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Appropriate? An Indescribable Term
By Susan RoAne, The Mingling Maven®
What a great word…. Appropriate. I used to tell my students that I expected them to behave appropriately, use appropriate language and treat others in an appropriate fashion. Now, all of a sudden, no one knows what that means. Funny, the rough, tough ‘show me ‘ sixth and seventh graders figured it out with a little help from their teacher tyrant.
Nowadays most people don’t have a clue what appropriate means. Manners/etiquette and demeanor get a D minus and far too many people also have NO clue on how to appropriately dress for an occasion be it a church function, an office party, an opera, a wedding…. etc. IF you doubt me, go to your local theater arts event, observe people attending a religious service or funeral. Sunday go to meetin’ clothes have a purpose.
This cannot be that hard. Not for people who can design firewalls, write code, speak intelligently, use spreadsheets, quote the law, put out fires, teach science, sell products and services and generally are educated and are self- sufficient ‘multi-taskers’. As long as one of the tasks does not involve or require APPROPRIATE behaviors or responses.
IF my recalcitrant students could figure out what appropriate meant (considerate, thoughtful, respectful)… why can’t today’s workforce get it? It is so easy to know. There are numerous books on etiquette, manners, skills for success, how to improve communication and the timeless How To Win Friends and Influence People. And there are many websites to help those in need of tweaking their behaviors and deeds in the direction of appropriate. What there is not is an excuse good enough to make INAppropriate behavior acceptable.
Can we lay the blame at the feet of the pyre of the dotcoms? NO. Lack of awareness has been an ongoing concern.
Here is the rule of thumb to determine what is appropriate: Ask yourself: IS this what your favorite Grandparent would condone, support, expect--- be proud of???
Is that how you would act or what you would say around him or her?
In my teacher past I had a mentor (“FRED”). Once I began on this path… author and professional speaker.. he began to make odd, stinging hurtful comments. At first, I thought, “How could he say or do that… I would never do that to him nor would I be able to even think up such antics.” Slowly I realized (and ultimately wrote in a chapter on Mentors and trauma) that “do unto others” would not apply to those who ultimately do not care enough about other people to regard their manner of interaction as important. “Treat me the way you want to be treated” has no relevance to “Fred” and his ilk.
Getting our arms around appropriate behavior to define it is tough. Much like the word “ethical” the meaning is often determined by individual interpretation. One person’s ethics is another person’s idea of sleazy and abhorrent behavior. Lying is also one of those ambiguous terms. I use to think of myself as an honest person.
Oh sure, if someone made a dinner that I did not like… I may have said it was good. If a friend spent a mortgage payment on an outfit, and enthusiastically showed me… I did not tell the truth and say that it looked frumpy or glitzy.
Then the ultimate test of truth came when I had to renew my license. Yes, it was time to say what I weighed. Tell the truth? Not a chance in hell. IF you look at my license… you may note I have not weighed THAT amount in 10 years! Yet, I still think of myself as honest.
On the other hand there are the people who pride themselves on being upfront, frank and ‘tell it like it is’ folk. They waste NO time trying to be tactful. Being around them for any length of time requires mental and emotional armor. They are tiresome and tedious. Lana Teplick…longtime best friend --has said for years that those who pride themselves on being brutally honest use honesty as a guise for brutality. Ain’t it the truth! Some of our honesty should be kept to ourselves. And that is appropriate behavior.
The murky and sticky situations where we do not know what to do have kept Ann and sister Abby giving advice for decades. Miss Manners has a syndicated column and several best selling books to help us be appropriate.
Corporate America invests millions of dollars so that their employees will know how to appropriately behave: on the phone, in the office, with customers--- even the irate ones, how to host a meal, how to attend an event, and pays experts-- including yours truly-- to share those do’s and don’ts. Corporate America even pays to teach high- level employees how to write a letter, have a conversation and how to dress…. appropriately.
Appropriate… like charm, class, ethics, truth…. is seemingly ambiguous, hard to get our arms around- to define. We just know when it is present and more easily know when it is missing in others. Not sure… ASK JEEVES or The Mingling Maven. That would be an appropriate thing to do.
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