Navigating your professional relationships with your coworkers can be complicated.
Did you accidentally say the wrong thing? Overstep a boundary?
The good news is that some of the easiest things you can do to build and sustain solid relationships at work are pretty intuitive, according to Daniel Post Senning and Lizzie Post, etiquette experts with the Emily Post Institute.
“It’s remarkable how durable the advice is when you get down to what our expectations are of each other on a very human level,” Post Senning told Business Insider.
Their book, “Emily Post’s Business Etiquette,” went on sale May 20. It includes a list of eight daily office courtesies you can do to build and maintain goodwill with your boss and peers.
Here’s the list from the book:
- Show up ready for the day or your shift.
- Acknowledge others and greet them with a smile.
- If you can, make eye contact when speaking with others (for video calls, turn on your camera and face the lens).
- Use the magic words in all your interactions, both verbal and digital. (The book lists as magic words: Please, thank you, you’re welcome, excuse me, I’m sorry)
- Use shared spaces appropriately, never leaving a mess or taking more than your share.
- Decline to participate in office gossip.
- Offer help to others or check in to see how their work is coming along.
- Say goodbye to colleagues on your way out the door for the day.
These are simple “‘gimme’ social interactions,” as Post Senning calls them.
“They cost you nothing, and done well, and repeatedly, they really forge important social bonds,” he previously told BI. “They build a sense of connection and trust that is going to carry you through tense meetings, critical feedback, miscommunications, things like that later on.”
At the end of the day, these small-but-mighty actions are about acknowledging each other, Post said.
“Acknowledgement is probably one of the most impactful daily practices that we can engage with in so many ways,” she told BI. “Whether it’s looking up and acknowledging your colleagues with a greeting or a goodbye, or it’s acknowledging the work that they do and the participation that you see happening around you that facilitates your own work getting done.”
“Emily Post’s Business Etiquette” Copyright © 2025 by The Emily Post Institute, Inc. Illustrations copyright © 2025 by Eight Hour Day. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
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