Non-Profit to ‘Ugly Americans’: Slow Down, Shut Up and Learn How to Listen

Business for Diplomatic Action, a U.S.-based non-profit funded by American companies and working in concert with the U.S. State Department, plans to issue a guide for American business travelers featuring 16 etiquette tips to improve America’s reputation abroad. According to the organization, people around the world resent the U.S. because of its foreign policy, globalization, the pervasiveness of American culture and the “perceived” personality of its citizens. “Research from 130 countries confirms that Americans are broadly perceived by others as arrogant, ignorant, lacking in humility, loud and unwilling to listen,” the group’s Web site reports.

The “World Citizens Guide” will be given to American business travelers, and according to an amusing story in the Sunday Telegraph, the organization has met with State Department officials to discuss distributing the guide with all U.S. passports.

Here’s how the British newspaper leads off its article:

Loud and brash, in gawdy garb and baseball caps, more than three million of them flock to our shores every year. Shuffling between tourist sites or preparing to negotiate a business deal, they bemoan the failings of the world outside the United States.

The reputation of the “Ugly American” abroad is not, however, just some cruel stereotype, but - according to the American government itself - worryingly accurate. Now, the State Department in Washington has joined forces with American industry to plan an image make-over by issuing guides for Americans travelling overseas on how to behave.

The guide features a range of tips, among them: listen as much as you talk; avoid lecturing others; find topics of conversation of interest to locals; and slow down.

No sign of the guide anywhere online yet.

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