Manners matter in business
While recently lunching with lawyers, I noticed that some mobile devices were out on the table. It prompted me to raise an etiquette question to the attorneys: Is it bad manners to keep your cell phone out during lunch or completely acceptable?
Today’s workplace etiquette is tricky, and most of us still are trying to figure out the rules. Between relaxed dress codes, use of technology and blurred boundaries, navigating the crucial distinctions between professional and social courtesies has become complicated.
Once I put the question out there, each of the lawyers chimed in with differing views. Some cited possible family emergencies as a reason to keep the phone in sight; others cited clients’ expectations of quick response.
Overall, the consensus was that putting your cell on the table and checking it during the meal is acceptable when lunching with colleagues or friends, not with clients or potential customers.
“Workplace etiquette does change and adjust,” said nationally syndicated etiquette columnist Judith Martin, also known as Miss Manners. Martin has partnered with her son, Nicholas Ivor Martin, to help us navigate the new workplace etiquette pitfalls in her book, “Miss Manners Minds Your Business.”
“Today, some of the etiquette rules are different. Others just are disobeyed more flagrantly,” she explained to me.
Because the rules change over time, many of us don’t intend to offend. Yet there are high costs, even with seemingly inconsequential actions: Our etiquette breaches create bad impressions with clients, ruin job prospects or set back our careers.
Young workers often step into a minefield on the job after years of parents and teachers encouraging them to “be themselves,” Martin explained.
At work, they might interpret that to mean posting their emotions on social networks, neglecting to wash the coffee pot, or writing an e-mail in text speak. “When entering the business world, you need to learn to be someone else. It is called having a professional identity,” she said.
For all workers, staying professional even as the workplace becomes more casual requires reading cues. You don’t want to address the boss by his first name if the rest of the staff calls him Mr. Smith.
Marc Cenedella, CEO and founder of TheLadders.com, an online marketplace for $100,000-plus jobs, warns that in every office — even those with a collegial culture — there exists an invisible line between professional and unprofessional behavior.
A survey by TheLadders.com found managers often draw the line at cussing at work, wearing revealing clothing and having repeated loud personal conversations. A Ladders survey deemed a foul mouth is the most punishable of all workplace faux pas, finding 36 percent of U.S. bosses have issued a formal warning and 6 percent have fired an employee for swearing.
Most workers will confirm the big slips that create most resentment arise from our being more distracted than ever by technology.
Leslie Harris said she was aghast when her physician took a call on his cell phone while examining her. “I could hear the conversation and I’m pretty sure he was speaking to a friend,” said Harris, a marketing executive. She has found another physician.
Of course, the smartphone addict typically doesn’t think he or she is being rude by staring at a screen or zipping off an e-mail during a team meeting or one-on-one interaction, and may actually consider himself being responsive to customers’ needs in real time.
Martin said that’s no excuse: “Not paying attention to human beings who are there to be with you is rude.”
Sometimes, prefacing a meeting by announcing you are expecting an urgent call helps buffer the interpretation of bad manners. Regardless, she said, “You are sending the message that the person or people you are with are not worth your attention.”
In a business setting, if you can’t give others your full attention, don’t go to the meeting or shut your door, Martin said.
Greenberg Traurig business litigator Michele Stocker recently found a client upset when she didn’t answer repeated calls on her cell in a two-hour span. Stocker explained it would be bad manners to not give the client she was with her full attention during a legal proceeding.
“When I (asked), ‘How would you like it if I took a call during a meeting with you?’ they admitted they would be offended and said that I made a fair point.”
Most of us strive to be responsive, but we are entitled to a peaceful private life. That may mean delaying an e-mail response or returning a call. Answering in up to 24 hours is acceptable, etiquette experts say.
Maryline Coirin, a Miami business etiquette consultant, said most of the questions she gets involve dining. Even today, the old business luncheon still is an expected part of a successful professional life — and rife with land mines. “When you sit down at the dining table, everything you do is being judged,” she said.
