BUSI 472 Week 2 Business Etiquette PowerPoint Example

Small Courtesies, Real Results: The Role of Business Etiquette in Organizational Success

Slide 1: Small Courtesies, Real Results

• The role of business etiquette in organizational success
• BUSI 472, Organizational Ethics

Speaker notes: Good morning. When people hear the word etiquette, they often think of which fork to use or how to address a formal invitation. This presentation takes a different view. I want to show that the small courtesies of working life, how we greet people, how we write emails, how we treat colleagues in a hurry, have measurable effects on how well organizations perform, and that they are also a matter of character.

Slide 2: Agenda

• What etiquette is, and is not
• What rudeness costs
• First impressions and the handshake
• Email, where tone disappears
• Habits for meetings, messages and meals

Speaker notes: We will move from definition to evidence to practice. The middle of the presentation looks at research on what happens when courtesy breaks down and on how quickly people form judgments of one another. The last part turns that evidence into habits anyone can adopt this week.

Slide 3: Etiquette Is Consideration Made Visible

• Rules exist to put others at ease
• Respect shown in small, repeated acts
• Professional image follows from conduct

Speaker notes: Etiquette is not a set of arbitrary rules. Most rules of business etiquette exist to make other people comfortable: arriving on time respects their schedule, introducing a newcomer includes them, and listening without checking a phone signals that they matter. Hosmer (2011) argues that management decisions affect people who have little control over them; etiquette applies the same awareness to everyday interaction. A professional image is less about clothing than about a pattern of conduct people come to expect.

Slide 4: Rudeness Spreads

• Incivility starts small and escalates
• It is common and widely experienced
• It travels from person to person

Speaker notes: Andersson and Pearson (1999) described workplace incivility as low-intensity rude behavior with ambiguous intent, and proposed that it can spiral, as one discourteous act provokes another until conflict escalates. Cortina et al. (2001) surveyed public-sector employees and found that most had experienced some form of incivility in the previous five years, and that those who experienced it reported lower job satisfaction and more thoughts of quitting. Rudeness is not a private matter between two people; it spreads through teams.

Slide 5: What Rudeness Costs

• Lower task performance
• Less creativity and helping
• Bystanders affected too

Speaker notes: Porath and Erez (2007) ran experiments in which participants experienced rudeness, from an experimenter or a third party, before working on tasks. Those exposed to rudeness performed worse on routine and creative tasks and were less willing to help others afterward, even when the rudeness came from someone unconnected to the task. For an organization, that means a rude manager lowers the output of people who merely witness the behavior. Courtesy is not a soft extra; it protects performance.

Slide 6: First Impressions Form Fast

• Judgments of trustworthiness in a tenth of a second
• Later information adjusts, but rarely erases them
• Interviews, sales calls and first meetings

Speaker notes: Willis and Todorov (2006) showed participants photographs of faces for as little as a tenth of a second and found that their judgments of traits such as trustworthiness and competence were already well formed, and changed little with longer exposure. First impressions in business form just as quickly, before anyone has heard our qualifications. Posture, eye contact, a greeting by name and attention to the other person shape that first judgment, which then colors everything that follows.

Slide 7: The Handshake Still Matters

• Firm, complete grip with eye contact
• Linked to interview ratings
• Adapt respectfully to cultural norms

Speaker notes: Stewart et al. (2008) studied mock employment interviews and found that the quality of candidates' handshakes, rated on firmness, grip, duration and eye contact, predicted interviewers' hiring recommendations. The handshake shaped the impression of the candidate's social skill. Customs differ across cultures, and many people now greet differently for health or religious reasons, so the principle is attentiveness: offer a confident greeting and follow the other person's lead.

Slide 8: Email Strips Tone

• Senders overestimate how clearly tone comes across
• Neutral messages often read as negative
• Courtesy must be written in, not assumed

Speaker notes: Kruger et al. (2005) found that people who sent sarcastic or serious emails were confident readers would interpret the tone correctly, but readers did so only slightly better than chance. Byron (2008) argued that email tends to make positive messages seem more neutral and neutral messages seem more negative. A short, unadorned reply that feels efficient to the sender can feel curt to the reader. A greeting, a thank-you and a clear request cost seconds and prevent misunderstandings that take hours to repair.

Slide 9: Habits That Build Results

• Meetings: arrive early, phones away, credit others by name
• Email: greet, state the request, thank, reread before sending
• Meals: follow the host, focus on conversation, not the menu
• Always: learn names and use them

Speaker notes: These habits are simple, but the research we have seen suggests their effects add up. In meetings, giving credit by name builds trust and models the behavior for others. In email, rereading for tone catches messages that might read as sharp. At business meals, the purpose is the relationship, so the guest follows the host's lead on ordering and keeps business talk until the host raises it. Learning and using people's names may be the single most effective courtesy of all.

Slide 10: Courtesy as Respect

• Every person bears God's image
• Courtesy honors that dignity
• Respect in small things builds trust in large ones

Speaker notes: Scripture grounds courtesy in something deeper than reputation. Peter instructed believers to honor everyone (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Peter 2:17), and Paul urged them to outdo one another in showing honor (Romans 12:10). Since each colleague and customer carries God's image, the small acts of etiquette, a greeting, a thank-you, patience with a hurried colleague, are ways of recognizing that dignity. Organizations whose people practice them gain the performance benefits the research describes, but the deeper reason is respect. Thank you.

References

Andersson, L. M., & Pearson, C. M. (1999). Tit for tat? The spiraling effect of incivility in the workplace. Academy of Management Review, 24(3), 452-471. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1999.2202131

Byron, K. (2008). Carrying too heavy a load? The communication and miscommunication of emotion by email. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 309-327. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193163

Cortina, L. M., Magley, V. J., Williams, J. H., & Langhout, R. D. (2001). Incivility in the workplace: Incidence and impact. Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, 6(1), 64-80. https://doi.org/10.1037/1076-8998.6.1.64

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Hosmer, L. T. (2011). The ethics of management: A multidisciplinary approach (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill/Irwin.

Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z.-W. (2005). Egocentrism over e-mail: Can we communicate as well as we think? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 89(6), 925-936. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.89.6.925

Porath, C. L., & Erez, A. (2007). Does rudeness really matter? The effects of rudeness on task performance and helpfulness. Academy of Management Journal, 50(5), 1181-1197. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.20159919

Stewart, G. L., Dustin, S. L., Barrick, M. R., & Darnold, T. C. (2008). Exploring the handshake in employment interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(5), 1139-1146. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.93.5.1139

Willis, J., & Todorov, A. (2006). First impressions: Making up your mind after a 100-ms exposure to a face. Psychological Science, 17(7), 592-598. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01750.x