Basics of Business Etiquette

Series Summary

The modern business world is a funny place. A suit and tie can make a man look respectable, neat, and confident; and a woman in a pantsuit comes across likewise. But underneath the finery is a highly competitive collection of industries run not by professionals, but by capitalists. You work at a publishing house, publishing books. You are a publisher. The owner of the company, the person in charge of all the publishers, however, is himself not a publisher at all. He is a capitalist. Shipping delays, paper quality, editor communication—they are only secondary concerns of his. Your job is to publish books; his job is to make money. The distinction can be tricky: you both work for a living, you both try to make as much money as possible, you both strive for bonuses and care about how the company performs. But you get paid for the time you spend publishing. He gets paid for making money. In the world of business, at least these two tiers exist.

Find out how to follow business etiquette in this free video series with professional communicator Tracy Goodwin. Tracy will show you how to dress for success, including what styles of dress might be appropriate to your profession and how to incorporate personal style into business casual. Tracy teaches about business meals as well, when to talk business and how to maintain professionalism. Covering introductions, Tracy gives you the invaluable order of who introduces whom to whom. Your business manners could use a refresher course in etiquette and protocol, and Tracy does a great job at it.

Video Transcript

"Hi there, I am Tracy Goodwin and I'm the red sweater lady and today we're going to talk about business etiquette. And what I mean by business etiquette is, there are some definite dos and don'ts in the business world and these cover all different kinds of categories, things that maybe you never even thought about, or maybe you have thought about because everybody around you is not following proper business etiquette. We're going to talk about lots of things like dress, clothing, appearance, interactions with other people at work, introductions, introducing people. We're even going to talk about the formalities of dining, dining out, business luncheons, business dinners and, of course, I can't not talk about business etiquette and not talk about proper cell phone use, that's a real big one today. And we're even going to talk a little bit about culture and how that affects business etiquette, we're going to, we've got to be aware of that as well. So, the first thing we're going to talk about is appearance, so let's get started."