It turns out that there is a lively market for advice and training on the subtle arts of Diplomatic Protocol and Etiquette.

Why?

Because these days many organisations (including official international organisations among eg the UN family as well as NGOs and large corporations) send people on postings in far-flung parts of the world and expect them to act in a ‘representational’ way.

Fine. Indeed excellent. But what exactly does that mean? What skills are they wanting their people to deploy, and how? Do the HQs themselves in fact have a clue about representational work overseas?

Part of the problem here lies in the fact that old standards of formality have given way to a randomised casualness and informality, which may be fine for many purposes but can lead to serious mistakes – even by senior people who should know better.

All this reflects – at least in the British world – a steep decline in the very idea of ‘good manners’. They have come to be seen as something stuffy, redolent of upper-class snobbery and so on. Perish the thought that something so laden with redundant class values be actually taught in schools.

This of course is a disaster as it leaves children unprepared for subtle situations in adult life.

An example.

At the ICC Mediation Competition the other day the issue arose of ‘cultural sensitivity’.

The mediator introduces himself/herself to the parties to the dispute, who come from different parts of the world and so may have very different instincts about deference to seniority/authority/age/gender and so on.

In the UK/US mediation tradition it would be usual to suggest that people use first-name terms during the mediation, to encourage relaxed informality and so (perhaps) promote an atmosphere more conducive to compromise.

The point was made that that sort of thing may not be appropriate in such a culturally ‘diverse’ mediation, as one party may feel itself at a psychological disadvantage if asked to use first-name terms: the party might agree, not wishing to appear ‘stuffy’, but nonetheless then feel most uncomfortable using first-name terms when addressing eg older or seemingly more senior people.

The solution proposed was that the mediator would let the two sides choose for themselves – if one party wanted to use first-name terms but the other not, fine.

I don’t like this. Surely the party opting to use more formal styles of address is going to have a problem when it sees the other party and mediator using informal first-name language when talking to each other? The mediator’s credibility/neutrality is implicitly eroded, at least in part.

In my own view, the safe way to proceed if the mediator thinks that these issues could be in play is to default to the more formal level of address, at least to get things moving. That way no-one is offended or risks being offended. All feel equal and at ease. In short, good manners.

These questions are not straightforward and they go to the heart of overseas representational work: what sort of style and language work best to get results and avoid inadvertent blunders?

Diplomats in theory are meant to know about such nuances. As indeed some of them do. See my latest article for DIPLOMAT on the origins and pitfalls of Diplomatic Protocol:

Because the core forms of diplomacy still represent personal dealings between heads of state, issues of politeness and good manners take on a special significance.

As the Wikipedia entry on Diplomatic Protocol puts it: There is no upper limit to politeness. But there is an irreducible minimum below which bad manners become obvious’. The failure by one country to extend to another country’s representatives an appropriate level of good manners may well be taken as a sign of deliberate insult, or a least a level of carelessness which amounts to the same thing.

The history of diplomatic insults goes back a long way. The Bible records Ammonite leader Hanun being enraged by the envoys of King David, to the point of shaving off half of each man’s beard and cutting off their garments at the buttocks before sending them away. War followed.

Nowadays things often do not go that far. Instead we have more subtle ways of belittling senior envoys, such as giving them a disobliging chair. Last year Israel provoked a sharp diplomatic incident with Turkey, when Israeli TV showed pictures of the Turkish Ambassador being summoned to hear an official complaint while being deliberately seated on a low sofa as if to emphasise his ‘inferior’ position…

So it is not surprising that many organisations these days want the reassurance of training from real experts in this area – people who have ‘done’ protocol for years and know what works (and what doesn’t).

And mirabile dictu in the diplomatic skills training offered by the Ambassador Partnership as organised to their precise requirements, they have exactly what they are looking for.