Please Pass the Business

From dinner manners to public speaking to dressing the part, business etiquette is all about sending the right message

Think about your most recent professional interaction.

Your posture, clothing, greeting, email, even jewelry and nametags were part of unspoken codes of business. Getting them right conveys a message – and so does getting them wrong. That’s why some people are turning to formal etiquette training as an investment in their careers and businesses.

South Carolina is home to one of the most prestigious training grounds in the nation, the Buckley School of Public Speaking in Camden. Greenville’s Caroline Buxton Avinger, an instructor at the school for 15 years, recently took the helm from founder Reid Buckley. She has worked with engineers with near-crippling stage fright, as well as military generals who want to keep from fumbling over formal dinnerware while delivering classified briefings.

0913UBJcoveretiquetteprovided1 — Caroline Buxton Avinger, president of the Buckley School of Public Speaking, leads a seminar at Davidson College.

The Buckley School has been something of a hidden gem. Scores of employees from Milliken and Fluor Corporation’s Greenville operations regularly receive its training, as do others from the Heritage Foundation, Philip Morris and the U.S. Department of Defense. Issues of etiquette know no professional bounds.

Getting Lazy

Businesses in general are getting increasingly “lackadaisical” about proper etiquette, said Gerald Glascock, director of the Southern Institute of Etiquette and Protocol. He said laziness may cost them more than they think.

“They get outclassed by their competitors very easily when they stop doing simple etiquette things,” Glascock said. “Customers won’t necessarily notice what you do wrong until your competitor does it right.”

People tend to neglect etiquette as they move up in their companies, only seeking to polish skills when on the job hunt, he said. The recent business world push toward better customer service is good, but often still lacks the proper image that goes along with it.

Smooth Talking

Avinger said good public speaking skills are not so much about being a great orator as they are about being poised and convincing. When professionals demonstrate good public speaking skills, it “encourages people to trust them and to do business with them. So it becomes business strategy.”

Bob Howard, president of the Greenville Tech Foundation, was one of her students at the Buckley School during a career transition from Bank of America to director of the Greenville Symphony Orchestra.

“In the bank, I had all kinds of advertising and thousands of other employees supporting the bank’s message. At a small nonprofit, we didn’t have that,” he said. “A lot of the messaging fell to me, and so I wanted it to be the best it could be.”

He said his stint at the Buckley School included playback of his own talks and feedback from students and instructors. Practice with everything from toasts to debates boosted his confidence. A jarring activity where rocks were dropped into a metal bucket every time he said “um” helped break him of the habit within a week.

Howard believes most people are their own worst enemies when it comes to public speaking because they don’t give themselves enough credit. He said people who are able to chat with a neighbor in the driveway have what it takes.

“If they can get over the fact there’s a hundred neighbors out there in the audience, they’ll do just fine,” he said.

Looking Good

Glascock said even as the business world drifts toward casualness, well-dressed people are assumed to be successful and therefore draw business. It is true across generations.

“The better you’re dressed, the more people want to give you money. If you get a reputation about being the best-dressed person, people are always going to ask your opinion on something,” he said. “If you dress down, they’re not going to respect your opinion.”

Beneath the clothes, the body itself tells a lot. Even if certain postures and gestures must be learned, our ability to read them comes naturally.

“You’re genetically preprogramed to read body language. You have 43 muscles in your face that can create over 10,000 gestures, and you can read every one of them,” Glascock said. Humans send messages no matter what they do, so controlling the body means controlling the message.

Working the Crowd

One big mistake people make is stuffing their faces at networking events.

“They didn’t invite you because they thought you were hungry. They invited you to make business acquaintances or maybe help someone,” Glascock said. He said the people who are engaged least at such events are the ones whose mouths are full.

It is even more important to understand the goals of a meeting when doing business across cultures. Ken Zwerdling, CEO of Foreign Staffing Inc., said it’s important to know when social banter is a necessity and when it’s taboo. Sending representatives of the wrong rank or gender could be a costly mistake in some countries.

While etiquette for every culture is different, there is one faux pas Americans tend to make wherever they go.

“Most Americans are too arrogant and they don’t show respect for other cultures,” Zwerdling said. “And they assume people can do business in English.” Even if they can, it’s best not to assume that parties understand each other fully.

Investing Time

Formal etiquette training tends to occur in the course of a day, a weekend or a week. Most etiquette schools offer intensives at their own locations or will travel to companies.

Even after training, experts suggest taking every opportunity to sharpen skills.

“The most important thing people need to remember is to be prepared and to practice and to not try and wing it,” Avinger said. She encourages people to give a blessing or toast or act as a spokesperson for a group whenever possible, allowing time to practice in less stressful situations.

After all, it’s the little things – the ironed shirts, handshakes and salad forks – that tell the bigger story of who you are, and who you want to be.

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