'A.M.' does not stand for 'ambush'

October 5, 2000
Web posted at: 6:00 p.m. EDT (2200 GMT)

With Ann Humphries, ETICON

(CNN) -- You bomb your way down 18 miles of Interstate to work ... you suffer the coarse insults of local morning idiot-radio because you're too sleepy to find NPR on the dial ... you stagger in from the company parking lot three blocks away ... you wait, panting, seven minutes to get an elevator to your floor ... the elevator stops at 16 floors before reaching yours ... you lurch 100 yards down a hallway to get to your desk.

Aiming for your chair, all you can think about is offloading the file folders you took with you last night -- that's two hours of homework now precariously close to breaking a toe when it falls to the floor.

SPRING THEM ON US
	Hit us with the burning issues of business etiquette that keep you lying awake at night. We'll fight the good fight for you and address them here in "corporate class." Is this full service, or what? Kindly click here.

You almost make it.

"Thank God you're here. Those people from Ad-Sales are an hour early. They're over there. Don't look, don't look, don't look. You looked. Well, smile, they're watching you."

"Payroll is on the phone, says it's important, something about you not getting paid for the next four months. Oh, and I forwarded 26 calls to your voice mail."

"Hey, we need to move up that meeting we were doing at 10 -- we're starting as soon as you get into the conference room, OK?"

Oh, and of course: "You've got mail."

You've been ambushed. By your own people. Friendly fire. This is the dreaded dawn's-early-light attack of the eager co-workers. Employees tackle their bosses. Bosses take down their underlings. Everybody's miserable.

What you need -- what everybody needs -- is a few minutes to just get there, sit down, pull yourself together, remember your name, check your calendar, take a breath. But how do you get it in a work force accustomed to launching guerrilla strikes against anyone who's just getting to work?

CNN: As soon as we got hold of ETICON founder and president Ann Humphries, we pounced on her with the question: What do you do about the traditional morning ambush?

Ann Humphries: It's a common problem. And I learned while I was studying architecture that it's really a question of transitioning. In designing buildings, you create spaces for transitions. If going from one space to another is too abrupt, it doesn't work. It's the same in your workday.

If you give folks a chance to breathe just a little bit, then everything is in sync and in rhythm. Helps you get peak performance.

QUICK VOTE
	How do you handle it when you're the target of the morning ambush? I ignore the people ambushing me. I go deaf. I try to handle it patiently. Maybe too patiently. I say, "Hey. I just got here. Give me a minute." It works! View Results

The way to do that is what I call opening the humanity side before the business side: Start the day with a greeting. That doesn't mean going up three floors to see a boss, but just saying something nice when you first meet during the day. "Heard something nice about you." It almost has a confidential tone to it, it's not a forced smile.

In this age of marketing customization -- when we can buy a Barbie doll the way we want, vitamins however we want, even have genes scanned for what we want, this is customization. A personal greeting.

If the ambush is habitual, then it's time to have a word of prayer with some folks. Just say, "Let me let you in on a little secret. It's not slowing down the work to say 'Good morning' before jumping on everybody about work, it's tuning up the car."

We can document this in our national surveys. The friendly, quick greeting is an extremely effective way to conduct business. (In 1999, ETICON made a survey of 1,281 business professionals on rudeness and what it can cost in the marketplace. Of those responding, 60 percent said a "friendly, quick greeting" was the single behavior most admired, appreciated and respected at work.)

And you know where we often forget this is important? At the start of a meeting. Welcome everybody. Tell them how glad you are they're there. Reinvest in your equity, right at the top. Don't jump them with the business of the meeting. First let them know they're recognized.

You won't just have a better morning, you'll have a better day.

Ann Humphries, founder and president of ETICON, Inc. and a Certified Professional Consultant to Management, includes several Fortune 500 companies among her clients. She's been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune and Money, and on CNN, CBS and Lifetime TV. You can contact her at www.eticon.com.

ETICON, Inc.

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