[Kuncher]

Article in today's Wall Street Journal that says Lexus created a body of reihou for all their car-sales personnel to follow. The reihou was engineered by a school of reihou, the Ogasawara Ryu Reihou, specifically for the Lexus sales experience.

It appears the story is only available to subscribers online and I'm looking at the print version. Read it if you get a chance. Under the Lexus ryu reihou sales people:

-lean five to ten degrees forward when a customer is looking at a car, in the "warrior's position"

-serve coffee or tea kneeling on the floor in seiza

-bow more deeply to a customer who has bought a car than one whi is shopping

-wear "the Lexus face," a closed-mouht smile

-stand with left hand over right, "fingers together and thumbs interlocked, as the samurais [sic] did to show they were not about to draw swords.'

^Anyone heard of that one?

[Speareerfug]

Ogasawara-ryu:

http://www.ogasawararyu-reihou.com/english/index.html

[WaydayFep]

Thanks for this,

I will pass this to my wife who works for Toyota-Lexus here in the UK.

[Gudronich]

That Ogasawara-ryu site is very interesting! Apparently they do a lot of business training.

[BonjGopu]

I think this is not completely uncommon.

I heard that the younger generations in Japan are not as interested in these customs and therefore the use of traditional manners is fading. A number of companies have started etiquette programs for the younger employees

Everything has to be put into context thou', elsewhere in the world many companies have guidelines for conducting business too.

Some stuff may sound silly outside the company like 'be the brand', my personal favourite is 'Data quality rock star' (well, this one sounded silly even inside the company), I certainly have a number of complimentary t-shirts from past jobs to prove it. Personally I think the have no place use than gardening, fence painting or shoe cleaning.

[UriyVlasov]

You know, I was just talking about this with some coworkers and I think business etiquette training, whether Japanese, European/transatlantic or some hybrid, would be very cool.

[Agedprepdoock]

My current employer runs courses on multicultural interaction (is a global firm), to ease the pains of working in globally distributed teams, they are quite useful in that respect, and fairly interesting too.

[italertb]

The Ogawasara-ryu web site stresses thinking of others in your actions, reflecting how you dress, how you talk on the phone, the giving of business cards. If I put such thoughtfulness into my work day, I wonder what the affect would be!