Courtesy

Courtesy the property describes to try (essentially successful and mostly in small everyday matters) about to meet other people, to meet their needs and their interests to act responsive, without that they have explicitly expressed a human. So courtesy requires empathy and is therefore not only associated with good manners as a given set of rules such as the currently prevailing etiquette .

Courtesy is often expressed in the fact that someone does small favors to his fellow human beings in everyday life, for example holding the door for someone, bringing someone useful little things without being asked for shopping or other walks, doing work at the workplace in such a way that the colleague can do his part of the processing easier and Something like that.

Use of terms

In the German language more common than the noun courtesy is courteous, which is also the participle of the verb vorvorkommen. As an adjective, participle attribute and adverb it has the same context of meaning as the noun. The verb vorvorkommen in other forms than the participle I with adjectival use, on the other hand, does not have the friendly-empathic content in its main meaning and rather describes a competitive situation: an opportunity that only presents itself to someone who has acted or arrived earlier. The verb vorvorkommen is used with the dative object. The present participle of the verb zuvorkommen, zuvorkommend, is used in participle clauses in conjunction with the dative object of a person or an event to mean the competitive situation, e.g. B. "anticipating the danger".

Others

Like (technical) competence , reliability and flexibility , courtesy is also a value judgment criterion in employee appraisals .

Freiherr von Knigge writes that absent-minded people should be looked after for a lack of courtesy:

"Incidentally, very absent-minded people do not have to be given credit if they are sometimes unintentionally lacking in the attention and politeness or generally in the politeness and courtesy that social interaction demands."

- Adolph Freiherr von Knigge : About dealing with people

literature

• Manfred Bruhn : Quality management for services: manual for a successful quality management. Basics - Concepts - Methods , Verlag Springer Gabler, 9th edition (2013); ISBN 978-3642339912 ; P. 142

Web links

• Wirtschaftspsychologie-aktuell.de with a report on experiments on the subject of courtesy
• Courtesy in the dictionary

Wiktionary: courteous  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Karl-Ernst Sommerfeldt, Herbert Schreiber: Dictionary on valence and distribution of nouns, Walter de Gruyter, 1983, p. 430 [1]
2. ↑ Joseph Herbet, Max von Sauer: Follow me !: a prayer and contemplation book, containing the complete text of the Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis with contemplations and an addition of prayers for the morning and afternoon devotions: the appendix contains morning - and evening prayers, Rietsch, 1858, p. 443 [2]
3. ↑ ^{a b} courteous in Duden
4. ↑ ^{a b} to come in the Duden
5. ↑ ^{a b} Oddleif Leirbukt: Investigations on the "getting" passive in today's German, s. 145, Walter de Gruyter, 1997 [3]
6. ^ Tilly, Johann Tserclaes Graf von in: German biography
7. ^ Bruhn: Quality Management for Services 2013, p. 142
8. ^ Adolph Freiherr von Knigge: About dealing with people . Hahn, 1869, p. 95.