Etiquette Helps Students Develop Needed Skills

Plano Star Courier Volume 117, NO. 145

Daniela Cuellar
Staff Writer

Jerri Robertson, owner and founder of *JGR Group, LLC, a personal and professional development company based in Plano, is helping bring back a fast disappearing art. An art that is the one thing that helps governments and nations keep from destroying our planet. It helps keep alive businesses, families, and personal relationships. What is this mysterious and amazing art? It is the art of protocol and good manners, otherwise known as etiquette. Robertson, a poised, statuesque, beauty, a former local pageant winner and former professional model, has been applying her life experiences, talents, and grace to teaching others these important life skills.

After a successful modeling career, and accomplished work history in Fortune 500 companies including IBM, American Airlines, and Pitney Bowes, Robertson found the requests for her modeling tips and her experience as a corporate trainer might allow her to venture out on her own to teach the skills on a regular basis. She saw a need in the modeling industry to help build skills that can be used in everyday situations and could be helpful to anyone in any walk of life. She determined her desire to “empower people through life lessons,” would allow her to “not just teach, but to change people’s lives.”

She does it by equipping them with the behavioral skills that could help them develop greater self-confidence and aid them in achieving higher levels of success both personally and professionally. She has dedicated herself to work as an etiquette consultant for eight years and has been able to help corporate clients, children, and youth develop essential team building skills, as well as behaviors and aptitudes that have helped countless others attain increased personal and professional success.

Robertson has been able to ensconce her classes on proper dining skills, attitude, confidence building, communication, interaction skills in social settings, and more in a studio providing for more conducive setting to teach skills and provide necessary tools and ambience to get the lessons across. She has classrooms allowing for instruction in proper table manners and table settings, poise, and other skills. Parents sign up their children to attend these classes for a variety of reasons. One parent’s response for enrolling her child was “to help my son learn to be more confident in social settings.”

“I wanted him to see and understand it was not discipline, rather reinforcement. I wanted to give him a chance to obtain the training from an outside source so he could see it wasn’t just at home that we were insisting on it being important for him to learn,” she said. Several other parents agreed. It was an opportunity for their children to learn from peers and see other children also developing similar abilities. “Kids can learn from their peers and see they are not singled out, that learning good manners can be fun.”
Most of the kids did say they had not been too eager to attend the class but did find they had enjoyed what they learned by the end of the session.

“Sometimes our society forgets about etiquette,” one mother said. “Our society seems to be getting more and more rude, very lax in the way we behave, speak and dress. That might be all right sometimes, but when they get older, out in the working world… I want to give my child an edge.” Another parent said “love and logic is great, and seem to be the focus in the schools, but sometimes there needs to be more. Discipline needs to be returned and added back in as part of the equation, and these classes help a child self correct and see their behavior does matter, their manners do matter, and do make an impression.”

As Robertson has found from the increase in her corporate classes, more and more people are taking note of the social skills and behavior of others. More business is being conducted over lunches and dinners providing business people the chance to observe other’s manners, behaviors, and attitudes and employing that information to determine whether they will want to do business with the individual or not based on this information. Rude is no longer acceptable. Corporate America is recognizing being nice can get a person farther in life, and part of that is having the appropriate social skills.

Many families are finding equipping their children is not just for girls. Young men are equally in need of these skills, if not more so. The absence of male role models has left a void in many young boys’ lives a woman cannot fill. How to tie their ties, how to shave, how to talk to girls. The increased incidence in dating-related violence or inappropriate behaviors is linked to this lack of knowledge of acceptable social skills. When young men learn what to do in social settings they are more apt to develop confidence and self-esteem. Robertson has designed a program she calls Backpack to Briefcase, which allows male instructors to help fathers and sons to develop a greater bond through classes that teach them to work together to develop basic male skills as well as male related social behaviors.

Robertson adds she also offers opportunities for women of all ages to gather in her studio for a variety of get-together’s. She offers tea parties and “Diva” parties- an opportunity to play “dress up” for both moms and daughters, and grandmas, too. She has bachelorette and bridal party etiquette parties and classes in development as well.

*JGR Group, located at 2301 Ohio Dr., Suite 150 in Plano. For information on any of the courses or other events contact Jerri Robertson at 972-624-1436 or check out the website at www.JGRGroup.com.

Daniela Cuellar
Staff Writer ©Plano Star Courier 2006

*JGR Group, LLC formerly named Building Images Studios updated 2008