When your children are in their teens and twenties, you realize something important. All of those manners you tried to teach them can make the difference in how successful they are in their careers. Most parents don’t think about that as they proclaim “Keep your mouth closed when you chew” for the millionth time. Yet as someone who has participated in hiring decisions, how your children use their manners (or lack thereof) in the interview process can be the very thing which tips the hiring decision.
As a graduate of the “Miss Manners” generation, I was interested to read a “modern manners” book when offered the opportunity to review Modern Manners: Tools to Take You to the Top.
Imagine my surprise when the book arrived and I realized it was penned by Liv Tyler and her grandmother. Somehow the daughter of the Aerosmith rocker had become an expert in etiquette. My expectations for the book, admittedly unfairly, sank a bit.
Fortunately, Ms. Tyler’s grandmother did an excellent job training her granddaughter. The book was easy to understand and covered all of the basics. Etiquette books can become overwhelming from the sheer volume of information they feel the need to cover. The authors of this book did a great job in picking the most common situations and mistakes to cover and eliminating some of the more esoteric rules and situations.