Do Manners (in Business) Matter?

Reading Time: 11 minutes

Some people think manners are old-fashioned. They ask, “Who has time to be polite?” or “This is work — people get paid to do their jobs. Why should I waste energy on courtesy?”

These questions are honest. And they reveal the real tension in business today: efficiency versus principle and presence.

But if courtesy is treated as an optional add-on, you miss something important. While its very visible, courtesy isn’t just surface behavior. It’s a clear way to give people dignity, connection, and respect. In every culture and every workplace that I’ve experienced, It matters.

Why Courtesy isn’t Fluff

When I was growing up in Las Vegas, “please” and “thank you” were expected. They were table stakes, and not just at the dinner table. My dad showed respect to everyone regardless of title. It didn’t matter if he was talking with the bellhop or the president of the hotel, the janitor or the CEO. He held doors for others. He stood when someone came to the table.

I do these things today because they’re part of who I am, not because someone taught me a rule. It’s not about pretense or proper etiquette; it’s about making people feel like they matter. It’s not for show but because they DO matter.

Here’s one example: A leader’s executive assistant once said of me, “This is the only man who stands when I enter the room.” I didn’t set out to impress her. I just saw her and stood as a sign of respect. But her reaction showed the deeper impact of simple courtesy; people notice when you see them. They feel valued and like they matter.

Courtesy isn’t contrived. It starts with an intentional act of putting another person’s interest before your own — not as martyrdom, but as generosity. It’s a human response that becomes muscle memory through repeated practice. You can build it over time, starting today!

When Values become Visible

Most organizations talk about values. A common value is “Respect.” Courtesy is one way respect becomes visible. It’s where intention turns into behavior.

The Virtues Project describes this beautifully, so it’s worth grounding ourselves in their framing before we explore how courtesy shows up in leadership.

Virtues are the essence of who we are. They’re described in the world’s sacred traditions as the qualities of the Divine and the attributes of the human spirit. Virtues are the content of our character and the basis of genuine happiness.

The mission of The Virtues Project^TM is to inspire the practice of virtues in everyday life by helping people of all cultures to discover the transformative power of these universal gifts of character. The virtues are spiritual life-skills that help us to live our best lives. As a Bahá’í, I also work to acquire these divine qualities because I believe I’ll need them in the life to come.

Politeness at Work isn’t Optional; it’s Human

Courtesy doesn’t care about rank. Considering another person’s interest before your own is an act of service and a sign of respect. It’s a practical way to turn values that hang on the wall into virtue-driven action that walks down the hall.

The workplace is full of choices like this: Do you clean the dishes in the sink after bringing coffee back from a meeting? Or do you walk past them?

That simple act: the cleaning-up example I shared on LinkedIn reveals a lot about how we treat others and how people feel about the team culture we create. When someone takes care of shared space, it signals respect for others’ time and experience. That matters for morale and trust.

You can Be Clear and still Be Kind

Some leaders think that honesty means being blunt, even mean. But clarity doesn’t require abrasiveness. You can be candid about performance goals, deadlines, and tough decisions while still demonstrating courtesy.

Being direct doesn’t give you permission to be unkind. In fact, leaders who are clear and respectful build deeper trust and engagement precisely because people know what is expected and feel seen doing the work.

That’s not soft. That’s human.

There’s Real Evidence behind Respectful Leadership

Courtesy and respect aren’t just “nice.” Both align with outcomes organizations care about:

Leadership communication that conveys respect and recognizes individual contributions is linked to greater employee engagement and well-being, which benefits performance and morale. Read How leaders communicate with employees sets the tone for a respectful workplace culture.
Employees who feel respected and supported are more likely to feel included and offer their best work. Leaders who create climates where people feel safe and valued help teams collaborate and innovate more effectively. Additionally, psychological safety, which starts with respectful, empathetic interactions, is associated with better performance and reduced attrition. Read How Leaders Can Build Psychological Safety at Work.
Kind and respectful leadership correlates with higher engagement and productivity. For example, leaders showing empathy and care have been associated with measurable improvements in these areas. Read The power of kindness in leadership: a choice, not a weakness.
Research shows that leadership behaviors like treating employees with fairness, respect, and acknowledgment are predictors of talent retention, which is one of the biggest challenges organizations face today. Read War for talent.
When respect is missing, leaders often misinterpret intentions or overlook blind spots that unintentionally undermine inclusion and engagement. Read Human Capital Leadership Review.

William Hanson is one of the world’s leading etiquette coaches. He’s advised royalty, CEOs, and television personalities on how to communicate with clarity, confidence, and grace. But his mission goes far beyond fine dining or proper handshakes.

Hanson argues that etiquette isn’t outdated; it’s essential for business success today. Whether you’re striving to land a job, win over a client, or simply connect with others, good manners are your most underrated advantage. He sat down with Simon Sinek to share how etiquette builds trust and opens doors. Watch the full episode: The Business Case for Good Manners with etiquette coach William Hanson | A Bit of Optimism Podcast (~55 minutes).

In short, there’s a large body of evidence showing that respectful interactions correlate with better engagement, retention, innovation, and collaboration. These are outcomes leaders pay for and measure.

What Type of Ripples Do You want to Create?

Leaders do create ripples. Some are immediate. Others travel farther than we expect. Either way, behavior at work rarely stops at the office door.

Inconsideration, the Pebble that lands like a Rock

Employees don’t leave their day at the office. They carry it home in their bodies and their conversations. When someone spends eight hours (or more) feeling dismissed or disrespected, that emotional weight travels home with them. It shows up at the dinner table. It shows up in their tone, their patience, and their exhaustion.

Incivility doesn’t stay neatly contained at work. Research on work-stress spillover shows that strain follows people home, affecting well-being and family life. Over time, repeated exposure to discourtesy can lead to unhealthy coping patterns and strained relationships. What starts as “just work” gradually spreads into homes and reshapes family systems.

You’ve seen this pattern. A bad day at work turns into, “Let me tell you what happened today…” followed by the same frustrations, the same discourtesy, the same story replayed night after night.

Some people numb that stress with alcohol. Others take it out on the people they love most. When this cycle repeats for years, the cost compounds. Health suffers. Marriages strain. Kids feel it. A culture of discourtesy doesn’t stay at work. It travels.

Courtesy Creates a Ripple Too

That same ripple effect works in a positive direction. Courtesy results in waves of positive energy representing the widespread, expanding, and self-reinforcing benefits that flow from a simple act of kindness.

Imagine a different dinner-table conversation.

“Guess what I saw today. Our CEO helped the janitor clean up a mess in the kitchen. No cameras. No audience. Not a PR stunt. Just kindness.”

Or this one:

“I made it to your soccer game tonight because my boss stepped in to finish a project that was due. I didn’t ask her to. She just did it. Pretty cool, huh?”

Moments like these change people. They restore dignity, rebuild trust, and inspire loyalty. And they remind us that work doesn’t have to drain us. It can lift us.

What discourtesy carries home, courtesy can too, just with very different results.

Courtesy doesn’t just improve workplace culture. It shapes the stories families tell at home. It gives people more joy, more breathing room, and more of themselves back.

A courteous workplace doesn’t just create better employees. It creates better evenings, stronger families, and better lives.

The AI Elephant in the Room

AI (Artificial Intelligence) is everywhere now, and so is the debate about prompts. One camp says, “Be courteous.” The other says, “Be direct. Some people even swear that being rude gets better results.”

Early research says: tone can matter, but it’s not a universal rule.

Here’s what we know so far:

In one recent experiment at Cornell University, rude prompts slightly outperformed polite prompts on accuracy for a set of 50 multiple-choice questions tested across five tones (very polite → very rude) using ChatGPT-4o. The accuracy difference wasn’t massive, but it was consistent in that small test.
Other research suggests the relationship isn’t linear. In other words, “more polite” doesn’t automatically mean “better,” and “ruder” doesn’t guarantee better either. Results can vary by model, task, and language.

So yes, you may see people claim, “Rude works better.” Sometimes, in some tests, it has. But the more reliable pattern is this: clear instructions beat vibes. Tone becomes a secondary factor.

AI doesn’t have feelings, but you have habits

AI isn’t human. It doesn’t get offended. It doesn’t feel disrespected.

But you are still practicing a way of communicating every time you type. And we become what we do repeatedly.

Habit research shows repeated behaviors can become automatic over time.

That’s why I’m cautious about normalizing “barky” prompts all day long.

If you rehearse impatience and contempt 30 times a day with a machine, don’t be surprised if some of that sharpness shows up in your emails, your meetings, or your dinner-table conversations later.

Is there a cost to saying “please” and “thank you” to AI?

Yes, technically.

Extra words mean extra tokens. Extra tokens require more computer time. More computer time uses electricity and, in many data centers, water for cooling. Research summarized by MIT News and benchmarks published by Google Cloud show that even small increases in computer time can translate into real energy and water use when multiplied across millions of prompts.

The impact of one polite word is tiny. At scale, small things add up.

There’s also a clarity cost when politeness turns into fluff. When “please” and “thank you” come with a long preamble that blurs your ask, you’ll likely get worse results. Not because the model is annoyed or offended, but because your instructions are less precise.

So, when time is of the essence, being brief makes sense. Clarity comes first.

But brevity doesn’t involve being rude or mean. And courtesy doesn’t have to mean a lot of extra words.

My Take?

You can be clear, direct, and human at the same time.

If a little courtesy helps you stay grounded in the kind of leader and communicator you want to be, it’s worth a few extra tokens. If not, at least be mindful about the habits you’re forming.

Either way, don’t let a prompting habit train you into someone you don’t want to become. The way we speak, even to machines, has a way of shaping how we show up everywhere else.

5 Simple Ways Leaders build Courtesy into Habits

Courtesy is learned. It’s not a grand gesture or something manufactured to gain notoriety. It’s a practice that take time to cultivate until it becomes muscle memory and authentically part of who you are and how you move through the world: genuinely courteous.

What can You Do?

Here are five concrete actions leaders can begin practicing today, not as a chore, but as ordinary human behavior that signals respect:

Ask and listen. When someone speaks, ask follow-up questions instead of preparing your response while they talk. Let curiosity guide you.
Request with care. Make eye contact and say “please” and “thank you” with intent. Make requests, not demands.
Use names. Calling someone by name acknowledges them as a person, not a task or transaction.
See the unseen. Notice people who often go unacknowledged and give them genuine recognition.
Be tidy in shared spaces. Small actions (e.g., cleaning shared dishes and putting things back in their place after you’re finished with them) signal respect for others’ time and shared culture.

To be clear, these aren’t leadership hacks. They’re small, repeatable human actions that signal presence, regard, and generosity.

What’s cool is that you can practice them anywhere and with anyone: at work with leaders, partners or colleagues; at home with family and neighbors, at the grocery store with clerks, at the restaurant with servers.

Don’t take my word for it. Be courteous with others and see what kind of reaction you get. You’ll be amazed!

Parting Thoughts

We all know the gruff leader who enters the room abruptly, interrupts whatever is going on, barks orders, and leaves without so much as a “goodbye.”

We respect them because of their position or rank, but we don’t like them much. And, more importantly, we’re not moved to do more than we must to avoid their wrath.

When leaders choose courtesy, on the other hand, they’re influencing culture in a positive way. They signal that people matter as much as performance. Not more, not less. Leaders also show that clarity and accountability can be firm and kind at the same time.

Courtesy isn’t about being soft. It’s about being real. It’s about showing up for people in a way that creates a safe space and naturally invites their best selves to feel welcome and that they belong.

In an age obsessed with efficiency and a world where common courtesy is no longer common, the leaders who slow down long enough to show courtesy will stand apart. They’ll build teams that feel seen, workplaces where people want to stay, cultures where employees flourish, and relationships that endure the test of time.

Be clear. Be kind. Lead with Light. ✨