Etiquette Lessons

By Michael Peltier

As anti-Americanism has grown in a post-9/11 world, firms that teach good manners to U.S. businesspeople have flourished. A once fledgling industry of protocol schools and etiquette consultants now serves a growing list of corporate clients that pay $10,000 or more a day to learn the cultural sensitivities of far-flung regions. "Increasingly, it's about building relationships, something American businesses are just beginning to understand," says Jacqueline Whitmore, director of the Protocol School of Palm Beach, Fla., who has seen her business triple in the past three years. Faux pas often begin, etiquette experts say, with an overly familiar, laid-back style in locales where "business casual" is an oxymoron and first names are reserved for family and close friends. Polo shirts aside, the minefields are everywhere: skipping tea drinking in Asia, for example, and forsaking small talk to rush headlong into negotiations. In some parts of Asia and the Middle East, guests should never clean their plate; if they do, it's a sign that they are still hungry, and their host will serve them more. "We have somehow been tabbed with the term Ugly Americans," says Roger Axtell, author of eight books on business etiquette. "It's a bad rap. I don't think we are Ugly Americans, but we are often Unprepared Americans." --By Michael Peltier