Kiss-kiss

The Global Art Of the Cheek Kiss

Shake hands? Kiss? Or kiss-kiss-kiss?

This is the quandary for Frank Higgins, one of today's global business soldiers. He is employed in Glendale, Calif., by Swiss-owned Nestlé USA Inc. as president of two divisions, one of which markets to Hispanics. With so many national customs involved, ordinary office greetings require savoir-faire.

"I would be rude if I didn't kiss my female colleagues from Mexico," says Mr. Higgins of his routine single-cheek kisses. He triple-cheek-kisses at the company's Zurich headquarters. In the mixed company of kissers and shakers, he faces a split-second dilemma: What to do with the cheek of the female head of Nestlé's Hispanic ad agency. "I'm thinking, are there other people in the room who won't get this?" he says.
There was a time when business acquaintances did not kiss lightly on our side of the Atlantic. Close friends and family, maybe -- but one didn't peck her investment banker on the cheek or buss his Congresswoman. Social greetings are evolving, though, and are becoming more complicated with globalization.
My first business kiss came a number of years ago from a high-ranking financial executive I was interviewing. It was in his office and sweetly single-cheeked. I wondered if he thought we were better friends than I judged. But as I later navigated more cheeks, it became clear that that kiss was merely evidence that cheek kissing had entered the U.S. social vernacular.
What's the proper way to greet colleagues and business partners? Kisses, handshakes, hugs?
The more we kiss socially, the more we need to understand the nuances. Here are some answers to some of the questions that arise.
Whatever happened to shaking hands? There is something so American about the firm control of a handshake -- it's about disarming one's opponent and keeping him two feet at bay. Control is in our DNA. This is why travel guides must spell the social kiss out for us: In France, generally two cheeks, or four, no lips; in parts of Belgium, three cheeks, and so on.
But Americans are now learning to perform the social kiss. The dexterous cover all bases. Jim Murren, president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas gambling giant MGM Mirage, routinely cheek-kisses, then mentions his wife, Heather, to make it clear that the kiss was just a kiss. "I think it helps break down barriers of mistrust and apprehension," Mr. Murren says.
However, he adds: "No frontal hugs!" While some men don't mind a less intimate shoulder squeeze, Mr. Murren is backed up by corporate etiquette consultant Ann Marie Sabath, who says simply, "Frontal hugs: faux pas."
After all, once we start breaking down the barriers, opportunities to get the wrong idea abound. The congressional cheek-kisses planted on our first female House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, led Chicago sex therapist Laura Berman to declare -- sounding a tad prudish -- in the Chicago Sun-Times that the kisses came across as "patronizing and derogatory, even unnecessarily sexual."
There are, of course, places where a social kiss is never appropriate -- a first meeting with a stranger, for instance, or a job interview.
But the business kiss does have certain corollary benefits. Among them, kissing doesn't leave as much time for lengthy introductions. New York executive-communications consultant Joyce Newman says she prefers a solid handshake, but sometimes a kiss can be helpful. "Kiss-kiss gets you out of a lot of things," she says. "You don't have to remember their name."
And those who are concerned that social kissing might be unhealthy might have been relieved when doctors in Britain, home of America's Puritan forebears, weighed in on social kissing. Earlier this year, the International Scientific Forum on Home Hygiene announced that cheek-kissing spreads fewer germs than handshaking.
Still, raise the subject and a blush-worthy anecdote is sure to follow. "Much of the confusion comes because each participant assumes he or she is choosing the type of social kiss to be performed, and the two choices don't match," writes Judith Martin, a.k.a. Miss Manners, in her "Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior -- Freshly Updated."
I just heard a story from a tall guy I know who went for a cheek kiss recently; he and the recipient aimed wrong, and the woman ended up kissing his neck.
That made me recall the sense of mild panic I felt one day at lunch when I saw Wolfgang Puck's face coming toward mine. My hand hung in midair, but I quickly offered my right cheek. When he moved in for the second cheek, I responded clumsily, and we ended up bumping noses on the way from cheek one to cheek two.
Mr. Puck is Austrian, but the celebrity chef's life is as global as that of Nestlé's Mr. Higgins. Mr. Puck moved to France when he was 17. Now he lives in Los Angeles, where Hollywood folks do one-cheek air kisses, but his wife is Ethiopian and accustomed to three-cheek kisses. Mr. Puck makes daily rounds at his three Los Angeles restaurants, Spago, Chinois on Main and Cut, greeting customers through lunch and dinner. Women who are complete strangers to him get a firm handshake.
The rest get the cherubic chef's neatly shaved cheek, once or twice. "Sometimes I do one, sometimes I do two," he says. "If there's a table of 10 women, I do one so it goes faster."
Write to Christina Binkley at christina.binkley