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Social Etiquette
I recently spoke at the Washington Society of Association Executives conference. After my presentation on making meetings more effective, I attended a presentation on kindness by Donna Cameron, author of “A Year of Living Kindly.” She shared some impressive statistics about the return on investment kindness has on an organization.
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My husband and I visited family in Philadelphia and one of the places we explored was Reading Terminal. It’s a pretty famous tourist attraction with a variety of food and mercantile vendors. When we were looking at some of the goods we noticed many of the vendors had signs that said “No photos.” We thought…
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When I worked for Washington Mutual many years ago, there were a few weeks where I was working on several big, deadline-driven projects and I was pretty stressed. The days ticked by while I toiled away on the assignments. One day a coworker who sat next to me asked if I was okay. Turns out…
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This is a guest post by Eric Mamroth, husband to Arden Clise and regular umbrella user. Perhaps there is no better indicator of a changing Seattle than the proliferation of … umbrellas. Big ones, small ones, cheap ones or expensively fashionable, they are seemingly everywhere now. Clearly our Seattle City Council has left yet another…
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Well, I guess it’s official; the holidays are just around the corner. I received my first December holiday party invitation the day before Halloween. I don’t blame the sender; the holidays are getting busier and busier and if you have any hope of having people attend your soiree you need to send the invitation out…
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We’ve all heard the saying “You don’t know what you don’t know.” I’m reminded of this quote often when people share with me their etiquette annoyances or faux pas stories. So often a person’s misstep is simply due to not knowing that their behavior is inappropriate. Or they aren’t aware of the proper way to…
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There are so many ways we can communicate with people – email, text, social media, instant message, phone calls and mailed notes. It can be confusing knowing what medium to use for event invitations. Just recently a friend received a birthday party invitation via a group text message. She thought it was a little odd…
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It’s cap and gown time; that wonderful time when high school and college students graduate and move on to their next adventure. It’s an exciting time. But graduation can also be a bit of an etiquette minefield. I certainly made some mistakes with my own graduation and have made etiquette faux pas with other people’s…
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“Wait, let me finish . . . what I was trying to say is interrupting other people is rude.” When you interrupt someone it says to the person talking that what you have to say is more important than what they are sharing. It shows disregard for the person and what they are saying.
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The concept of etiquette and civility has been around for a very long time. I recently finished a novel called “Rules of Civility” that included mention of George Washington’s Rules of Civility & Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation. Apparently, at age 16, young George (yes, eventual first president of the United States) copied by…
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