Your Manners Matter

This year The Charleston School of Protocol is focusing on the “Journey of Civility”. This exciting journey can bring an awareness of how to reflect your personal brand with excellence, and the impact that it has both personally and professionally.

According to a study conducted by the Stanford Research Institute, Harvard University, and the Carnegie Foundation, 85% of your professional success is attributed to your social skills, and 15% from your technical knowledge.  Your social skills reflect on how you handle yourself and how you handle others; what I refer to as the skill of polish.

Based on this information, the investment to develop the skill of polish both personally, and in the lives of our children, will prove to create one of the greatest advantages we can realize. Therefore, how much time have we spent integrating polish into our lives and the lives of our children?

Ideally, the “Journey of Civility” begins at a young age and continues throughout life.  But it is never too late to jump on board. You can begin today!

(Reprinted from one of my columns)

Wow!  I cannot believe it is already February!

In November of last year we released The Proper Penguin – The Story of B Polite.

Here is an excerpt from the back of the book.

Back Cover Excerpt- The Proper Penguin – The Story of B Polite was developed to help children and their parents to see civility in action. B Polite is a penguin that lives at the South Pole. The penguins that live there get their name from the pole-lights or the “Polites.” B is a nick name for Bentley. The story is a day in the life of B Polite, a penguin that lives in a cold place that is warm and friendly due to a kind way of life. It is a sweet story of the benefits of building a foundation of manners early in life.

The story is written so that the children may connect with “B Polite” and see that kind actions are a desirable way to a happy life.The Book is going into its second printing and is doing wonderfully well!!!

If interested in learning more about the book and the Proper Penguin program, please click the following link: http://www.charlestonschoolofprotocol.com/Proper-Penguin

The journey of civility begins at a very young age and the concept of B Polite was developed to help make the trip fun. B Polite is not so much about the rules, but rather, it is about respecting oneself first; enabling respect for others, i.e., the circle of life in the life cycle of civility.

Hybrid Mom
Moms at Work: How Much Kid Talk Is Too Much?
by Angie Mizzell

For humor columnist Robin O”Bryant, sharing stories about life as a mom and the daily antics of her three young girls is just part of the job description. From potty training to potty talk, few subjects are off limits.  “My humor is very self depreciating. Anything I do to embarrass myself is fair game,”she says.

But before O’Bryant became a stay-at-home-mom and began a career as a writer, she worked as a registered nurse. While working as an RN I did share about my kids, but it was more of a conversation with coworkers about raising kids, instead of a monologue. If you find yourself at work constantly talking about your kids and you don’t know the names of any of your coworker’s kids, it’s time to shut up.

We all love to talk about our children, and in the past decade the surge of mom blogs has given parents an open platform to share their touching and outrageous tales. But experts say when you’re working on someone else’s clock, it’s best to keep the chitchat in check.

“There’s a limit to personal talk at work, whether you’re talking about your child, your husband or your dog,” says corporate etiquette expert Cindy Grosso, founder of the Charleston School of Protocol and Etiquette. Grosso says personal conversations should be, ideally, no more than 2-3 minutes long. If your personal story goes on for more than five minutes, you’re encroaching on someone’s time. Grosso says the rules relax a bit when you’re on a break or at lunch, but even then, it’s important to ask about the other person’s life. “Make sure it’s not all about you.”

For some parents, the workplace may be the only social connection they have. Conversing and building friendships at work is fine, but experts say to remember that talking too much and too personal is simply impolite. Take it from Allan Beaton, a networking and social media consultant who says recently, he was on the receiving end of too much information. “One of my clients identified while on the phone that the dog just peed on the carpet, the 4-year-old threw up, and the one-year-old just did a poo simultaneously.” And for the record, the client was a dad.

To share or not-to-share? A good rule of thumb:

When in doubt, focus on the highlights, not the day-to-day (or bodily) functions. Grosso says it’s important for parents to remember that the ordinary, day-in-the-life-type-stuff of living with and raising children are often perceived as quite out of the ordinary for people who don’t have kids. Storytelling isn’t all bad, if you think before you speak and consider the audience. After all, the person on the receiving end might appreciate a peek inside your world. “A comment that your child made to you really may brighten someone’s day.”

There seems to be a plethora of articles on children and manners a lot of people are writing about them, but there appears to be a missing link between talking about how to teach the manners to children and actually teaching them.

There are many parents that do a wonderful job in this area, but there are others who do not. Some may even leave it up to someone else to teach their child. or maybe their lessons are limited to the practice of saying please and thank- you and that is the extent of what is taught.

Most people say it is important but why? I have come to the conclusion that although children may be misbehaving, parents are not necessarily understanding that more often than not, it’s not the action that gets them in trouble, but rather, the attitude behind it. This attitude is often connected to a lack of self confidence which can be directly related to their lack of understanding and use of manners.

I realized this as I was at a home school convention and a parent said to me  ‘Do you expect us, the parents, to teach this program on manners? ‘ This one comment alone helped me to enhance our home school curriculum even more, as it helped me to realize several things:

1. Parents may be unsure of how to teach this on their own

2. The homeschooling parent has a lot on his/her plate and is not really interested in adding one more topic to the list, if the magnitude of the topic is not fully understood.

3. Even if parents who homeschooled had the curriculum for manners, they may not be able to teach it, because they feel they may not have been a perfect example themselves.

So how do I help parents with this?

Well first, we added audio to the homeschool program that allows it to be taught by a National Etiquette Expert. This enables the program to be self-directed, more interactive and fun!

In addition, my focus now will be on the awareness of the  ‘why ‘ as the saying goes  ‘Rules without reason, result in rebellion. ‘ So I will start to focus on how to help parents with the awareness of why, maybe even more so then the how. Stay tuned for part 2 to learn why and how to instill self confidence in your child.