Executive Management Manners

Are you faced with the challenges of being a younger manager with older employees reporting to you?

Recognizing that the older employees may feel resentment, hostility or have fears of being replaced, Ms. Baldrige advises that the younger manager set his/her style of management at the first staff meeting by doing the following:

Greet and shake hands with every employee present, asking each person their name and job title.

Read carefully beforehand the employee bios, so that he can profess admiration for the impressive background and job skills of the people he or she will now manage.  One should memorize interesting tidbits about them, to prove when he meets them how well he did his homework. 

Such as, "You're the one with nine children, aren't you?  Wonderful!  I'd like to see a picture of them some day."  "You must be the one who transferred from Indianapolis.  How do you like Denver in comparison?"  "You won the company sales championship last year, didn't you?  Great!"

Explain to workers that they really need one another in order to work as a team, to bring increased profits.

Demonstrate why they are qualified to be in the new lead position. You should talk about their background and expertise, and how they expect to utilize it.

End with a vigorous affirmation of how pleased they are to be in the new job, how much they admire the team already in place, and how successful they know they will all be.

This tip was provided by the Culture and Manners Institute at http://www.cultureandmanners.com/ 

What to do about the knife...

You are attending a business lunch in with your work colleges...

"Would you like to hold onto your knife?" asked the server.

It always seems like a strange question. There you are holding a knife dripping with salad dressing and you are not quite sure what to do with it.  At a high-end restaurant you usually get a knife with your salad and another knife with the main course.  But some restaurants, in order to cut costs, cut back on the number of eating utensils.

Here are your options:

1. Give up the knife and ask for a new one.

2. Place your knife, blade in, horizontally across the top of your bread plate, if you have one.  Or prop it up on a spoon that is already resting on the table. 

3. If there are no other options, you may have to set the knife on the table itself.  (If you are worried your knife might pick up bacteria from the table, you need to read The Wall Street Journal's article this morning about what kind of bacteria is already on your cell phone.  Sometimes you just need a good pre-Halloween scream.)

What happens if your knife falls on the floor?  Wait for the serving staff to pick it up and hopefully, bring you a new one.

Etiquette Tip of the Week thanks to Culture and Manners Institute at http://www.cultureandmanners.com/