavior—people who are eager, as you are, to learn how to conduct business with charm and savvy. Through my business, At Ease Inc., I provide business protocol services and training through live seminars, DVDs, print media, and a telephone hotline service. I’ve trained thousands of individuals and have worked with such organizations as Fidelity Investments, Procter & Gamble, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, United Brands, the Huffy Corporation, Showtime Network, Inc., Saks Fifth Avenue, SmithKline Beecham, BP America, Paychex, MCI Telecommunications, the Marriott International, and Deloitte & Touche. I’ve also worked with countless small businesses in addressing the same etiquette and protocol questions that trouble representatives of the bigger companies.

How did I get started in my business? After graduating from college and doing some experimenting in the work world, I began to watch what people were doing to get ahead in their organizations. I realized that the ones who knew how to make the best impression and how to make others feel comfortable in social situations were the ones who often got a leg up on the competition. So about 23 years ago, I started taking some notes and eventually started a new company. My aim was to help companies get the sand out of their employees’social gears and, as a result, to increase their bottom lines.

Guess what? It worked!

Who is this book for?

Business Etiquette: 101 Ways to Conduct Business With Charm and Savvy is for you—whether you’ve just landed an entry-level office job, operate on the front lines with people who use your company’s product or service, run your own business, or hold any other position that involves maintaining business relationships with others. Whether you work for a multinational corporation, a local print shop, or a one-person business, you have probably faced the same basic question my clients have: how do I make sure I don’t say or do the wrong thing in a business setting?

Often, I am challenged by seminar participants to provide a single, one-sentence answer to that question, an answer that applies to any and all business situations. You may be surprised to learn that such an answer actually exists!

The guiding principle

This book is full of practical advice that will help you come across with charm and savvy in a wide variety of business settings. Before you take advantage of this targeted counsel, however, you may be interested in learning more about the underlying principle that I believe is always—repeat, always—there for you to fall back on in business situations. Here’s my one-sentence answer to that question my clients always ask: Make the individual with whom you’re dealing feel as though he or she were the most important person in the world.

When you come right down to it, that’s the secret to managing business protocol and etiquette issues. Naturally, there’s a lot more advice to bear in mind. Yet all of it, I believe, relies on making the other person feel important, attended to, and respected. It’s a natural human tendency: We like to spend time with—and will often go out of our way to help—people who make us feel like a million bucks.

This guiding principle is simple, memorable, and—surprise, surprise—capable of imparting just about everyone with a new sense of confidence in approaching even complex issues of etiquette and protocol in the workplace.

Conducting business with charm and savvy means making an investment of attention in the other person, nothing more and nothing less. That principle applies whether you’re picking up an important executive at the airport or explaining an unfamiliar office policy to a wayward subordinate.

Conducting business with charm and savvy means making an effort to learn more about others than you share about yourself. It means learning to interact with others more effectively by consistently putting a positive focus on the person on the other side. It means being present for the individual with whom you’re interacting and making sure he or she feels great about the exchange.

Interest in and concern for others supports all proper etiquette. In my own experience, undivided attention may be the single best technique for banishing that queasy what do I do now? feeling many of us associate with social encounters related to our work.

The specific applications presented in this book—all of them—reinforce the basic principle in ways you can easily use. When you know you’re doing the right thing and recognize how to do it, you feel more confident, better informed, and better prepared for the challenges that come your way during the workday.

So much for the etiquette jitters!

A simple, no-nonsense guide

Part of what makes business etiquette and protocol seem so intimidating at first glance is the apparent complexity of proper conduct. Many etiquette books, business-related and otherwise, resemble fat dictionaries or legal resources, with column upon column of dense type. These books often leave readers reeling with the question, How am I ever going to remember all that?

Business Etiquette isn’t one of those guides. It won’t spend page after page outlining intricate, hard-to-remember theories and systems for you to follow. But it will offer concrete advice that will help you in specific situations.

The aim of this book is to assist you in conducting your business with more confidence, know-how, grace, and efficiency than ever before. I’ve written this book on the principle that little things really do mean a lot. Little things are, after all, what make other people feel special. Accordingly, this book will outline plenty of little steps you can take—steps that, one by one, will help you:

○ Put others at ease by showing more confidence and poise in business settings.

○ Handle moments of hesitation with a style that leaves your contacts feeling glad you were there.

○ Negotiate more win-win outcomes.

In short, this book will help you master the neglected art of making people feel good about themselves!

How this book is arranged

This book is divided into specific areas of business, each offering practical solutions that are critical to your success.

For example, Chapter 1 shows you how to handle initial contact. If you’ve ever wondered how to manage greetings and introductions, what to do when a name escapes you, or when to pass along a business card, you’ll want to take a look at the advice here.

Chapter 2 gives you all the advice you need on attire issues in the workplace: What exactly is business casual? What do you do if your company hasn’t set down clear guidelines about what’s acceptable attire and what isn’t? How should you handle subordinates whose dress is clearly unprofessional?

Whether you’re interested in making your business correspondence look as sharp as it possibly can, using fax messages to make a positive impression, or sending e-mail that gets noticed for all the right reasons, you’ll find plenty of helpful suggestions in Chapter 3.

Lapses in business etiquette over the telephone are usually among the most dangerous (and neglected) enemies of any organization’s bottom line. Chapter 4 shows you ways to use this common business communication tool to your best advantage.

Chapter 5 is where you’ll find the 12 Commandments of Cubicle Etiquette and more great advice on harmonious interaction with the people sharing your workplace.

In Chapter 6 you’ll learn how to make the most of meetings and how to clear all the common hurdles—without ruffling the feathers of subordinates, peers, or supervisors.

If you’ve ever felt flustered when dealing with a CEO or other potentially prickly top dog, you’ll want to study Chapter 7, offering the lowdown on handling people in high places.

Poise and confidence may count for even more when you’re away from the office on business. Chapter 8 shows you how to display charm and savvy at parties, receptions, restaurants—any time you’re away from your home turf.

Personal crises? Prescription medication? Job offers? The way you address these and similar challenges can lead to catastrophe if you’re not careful. Chapter 9 offers the best ways to handle some relatively uncommon, but potentially serious, questions of protocol and behavior.

The final chapter features some common questions and interesting business etiquette problems that readers of my newspaper column have brought to my attention—and the solutions I recommend. See how the real-world challenges of my readers compare with your own.

In addition to the etiquette tips focusing on business close to home, you’ll also find a helpful appendix that outlines the essentials of international etiquette. Whether you’re planning on doing business in Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, or the other countries covered, you can prepare for your encounters with this review of the do’s and don’ts of conducting business throughout the world.

Where to begin?

How should you read this book? There are two ways to go: One is simply to start from the first tip and work your way through to the end. This will give you the opportunity to conduct a thorough review of, and gain an in-depth understanding of my approach to the various issues covered. The other way to read this book is to consult it as the need arises—scan the Contents and find the chapter heading that applies to the situation you now face. Either technique, or a combination of the two, is acceptable. There is no wrong way to track down the information you need. This book has been arranged for ease of use and