FREE online courses on Etiquette in Business - An Advantage
Of Polish
One advantage of polish is that one's opponent can never tell what is going on
under the glazed surface of highly finished manners, whereas an unfinished
surface is all too easily penetrated. And since business encounters are often
played like poker hands, it is surely a bad plan to be playing with a
mind-reader who can plainly divine his opponent's cards, while his own are
unrevealed.
Manners that can by any possibility be construed as mincing, foppish or
effeminate are not
recommended; but a gentleman who says “Good morning” to his employees and who
invariably treats all women as “ladies,” does not half so much flatter their
vanity as win their respect for himself as a gentleman. Again, good manners are,
after all, nothing but courteous consideration of other people's interests and
feelings. That being true, does it not follow that all customers, superior
officers and employees prefer an executive whose good manners imply
consideration of his customer's, his company's and his employee's interest as
well as merely his own?