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Etiquette For Home and Office

These 10 rules instill civility everywhere.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   08/27/2009

Wouldn’t it be great if our partner were perfect? If he or she behaved according to plan and met our needs while eliminating annoying habits and getting more charming every year? I’m pinching myself now–back to reality after staring dreamily out of my office window.

Let’s be honest: Some of the behavior we exhibit at home would get us fired or sued at work. We understand that in business it’s necessary to measure our words and guard our actions–otherwise the wheels fall off. Why aren’t we willing to demonstrate similar restraint in our personal relationships? After all, business etiquette reflects our understanding that aggression, meanness, teasing, name-calling or sexual objectification are not OK.

Working as business partners has taught my husband Martin and me important lessons about how we temper behaviors at both home and work. While our intimate relationship enables us to be honest and direct at work, the few times we’ve stepped over the line and gotten angry with each other, we quickly saw how upsetting and damaging it was to our co-workers. We just don’t have the luxury of creating an emotional mess to clean up. Folks can’t work effectively or efficiently under that stress.

That office experience made me notice that the same thing was happening at home with our children when we lost our tempers. They were scared, stressed and confused. Do we disagree in front of the kids? You bet. But we follow the same rules we follow at work. We stay calm. We don’t shout. We listen carefully, and each allows the other to be heard. Then we start to negotiate. If it is a volatile situation, we take it offline, away from others.

I’m no Moses, but being the polite Southern girl that I am, I offer the following Golden Rules for Universally Good Behavior–at home or work.

Rule 1: Do what you say you will do. Most of us know that if we agree to a request at work or make an agreement with a client, we have to follow through. Why is it so easy (be honest) to make a promise to your partner and then let it slide? We’ve all felt the injustice, the erosion of trust and the frustration engendered when we break this golden rule. We need to treat our partners with equal respect.

Rule 2: Be on time. Sounds simple. Why don’t more people follow this one? In the working world, those who are repeatedly late earn the scorn, mistrust and disrespect of their co-workers, clients and vendors. Being on time confers respect. It says quite clearly, “You are as important to me as I am.” Is your partner’s time as important to you as your own time?

Rule 3: No name-calling. Would you call your co-worker a stupid fool? Would you even say his idea was stupid? Don’t go there with your partner. What’s damaging at work is devastating at home.

Rule 4: No yelling, please. You know you aren’t supposed to yell at work. You aren’t supposed to yell at home, either. If you lose your temper and yell at co-workers, you’ll likely be spending some time in anger-management class . . . or on the street. It’s not effective at work because it’s not effective. Period.

A corollary: This extends to the kids, too. We don’t yell at our subordinates at the office; we don’t yell at our children, either.

Rule 5: Say “please” and “thank you.” This little courtesy makes for a pleasant atmosphere. Please begin a request with “please.” Please acknowledge others’ efforts with a “thank-you.” Thank you.

Rule 6: Absolutely no electronic fights, diatribes or one-way reprimands. Notice how easy it is to shoot off a nasty e-mail, text or phone message? Don’t go there. Ever. Please. We have a policy at our office that no content that is confrontational, negative or emotionally laden will be shared by e-mail. These are face-to-face conversations. And no one is to use all caps to express herself via e-mail. Digital communication is easily mistranslated, one-way, limited-context. Save electronic communication for facts, scheduling, keeping up. Not disagreeing.

Rule 7: If it’s important, set an appointment. Really. If Martin wants to have a deep conversation with me at 6 p.m. on Friday and all I can think about is a big glass of cabernet and five hours of Friends reruns, I just tell him we need to set an appointment. And we do. We typically come to these meetings (often on Sunday afternoon) with a much better attitude and an ability to really focus on that one important thing.

Rule 8: Respect a closed door. When we encounter closed doors at work, we know that a meeting, important phone call or just concentrated effort is happening on the other side. Do we barge in? Do we yell through it? No. We just knock. Teaching our children (and partner) to tap on a closed door at home can save so much embarrassment. It’s a sign that I respect your right to a little space. So rather than barge in on you enjoying an afternoon bubble bath, I’ll ask permission to enter your space. Nice.

Rule 9: Embrace “I’m sorry.” Funny, sometimes it’s actually easier to apologize to folks we’re closest to and beg off with every excuse at work. But acknowledging a mistake and apologizing for the results it caused is necessary to the long-term health of any relationship. Saying I’m sorry when we have caused someone to feel bad, whether we meant to or not, is the civil thing to do. It runs up all kinds of brownie points and deposits in the emotional bank account. “I’m sorry” acknowledges the damage, even when there was no ill intent.

Our policy at work is that when we make a mistake, we openly share it with the client, explain what went wrong and what we did about it, and how we will adjust our processes to avoid that mistake in the future. Try this at home.

Rule 10: The Golden Rule is always the best rule. Enough said. It works at work, and it works at home.

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Who’s the Boss in Your Family?

Match strengths and abilities to common household tasks, the same way you assign duties at work.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   07/20/2009

Most businesses create an organizational chart. They break the work down into areas of responsibility and define them further by required skill sets and accompanying tasks. Applicants are screened for their experience, training and aptitude before they are assigned to the jobs. Doing so makes the business run better.

But does this happen at home? Not often.

Answer these questions: Who’s the CEO in your family? And who’s the CFO?

Applying a bit of management discipline to your home life can open new possibilities. Consider the skills and aptitudes required by real life and match them to the unique abilities each of you brings to the relationship.

Take the CEO, for example. The primary role of the CEO at work is holding the vision and setting strategy, not “being the boss,” as is generally assumed. When I think about the role of home CEO, I ask myself, who in this family tends to carry the vision for the future and see the big picture? That would be me.

As CEO, I am responsible for planning the future. What does summer look like for the family as a whole and for each child? Where would we like to travel? Are we on track to complete that kitchen renovation? What goals must we reach in order to make the whole system, as well as each individual, better?

On the other hand, Martin is the best fit for CFO, so he manages all things financial. Does he get to decide what we purchase? No. That would be the purchasing agent–me. He’s responsible for creating the annual budget, paying the bills, determining the best plan for college or retirement savings, and monitoring those investments.

COO? Well, when it comes to operating the household, we break it up into inside (me) and outside (him). These choices aren’t about traditional roles. These are about what each of us does best. This became really clear when we had very young children. Martin can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, in an instant. If I am awakened in the night, I cannot go back to sleep. Guess who managed the bulk of the nighttime care duties in our house?

On top of that, I’m blessed (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) with a head of curls that would make Orphan Annie jealous. The only approach to hair care is to wash it and let it be. Our daughter, Claire, has beautiful, wavy black hair. It required more than mere maintenance; it called for artistry! Martin took on the role of coiffeur, mastering the French braid and other lovely updos. And because we both hate housework, we outsource.

What roles do you play in your family life? Are you doing that job because you have the right aptitude and skill, or are you doing it because “that’s how it was done in my family” or “it’s a woman’s job”?

Do you find yourself angry and annoyed at your partner each time you perform a certain task? Chances are you aren’t made for the job. If both of you hate it, pay someone else to do it, even if you have to tighten up elsewhere. Martin and I cut back on dinners out, double lattes and manicures in order to pay for some help in the home and kitchen. Now we have clean clothes, bathed dogs, food in the ‘fridge and a chance to take a nap on Saturday afternoons.

You might find that neither of you is great at keeping the checkbook balanced and the bills paid on time. These processes can be automated with a little investment in technology. That’s what happens at work, right? Making those little investments can pay off big when you raise your credit score and lower your blood pressure.

By the way, the two of you may not be the only “staffers” at home, so consider applying the discipline of delegation and job descriptions to your kids. My daughter was my personal assistant during high school. She paid for her car insurance by working it off 10 to 12 hours a week.

If outsourcing those irksome tasks or investing in household technology (Roomba, anyone?) saves you conflict and stress, you have managed your budget wisely.

Sometime soon over coffee or wine, work with your partner to identify all the jobs required to run the “business of life” for your family. Map these jobs into roles on your “org chart.” Then match family members to the positions and tasks that leverage their strengths and native abilities. At home–as in business–becoming more intentional about this process can foster a more peaceable kingdom.

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Marriage Glitches? Call a Meeting

The following 4 kinds of meetings work as well at home as at work.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   07/13/2010

A quick look at my Google Calendar this week makes my workday schedule startlingly clear. Well over half my available working hours will be spent in meetings: staff, management, client meetings–not to mention the meetings associated with my board leadership and other philanthropic activities.

With that much time devoted to meetings, it’s critical that they be productive. I’ve mentioned that our senior team spent a year working with an executive coach. Among the skills he taught was how to plan, produce and document a great meeting. Ever since we learned that great meetings don’t just happen, we spend a lot of energy and intention making sure our meetings start on time, end on time, have a published agenda, and participants who show up informed and prepared to work.

Effective business leadership requires meetings–and lots of them. Good meetings are a reflection of a good leader. I’ve also learned that good meetings are imperative to running a marriage. What sets a “meeting” apart from ordinary marital discourse are the intention and focus. It’s that extra emphasis on structure and discipline that creates a positive environment for listening and acting–rather than reacting.

As homework during our coaching experience, we read Patrick Lencioni’s accessible little business fable, Death by Meeting. In it, Lencioni explores the reasons most workplace meetings are such abject time-wasters. And he prescribes four types of meetings designed to address four specific types of objectives–formats I’ve found work just as well at home as at the office.

Lencioni argues that most meetings fail because they lack two key components: drama, and context or purpose. Drama is necessary to help participants grasp the relative importance of the subject matter. I’d have to say that in my experience there is no shortage of drama in most family or home meetings. At our house, if it’s important enough to call a meeting, it’s important. In fact, the simple act of calling a “meeting” tends to acknowledge the drama inherent in the situation–with no need to create any extra. But in marriage, creating context and purpose is really important.

Ever try to have a serious talk with your spouse about a situation in which you both deviate, discuss, disagree and digress to the conversation’s end, only to walk away with nothing decided? I think this happens quite frequently.

For instance: The sink is leaking in the kids’ bathroom upstairs. First, there is the conversation that raises the problem. “Hey, I went in the kids’ bathroom and water was just dribbling out of the faucet, even though it was tightly closed,” you say.

“Yeah,” he says, “I noticed that, too.”

“Why didn’t you say anything about that to me?”

“Mmmm . . . I was going to fix it last weekend, but I didn’t get around to it.”

End of first conversation. The second conversation goes like this. “Did you ever do anything about

the kids’ faucet?”

“Mmmm . . . no, that kind of slipped my mind.”

“I have to do everything myself around here. Nothing ever gets done. Jeez, it’s been a month since we talked about this.”

Familiar? Context and purpose in a conversation are really helpful. Such as, “I wanted you to know that the kids’ faucet is leaking and I would like you to take the lead in getting it fixed.” Hear the context (leaking faucet problem) and the purpose (wanting to negotiate for your spouse to take the lead in fixing it).

Lencioni offers a system of very purposeful meetings that help provide appropriate context for work meetings. They include the daily check-in, the weekly tactical, the monthly strategic and the quarterly off-site. These four meeting types make excellent structures at home.

At work, our firm uses a daily huddle to check in. We meet standing up at 8:30 a.m. sharp for no more than 15 minutes. We record daily “must-do’s” on a wall chart just like they use in ERs to triage patients. We get in and out of the meeting, and everybody leaves with clarity about the day’s objectives.

At home, Martin and I begin each morning over coffee with a daily check-in. It’s so vital to our home life that I don’t leave the house without doing the same check-in with each child. You’d be surprised what surfaces when you thought you knew everything about the day.

Next comes the weekly tactical. Martin and I have had various degrees of formality with this one, but because we both use Stephen Covey’s time-management and planning system, we both do our weekly planning on either Sunday evening or Monday. What has to happen this week for our home to function optimally? What calls must be made, what kids must be where, what workmen must be met? This weekly tactical allows us to be full partners to each other and keeps a lot of stuff from falling between the cracks. Sunday evening is a great time to conduct this meeting.

What you’ll find with these daily and weekly check-ins is that they lose their usefulness if you get into big-picture stuff such as “We need a better budget” or “What are we going to do about Junior’s refusal to potty train?”

For those bigger issues, Lencioni suggests a monthly strategic meeting. We do this at Thoma Thoma: Each month our senior team comes together specifically to monitor progress on product and service development, staff mentoring and coaching, budget monitoring and so forth.

Many couples make a commitment to a regular date. Perhaps once a month, part of your evening is devoted to bigger-picture strategizing. If you make a strategy without any tactical “touch bases,” you are pretty sure to wind up with nothing getting done. If you are all tactics with no time to think big, you’ll take the magic right out of your marriage and life. It can be mind-boggling to try to accommodate tactics and strategy in one meeting, so I really like the way Lencioni has taught us to break it down to weekly tactical meetings and monthly strategy meetings.

The quarterly off-site is a fairly typical meeting in the workplace, but it’s not practiced too often at home. Early in our marriage when Martin and I had small kids at home and very little time to ourselves, we actually got “off site” every three to four months. We went overnight to fun little resort towns near Little Rock or, occasionally, just to a downtown hotel.

Trips away are times to re-energize, renew connections and spark dreams. It’s when you’re out from under the daily distractions that big, bold, lifetime goals and dreams bubble up and enter the conversation.

This commitment to time away–off-site–did more for our marriage than almost anything else. After all, off-site strategic meetings are for reflecting on our mission, values and commitments. Perfect for marriage!

So there you have it: meeting formats to focus the content and purpose appropriately to the task. Martin and I have found the sense of shared purpose and co-creation engendered by our meetings to be a powerful force that continues drawing our lives together. And when you consider the number of recent high-profile divorces among couples who “just drifted apart,” continually turning toward each other in some great meetings is surely a good thing.

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Master the Art of Partner Negotiation

Strengthen your relationship by negotiating to a win-win deal every single time.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   06/14/2009

We approach our work relationships with the natural understanding that we’ll be assigning or receiving tasks, setting goals, giving/getting rewards and determining our future in business through the process of negotiation. But we often fail to realize the extent to which we need this skill at home with our partners or children.

I recently attended a workshop on effective business negotiations, offered by one of my clients. The seminar featured Deepak Molhotra, associate professor at the Harvard School of Business. My husband Martin and I participated in a role-play activity simulating a buy-sell negotiation for a piece of land to be developed. Our negotiation was quick, simple and straightforward. More than 100 pairs of negotiators squared off in that class. When the speaker revealed the dollar range of all the different agreements, I laughed. At either end of the spectrum, the buyer or seller could have exclaimed, “I was robbed.” But neither Martin nor I had out-negotiated the other. There were no losers in the deal, only winners.

That may not be the best way to negotiate in business. Depending on the situation, you may decide to negotiate to a clear advantage. An article on the Mind Tools website makes a good point: “Where you do not expect to deal with people ever again and you do not need their goodwill, then it may be appropriate to play hardball.” But as Molhotra pointed out, the process of negotiation is every bit as important as the outcome, because it’s how you feel at the end that will determine whether you have a future opportunity with that partner.

When it comes to negotiating with your life partner, I’d wager that you’ll be dealing with each other again, so why not determine that every negotiation should produce only winners and strengthen the relationship? Sadly, a lot of folks just want to play hardball at home. It’s rooted in the classic power struggle that comes from learning to share a life together. Couples get so caught up in claiming their space on the lifeboat that they are willing to win at each other’s expense. Only problem is, that parting shot just put a hole in the lifeboat they’re sharing.

Consider the principle of “win-win or no deal,” articulated by Stephen Covey in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. According to Covey, the first thing negotiators should do is seek to understand. For example, if your partner is likely to approach the coming duck season with, “I’m going hunting next weekend,” try to get beyond the facts to his real desires. Does he want that exact weekend or every weekend? Or does he want to guarantee that he’ll have the chance to spend some quality time with his buddies in the duck blind?

Now you can negotiate to a mutually agreeable outcome. “I want you to have some time at the club as well, but next weekend is that dance recital for Mary and I feel that you should be there in support of our children. Let’s look at the calendar and find the weekends that are good for everyone.”

It is from the basis of understanding that you can move through the components of a successful win-win agreement:

• Desired results: not the method, but the desired outcomes and goals, the “I want

to do this because . . .”

• Guidelines: the parameters we are willing to operate within. You might be willing

to give him as many as three weekends away during duck hunting season, but not

every weekend.

• Resources to help accomplish the goal. You might negotiate to invest in extra

child care during the weekends he is hunting.

• Accountability: What are our standards? You promise not to cop an attitude

as the weekend of hunting approaches. He promises to make sure his obligations to

the family are met before leaving town each Friday.

• Consequences: He recognizes that you are due some girls’ weekends after hunting

season. You recognize that this may be tough, but you made a fair negotiation.

Be honest: Have you worked out a plan with your partner that reached this level of communication? So often, we don’t get into the detail necessary to feel good about the solutions we come to in our personal relationships. What’s needed is just this level of clarity.

Over the course of our business relationship, Martin and I have had to negotiate many things, from the correct marketing strategy for a client to our annual budget allocations. We’ve found that we do best when we:

• Are extremely clear (as in, “I do not agree with your proposed plan. We need to

negotiate”).

• Set aside a specific time to negotiate.

• Are clear about our parameters. We will absolutely not settle the deal without a true

negotiated outcome.

Covey calls this approach “win-win or no deal.” Neither of us moves forward with any plan until we have agreed on that plan.

Is there tension? You bet! Are we passionate about our positions? Yeah! But we’re in the same boat, remember? It does one of us no good to win at the other’s expense. So negotiate to a win-win, remembering that the alternative is no deal. You’ll walk away the winner–and so will your partner.

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In This Together, For Better or Worse

Good business practices translate well to marriage–in itself a decidedly risky business.

By: Melissa Thoma   |   05/11/2009

We were the typical starry-eyed lovers: young (our parents would say too young), full of potential, open to any possibility–with the super-charged hormones of 19-year-olds. We had aced the school thing and were ready to leave our mark on the real world. And we had each other. Nothing could stop us. Right?

After 25 years of marriage, we look back and have to laugh. Real life has not only shaped us at times but has slapped us around a bit, too. Learning to live together, learning to work together, learning to parent and to manage together through poverty and wealth has been much more like a roller-coaster ride than the glorious ascent to fame, fortune and romantic rapture that we envisioned when we embarked on our shared life.

What my husband Martin and I have after 25 years is a partnership: solid, secure, rewarding. Six years into marriage we went into business together, creating a marketing firm with $700 and a first-generation Mac, using our back bedroom as an office. We discovered something in the process: Our best business practices have turned out to be some of the best practices for our marriage.

What about your joint venture? You’ve pledged your life to your partner in the name of love and passion. You may have set a wedding date, decided to move in together or are about to celebrate an anniversary. Let me ask you a few key questions: Would you sign the paperwork on a new business partnership without first creating a business plan? Would you put out the “Open” sign without setting up a budget or clearly defining job responsibilities?

How long do you think your business would last if one of you dreamed of becoming the next Sam Walton, and the other wanted to create an exclusive boutique?

You’ve committed your life to your significant other, but have you created a life plan together? Martin and I have observed that most couples don’t stop the business of life long enough to plan that business. And that’s a real shame, because while new businesses fail at a surprising rate, new marriages fail at an even higher one. Using our business plan as a model, Martin and I have been life planning for years, and we believe it has made a big difference.

Martin and I begin every planning consultation by posing the same question to clients: What does your business look like five years from now? We then push our clients to create a vivid picture of the future, detailing accomplishments, changes, dollars, even the physical environment and relationships. Sometimes, as we seek honest assessments, the picture doesn’t seem too rosy. “If we don’t make a change, we won’t be here in five years,” some clients say.

We find this exercise very enlightening because the demands of running the business often prevent our clients from stepping back to define or refine their goals.

When was the last time you answered this question in your personal life? Have you sat down with your life partner and painted a detailed picture of your next five years together? Where will you live? Will one of you have a new job? Are there kids in the picture? If you maintain the present course, will you be happy five years from now? Begin with this conversation.

This column will work through the business of planning and managing your life using the same tools most businesses use to operate successfully. We’re talking about everything from budgets to organizational charts. Engaging in a meaningful conversation of these issues can create clarity and an environment for productive negotiation, something every relationship can use.

Each morning when I come into work, I get my coffee, switch on my computer and seat myself right beside my husband, who is sitting not 5 feet from my terminal. I’m reminded again: We are in this together . . . for better or worse. You are, too. And you can partner for a Fortune 500 success or a Chapter 11 reality check. Putting a little business into your relationship might be the difference.