Etiquette Consulting Inc

Tools to help you avoid Social Faux Pas

In a world where image is everything, you must make your brand stand out in order to attain your goals.

Jules Hirst, Etiquette Expert

Politics and Etiquette: Incivility in the Workplace and Congress

Here is a great arti­cle form the Boston Globe which dis­cusses inci­vil­ity in the work­place and Con­gress. What do you think? Is there a problem?

Olympia SnoweMaine Sen­a­tor Olympia Snowe is just the lat­est exam­ple in pol­i­tics and busi­ness to demon­strate the ugly effects of inci­vil­ity. She said last week that she is not going to seek another term in the US Congress.

The three-term Repub­li­can sen­a­tor did not make her deci­sion because she was fac­ing a dif­fi­cult reelec­tion bid. Instead, she blamed the intense and some­times destruc­tive par­ti­san­ship in Wash­ing­ton. That, in a nut­shell, is the prob­lem with inci­vil­ity. At a cer­tain point, peo­ple say, “No more. I don’t have to put up with caus­tic, vit­ri­olic, neg­a­tive behav­ior.’’ And they dis­en­gage, refuse to serve, quit their jobs.

It’s not just in pol­i­tics that inci­vil­ity causes a prob­lem. In busi­ness, it is costly to replace a worker. There’s down­time between when a per­son leaves and a qual­i­fied replace­ment is hired. There’s a learn­ing curve for the replacement.

While busi­nesses don’t expect to keep a worker from leav­ing for a good rea­son — a bet­ter posi­tion, a relo­ca­tion — good busi­nesses ensure that employ­ees don’t leave for pre­ventable rea­sons. When a per­son leaves because of inci­vil­ity, that’s preventable.

And it should be unac­cept­able to the Amer­i­can pub­lic. I can accept any elected official’s deci­sion to return to pri­vate life; what is unac­cept­able to me is a res­ig­na­tion caused by the atmos­phere in Con­gress. The atmos­phere of the past few years is reflected in Con­gress’ steadily declin­ing approval rat­ing, which hit a record low of 11 per­cent in Decem­ber 2011. It is time to demand civil behav­ior from Congress.

Rude­ness and inci­vil­ity in the work­place — and Con­gress — are pre­ventable. Pre­ven­tion begins by chang­ing the work­place cul­ture and that means change must be embraced from the top down. That change is grounded in three pow­er­ful prin­ci­ples that should gov­ern inter­ac­tions in the work­place: be con­sid­er­ate, be respect­ful, and be honest.

It’s time for con­gres­sional lead­ers to rec­og­nize that the cur­rent cul­ture is toxic and to take respon­si­bil­ity for restor­ing civil­ity in the House and Senate.

Source:Boston Globe

Writ­ten By: Peter Post

A TITLE IS EARNED.… How to Address a Retired Lt Col

Fox News Channel’s The Five, co-host Bob Beckel expressed his dis­plea­sure with Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Allen West’s com­ments about the Democ­rats at the Lin­coln Day Din­ner. Mr. Beckel con­tin­u­ously referred to Rep­re­sen­ta­tive West as Mr. West while crit­i­ciz­ing his views. Co-host Eric Bowl­ing cor­rectly pointed out to Beckel that he should be refer­ring to Allen West as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive or Lt Col Allen West because he had earned both titles.

Here is what eti­quette states:

Although Rep­re­sen­ta­tive or Congressman/Congresswoman are not tra­di­tional hon­orific titles, they do express the person’s cur­rent posi­tion and can be used to refer to the person.

The for­mal form of Mr. (name) or Ms. (name) should be used when address­ing an enve­lope as shown below.

Enve­lope, offi­cial:
The Hon­or­able
(Full name)
United States House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives
(Address)

The proper form for Lieu­tenant Colonel would be Lt Col with­out peri­ods. You do not need to use Retired unless you were address­ing an offi­cial enve­lope. In which case you should use “…

Clark­son, USAF Retired” or “…Clark­son, USAF Ret.”

See exam­ples below for the dif­fer­ences between an offi­cial enve­lope and a social envelope.

For­mal forms for an “offi­cial” enve­lope would be:
    Lieu­tenant Colonel Joe M. Clark­son, USAF, Retired
    and Mrs. Clark­son
     Address
For­mal forms for a “social” enve­lope would be:
    Lieu­tenant Colonel Joe M. Clark­son
     and Mrs. Clark­son
     Address

    Lt Col Joe M. Clark­son
     and Mrs. Clark­son
     Address

Whether you agree or dis­agree with some­one, you should show them the proper respect by refer­ring to them using the title(s) they have earned.

Valentine’s Day Etiquette: Plan Ahead and Have Fun

Valentines Day Etiquette - Jules HirstAs we get older, Valentine’s Day looms larger and larger. Either we are with some­one spe­cial and feel the angst of mak­ing the day extra spe­cial or we are alone and feel worse because we have nobody to cel­e­brate with. It doesn’t have to feel this way. With a lit­tle fore­thought and plan­ning, Valentine’s Day can be fun for every­one. Review our tips below to help add a lit­tle fun to your Valentine’s Day.

  • If you have a spe­cial some­one, talk about Valentine’s Day with them. This is not a time to make assump­tions. Maybe your part­ner is really into Valentine’s Day or maybe not. Maybe you are. By talk­ing it over, both sides will have an under­stand­ing of the other’s expec­ta­tions and then can plan accordingly.
  • If you don’t have a spe­cial some­one at the moment but are think­ing about ask­ing some­one, don’t wait until the last minute. There is noth­ing worse than being turned down and then not hav­ing a backup plan. By ask­ing the per­son ahead of time, you now have time to make plans to cel­e­brate or cre­ate a backup plan to spend time with friends.
  • Valentine’s Day this year is on a Mon­day, which isn’t always the best day to cel­e­brate. By plan­ning ahead you can turn it into a week­end event or just cel­e­brate a day or two early. This will help beat the crowds and can lead to bet­ter service.
  • Gift giv­ing doesn’t have to be extrav­a­gant. Every woman would love a lit­tle blue box from Tiffany’s, but if that’s not in the bud­get this year then find some­thing per­sonal and spe­cial. Remem­ber, it’s the thought that counts.
  • Flow­ers and choco­lates are Valentine’s Day sta­ples but don’t break the bank try­ing to impress. A sin­gle rose can declare love just as well as a dozen roses but doesn’t cost nearly as much.
  • You don’t have to be alone on Valentine’s Day. Some of your friends may not have sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, so plan an out­ing for that evening so that you are not alone. Have a bowl­ing night or a movie night. Spend­ing time with friends can be just as reward­ing and can help fill any void you may be feeling.

Plan­ning ahead can remove the anx­i­ety from Valentine’s Day. Talk­ing with your part­ner about Valentine’s Day plans will help ease the stress from both of you and will lead to an improved cel­e­bra­tion. Also, if you are sin­gle plan an event with friends because they may be sin­gle as well and the com­pan­ion­ship will ben­e­fit you both.

International Protocol: Avoiding a “Sticky Wicket”

Before con­duct­ing busi­ness in for­eign coun­tries, it is impor­tant to famil­iar­ize your­self with the cus­toms and cul­tures of that coun­try. What is accept­able here in the United States may be taboo in that coun­try. By prepar­ing ahead of time, you will lessen the risk of embar­rass­ing your­self and stick­ing your foot in your mouth and poten­tially dam­ag­ing your busi­ness rela­tion­ship. Pres­i­dent Obama is cur­rently mak­ing his first offi­cial visit to Aus­tralia and kudos to him for tak­ing the time to famil­iar­ize him­self with some com­mon jar­gon. Dur­ing a speech at the Par­lia­ment House in Can­berra, Aus­tralia, Pres­i­dent Obama worked in Aus­tralian jar­gon terms like ear­bash­ing and sticky wick­ets while talk­ing about the rela­tion­ship between the United States and Aus­tralia. Hav­ing used these jar­gon terms cor­rectly, Pres­i­dent Obama has shown that he prides him­self in prepar­ing him­self for busi­ness in other coun­tries and hope­fully this will improve our for­eign pol­icy and help get us out of our sticky eco­nomic situation

A Lesson in Social Etiquette: It is said that any publicity is good publicity.

Public Relations_Social EtiquetteIt is said that any pub­lic­ity is good pub­lic­ity. Appar­ently PR reps in NYC are try­ing to get pub­lic­ity for their events in cre­ative ways. They have asked blog­gers to post about their events after the fact and not hav­ing invited them to attend. Christo­pher Kouli­uris, a NYC social scene blog­ger for scallywagandvagabond.com, is appalled by this and has writ­ten an enter­tain­ing post on his blog about it. Check out the post and let me know your thoughts.

For those of you who are reg­u­lar read­ers of my (mis)adventures of carous­ing the NYC soci­ety set– you’ve prob­a­bly gone away with the impres­sion that I live some sort of glo­ri­ous glam­orous life. How wrong you all are, except for the occa­sional cock­tail, inspir­ing guest, cause or lin­ger­ing glance of some femme fatale who really should know bet­ter, can­vass­ing the NYC social land­scape as a reporter is a thank­less task.

Thank­less because of the demands imposed on keep­ing a tight jour­nal (which means whilst you all sleep coco pops away I’m up invent­ing clever drib­ble and upload­ing images after images of peo­ple who always seem to be too happy). But today I can tell you my task of being a soci­ety reporter has just become 17 notches more mis­er­able. Why you won­der? Because I want every pub­li­cist who has ever had the good idea to find me to scratch me off their go to media list take a few steps back. Not because I don’t like pub­li­cists (I like quite a few of you if you must know) but because of the cal­cu­lat­ing nature of the way some of you behave and the con­niv­ing games so many of you rel­ish in (but why?).

So let’s get to the meat of the mat­ter. In the space of 7 days I, this scoundrel, received no fewer than 117 10 soci­ety event invi­ta­tions as my capac­ity as a soci­ety reporter (what­ever soci­ety means any­more and what­ever it is us soci­ety reporters are sup­pose to do any­more blah!). Out of those I prob­a­bly I only both­ered attend­ing 3. Okay, so far we’re all happy. Now here’s where the jig comes in, dur­ing those same 7 days I also received 400 9 event post press releases with pro­pa­ganda jar­gon and accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures, get ready to catch this– to events that I or the jour­nal wasn’t invited to but pas­sively expected to pub­lish regardless.

So let’s get this straight, I get invites to events and if I feel as pub­lisher we should cover them we do. But now not only am I get­ting the usual invites, I am now get­ting more non invites to events that I wasn’t invited to attend solely for the intent that some pub­li­cist can use me as a mar­ket­ing con­duit for their pay­ing client.

This of course gen­er­ally comes with a care­fully worded tip sheet (cause we all need to metaphor­i­cally know the client has a penis 78 times big­ger more cache than you and I could ever hope to have ) with select accom­pa­ny­ing pic­tures of mar­velously happy peo­ple. How they always man­age to be happy beats me, but then again who can really under­stand the aspi­ra­tions of most media whores? (milk the cam­era boy for as much pub­lic expo­sure then go on to hope­fully milk an appear­ance deal or at least self jus­ti­fied social standing).

Now if you were in my posi­tion how would you respond? Would you acqui­esce and just post said pro­pa­ganda pieces (and I know quite a few of you blog­gers that do, but I wont men­tion names this time, cause last time I embar­rassed you all gave me dirty looks for weeks to come, but you copy and paste blog­gers we all know who you are or would you do what I do which is stand up for yourself?

Now the polite thing would be to ignore the emails and just pay them offend­ing pub­li­cists no mind. But I am afraid as some of you have to come to find out, I don’t tol­er­ate bad form too well (espe­cially after one pub­li­cist had me uncer­e­mo­ni­ously thrown out of one event ear­lier this year and another threat­ened to sue me for exer­cis­ing my jour­nal­is­tic rights). And if I must I will gather you up and expose your treach­er­ous ways. Which reminds me about the phone call I received Sun­day night (8.09pm) from a cer­tain infa­mous paparazzo who I sev­ered ties with in early Octo­ber who threat­ened to beat the crap out of me (accord­ing to sources this is his usual way of intim­i­da­tion, never mind the taped mes­sages) if I went to press with a story doc­u­ment­ing his shady crash­ing ways that most pub­li­cists can tell you about and have emailed me about (paparazzo the story will be up soon– promise).

Which brings me to the above arbi­trary sam­ple from one pub­li­cist. Let’s all read it together:

photo taken from Scal­ly­wag & Vagabond

So please ladies and gen­tle­men of the pub­lic rela­tions world– start treat­ing us soci­ety reporters with respect, even allo­cate a por­tion of your bud­get for us to cover your event prod­uct place­ment (really that’s what it amounts to) and we too will give you a per­fect pr write up that your client can be proud of. Or on the other hand approach us with respect and ask us if this is some­thing we would con­sider writ­ing about, assum­ing it reflects one’s jour­nal edi­to­r­ial gambit.

source:Scallywag & Vagabond

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