As a certified public accountant, I’m required to earn at least 80 hours every two years of continuing professional education credits. Many other professions and trades, including lawyers, healthcare professionals, engineers, electricians, plumbers and certain contractors, have similar requirements. It’s a good idea.
These professional requirements often also include ethics training. That’s a good idea too. But just getting a refresher on ethics isn’t enough. Something else is needed – something that’s even more important: etiquette.
One venture capital firm is trying to address that problem. According to a recent story, the firm conducts an “etiquette finishing school” for startup founders and tech entrepreneurs so that they can “learn how to dress and socialize, as well as how to overcome their fear of fish eggs”. Among the topics covered are the importance of wearing a suit and tie to a presentation, understanding how to “approach different rooms”, selecting wines and how to eat caviar.
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While I’m sure this may be important for some, it’s completely valueless for most. Etiquette goes way beyond fish eggs. It’s becoming a critical management skill.
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines etiquette as a system of rules and conventions that regulate social and professional behavior. According to them, “in any social unit there are accepted rules of behavior upheld and enforced by legal codes; there are also norms of behavior mandated by custom and enforced by group pressure.”
Etiquette isn’t just about dressing or socializing – or eating caviar. It’s about saying please and thank you. It’s about being on time for meetings. It’s about putting your phone away when having an in-person conversation and letting another driver merge in front of you in traffic. Etiquette means keeping your shoes and socks on your feet during a flight and not bringing a smelly food on the plane. It’s holding the door for the next person. It’s listening to your music in a public place with earbuds. It’s not commenting on a person’s appearance, skin color or sexual orientation. It means understanding and respecting another person’s point of view, regardless of how much you disagree.
Etiquette is simply learning how to live and work with people who are different from you. This type of training is needed now more than ever. The American workplace is far more diverse than it was a few generations ago – not just racially, but religiously, culturally, politically and generationally. Women make up roughly half the workforce. Four generations can find themselves working under the same roof. Employees have different religions, sexual orientations, political beliefs and ideas about what constitutes acceptable behavior.
Everybody has their thing. How owners, managers and colleagues respond to someone else’s thing is etiquette.
For a business to succeed, managers need to not only be versed in their technical requirements, but they have to be skilled at understanding cultures, religious beliefs, political leanings, attitudes, backgrounds and modes of dress. A conservative Christian manager needs to know how to respectfully manage a Muslim employee. A progressive manager needs to know how to respectfully manage a Maga employee. A 25-year-old needs to work with a 65-year-old – and vice versa. This isn’t about making everyone nicer. It’s about making people easier to work with … and therefore more productive.
How to help resolve these differences? Lower the temperature? Get along better? One big step would be to expand on that VC firm’s “etiquette finishing school” idea.
No, not how to pair wines. But to better know how to behave with others who are different. To show them respect. And why not start with the millions of professionals in this country who are required to take continuing professional education in order to maintain their business licenses? Technical expertise is important. But if we’re already forcing professionals to spend dozens of hours in classrooms, I’d happily trade four of them for something that might actually make us better at dealing with one another.
A four-hour class in etiquette isn’t going to solve the world’s problems. But, like any course, something will be remembered. Something will rub off on its participants. And that something may help ease conflict. Sure, it’s easier to succeed in the professional world by choosing the right wine and wearing the right tie. But then again, learning the etiquette so that you can understand, respect and work with your team is even more valuable, not only for business but for the world at large.
