How to be Polite even if Others are not

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SUMMARY

 Online trolls get away with rude posts when they hide their identities. But when identified professionals wish death or harm on others, it can get alarming. And all uncivil behavior can agitate anger that can spiral into an uncontrollable tit-for-tat rude exchange. 

Why be polite even if others are not?

1. Politeness gives you an edge in your career.

2. Polite persons implicate their families in their good reputation. 

3. Polite persons have room for adaptability. They have known the sacrifices entailed by being polite.

How do you become polite even if others are not?

1. Lower your expectations about people. Education does not make a person polite. The respect for other people does.

2. Learn to listen. If customers display rude behavior, listen as they might be really pointing out something that can be improved by your organization.

3. Be extra nice online. Review your content before hitting POST or SEND.

4. Be attentive to polite role models. Etiquette books can help and living examples of polite behavior can help even better.

5. Know that it is other people who grants authority on communications coming from you. That's the limit to faking politeness. 

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

TRANSCRIPT

Recently I read in Facebook and Twitter some very rude posts where people use abusive language wish death or harm on others, not just on another person but on an entire group or community.
At first my conclusion was they could be boorish because they are safely hiding behind anonymous profiles.

But then I saw similar posts of identified professionals like a pilot, a dentist and a former high ranking official of a state university, and I got alarmed.

There must be some expectations of good behavior of professionals for them to be trusted by clients using their services, or the professional communities whose name and reputation they carry with their practice.

In response to these rude comments I saw, as expected a number of people have been provoked and have answered with rudeness. Perhaps meeting the aims of the originators of rude posts in agitating anger. So the tit-for-tat behavior has spiraled, many times uncontrollably.

Rudeness is not new,  but because company presidents and national leaders have taken them to higher levels of formal power and they have followers or supporters, it can seem that rudeness is getting to be more accepted. For instance, Donald Trump is infamous for his offensive tweets. Outgoing Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has also gained international notoriety for cursing Barack Obama, Pope Francis, etc.

The good news is that, for all the influence that these leaders have wielded, still there are many people who believe that it is wrong to be rude, there are negative consequences to uncivil behavior, and it still pays to be civil and polite.

The question is how comfortable or how tolerant are people as regards rude behavior. Is it well-accepted? Can people still distinguish what is right and wrong behavior?  

A Korn-Ferry survey of 690 professionals back in November 2021 showed that 83% try to avoid colleagues who they believe are rude and 75% have considered quitting due to uncivil co-worker or boss.

In January 2021, 77,000 people were asked whether they think the people in their state tend to be more rude or more polite than most Americans. The self-declared rudest state in America is Rhode Island, where 42% say they believe people in their state tend to be more rude than most Americans. I can only guess that tourism or other government revenues have been affected that reputation of rudeness.

So should we enroll in etiquette schools, should we relearn good manners? Should we be polite or civil? What’s the diff.

We won’t dissect the nuances of these two terms. Etiquette and good manners almost always go together as they signify socially accepted behavior, although etiquette can signify a set of rules like what cutlery to use when fish or pork is served at a formal dinner, or how to word a dinner invitation to an ambassador or a bishop, etc.

On the other hand, there is a more glaring difference between civility and politeness. Civility tends to be more generic and politeness is specific. Even the Cambridge dictionary notes a certain liking for politeness when it defines civility as politeness or polite remark, and politeness per se is behavior that is socially correct and shows understanding of and care for other people's feelings (Cambridge)

Civility is generally accepted behavior of being agreeable. Politeness goes specific in that you don’t do anything that may displease the others or in a more positive terms, you do or say whatever others like.

I clearly remember back when I was a postgraduate student in Spain, when we get to have louder music on a Friday night, we get a phone call advising us to lower the volume. I asked how they found it was our apartment, I was told the telephone directly will show your exact address and telephone number, so perhaps the rooftop where we have the lights and music gave us away, but then it gave me an idea what a civil neighborhood it was that people know what to do when others forget to follow the rules. Or there was another time that I was washing the dishes with another student and right across our kitchen window was a terrace where a lady was almost nude sunbathing so my friend did what was civil, respect the lady’s right to dress as she wanted and respect our own dislike for that view so we drew the curtains.

Another day we were viewing the sunset and doing some reflection hour when a family came put their stuff right across us blocking the view of the horizon and the woman in that family started undress by the beach so we just stood up to find another place, thinking we might have gone into a nudist part of the beach. Now that I thought of it, If we found out we were in the right space, then the polite behavior would be to charmingly inform the family that they are not in the place and to point to them the beach part where they could be nude as they please, because if not we would not have our own pleasant view of the sunset, if we leave our designated place.

Both civility and politeness are acquired through education, no one is born civil or polite. However, politeness is more refined civility.

Civility is performing social conventions that represent respect.  For example, someone with the formal power of a president can demand my civility like I should stand up in respect when he passes by, but politeness can demand more quality of attention rather than thinking of much better use of my time while standing straight in his presence.

In this regard, the word polite comes from the from Latin politus ‘polished, made smooth’.

Understandably, one can have fake or surface politeness around. For example, a leader that is generally not liked can be surrounded by a small polite entourage that would not dare disagree with him, and should always agree with him. So the leader is deprived of the true and honest feedback by his seemingly polite followers.

In this regard, what I mean by being polite is following socially and generally accepted behavior intrinsically motivated by respect for other persons but that does not mean accepting as true when other persons speak lies, or making them exemplary models of good behavior when they are not. You must have heard of polite thieves who has the usual greeting and apologies before coercing you to give them your money at gunpoint. Even thieves can be polite if they follow external rules of greetings, but their action is wrong. So we are not talking about that politeness that is for following social conventions only but that deeper surface politeness that involves respect for human dignity, that polite thieves should respect individual property

Why be polite even if the others are not

Having clarified what I really mean by politeness, I now proceed to specify 3 huge reasons why it is important to be polite even if others are not.

The first reason is that the habit of being polite will give you an edge in your career.

First impression lasts, and a person who comes into the door for a job interview, the way he conducts himself respecting the other people in the room regardless of whether they are fellow job applicants or company managers, will give away a certain edge in attitude. And when there are several rounds of interview, the polite persons are polite consistently. They never stop as they are mastered themselves to be polite, not master of tricks to pass a job interview. They don’t wear politeness as an accessory but it pretty much defines who they are.

The second reason why it is important to be polite even if others are not is the positive effect on the family or community you represent.

You implicate your family or community reputation to your politeness as much as the obnoxious persons implicate theirs. For example, an ill-mannered behavior can easily trigger a expressed or implicit question among the observers: is he really like that or did his parents bring him up without good manners. What school did he go to?.

Sometimes an entire nation can benefit from polite citizens like some people when they travel for the first time and they have options would search for the most polite countries in the world. You would not want to be a tourist in rude places, would you? So you might consider to go to Japan and test for yourself why it is regarded as the most polite nation on earth.

The third reason for being polite even if others are not is the strong habit it is formed in you that prepares you for both civil or incivil environments. Just think.  Someone who is rude like an online troll earning a lot of money sees that he does not need to be polite to get rich. So he has gotten into some habits of being rude and unbearable. He will be successful as long as Facebook and Twitter, or Tiktok would be there as the platform for trolling because those are the places he has flexed his muscles for bad behavior. But when circumstances change and he cannot make use of these platforms, he has limited environments to use his anti-social behavior. In other words, unless rude people realize the need to co-exist with others in harmony, they would not stop being rude. And even if the online platforms continue to exist but they just become stricter or they get zero tolerance for cyberbullying, then the rude persons would have difficulty to adjust. The polite persons have more room for adaptability. They have known the sacrifices entailed in being polite. They can be patient when bullied knowing that there is an end in suffering rude behavior, sooner or later, hopefully sooner than later. Even the social media platforms give options to block or report users. So those who cannot live without social media and craves for a sane and healthy environment have the option to see less of online rude behavior. It’s very much like having a clean-up of your room to remove the mites and mosquitos. You purge online trolls and prevent them from returning. You just search the ways using Google.

I personally am grateful to have experienced suffering rude behavior because I now know how I could help others deal with rudeness. But come to think of it, I have witnessed several and I could have been treated with less respect when I was living abroad but somehow it did not hurt much because I think this people who treated me badly has less travel exposures than what I fortunately experienced. In other words, I have a bigger arsenal for cross-cultural interactions. But then it was more painful when you experience rude behavior from persons you expected to behave better. 

How do you become polite even if others are not

The first and most important tip is lower your expectations about people. Neither education nor professional certification nor values formation training will magically transform people to be polite. Neither should you conclude that rude, uncivil persons have mental issues. Those expectations or assumptions might prevent you from listening which takes me to the next tip.

The second tip to be polite when others are not is to learn to listen. If the rude persons are customers, listen well because they might be really pointing out something that can be improved in your organization. So listen well, take notes mentally or in a physical note pad and when you are given the chance, restate their issues and respond with facts or apologies.

My third tip concerns your politeness in the online world. Be nicer online that you are offline we cannot perfectly gauge how what we write will affect the person reading it. Don’t fail to read it again. Don’t rely on being able to edit your post as you could post like a knee-jerk reaction, without thinking because if the other person is online, she would have read your initial message that is not nice. She would have been fast in creating a screenshot. And then some apps do not have a way to edit (like text messages).

My fourth tip is to be attentive to behaviors of polite role models. You need to develop your observation skills, in case reading etiquette books bore you and you retain little in terms of tips. In addition, using tips and strategies for politeness will not take you far in developing a good character. I have met people without school diploma or professional certifications but their high regard for other people motivates them to act well and speak well.

My fifth and last tip to be polite even if the others are not is to consider that it is other people who bestows on you moral authority such that they respect and follow you. If you are faking politeness they will be able to detect it. So my tip is to keep striving to be polite respecting the dignity of the people you are interacting with.

Don’t think that you can show disagreements to rude people by being rude with them as well. Go through the proper channels of feedback. Don’t lower yourself to the level of boorish behavior. Those in higher positions of power than you may only have extrinsic power and they can only demand external obedience. But they cannot wield power over spontaneous respect. Rude leaders can oblige or force obedience from their constituents only at the level of externalities. Perhaps they can also demand a certain show of sadness once they leave their formal post, or external show of joy once they assume a formal post but they that is all they can get. Perhaps internally some constituents can choose to ignore rude leaders, quit the environment, or pray and wait for the end of leadership. For the leaders are free to express themselves especially if they have formal power, and the followers have freedom of choice as to the degree of external or intrinsic obedience.

You yourself can influence that spontaneous respect from other people by being consistently polite among other good behavior. Show that you care, try to strike a conversation. Be friendly and positive.