Chris Padgett, an executive coach living in Ohio, meets with about 20 top-level executives every month. Basically, it’s his job to advise CEOs and VPs on how to run their organizations more efficiently. As you can imagine, it’s the sort of high-pressure job where appearances are important and formality is key. A good handshake is essential — or so you would think.
A couple of months ago, Padgett went to meet with one of his newest clients, a chief marketing officer at a Fortune 500 company. The meeting started out typically enough — they exchanged verbal greetings, coffee was poured — but Padgett noticed something strange: The guy didn’t extend his hand for a handshake. Weird, but maybe he just forgot, Padgett thought. Or maybe he’s a germaphobe.
At the end of the meeting, the executive stood up and, apparently pleased with how the meeting went, thrust his fist out. "It threw me," Padgett says. "At that level there’s more formality, and this guy in his mid-50s was like, 'Nope.'"
Their knuckles collided midair and the fist bump was complete.
Later that day, Padgett started thinking about meetings he’s had over the past couple of years. He began to realize that something was fundamentally changing. "More and more people aren’t shaking hands," he says. "I work in corporations. And in corporations, I’m finding it’s going away."
It’s a bold statement. The handshake has existed as a form of nonverbal expression since ancient Greek times, and in corporate settings the handshake has been as ever-present as oxygen. But things change, I suppose.
I’ve noticed it, too: More and more of my friends are opting for fist bumps. Even at work, with colleagues and superiors, the fist bump (A) is more fun and (B) has the potential for less awkwardness. (Nothing worse than receiving a slimy, limp hand.) But we’re still in an in-between phase. With friends, half the time I don’t know whether to hug or handshake or fist bump. Sometimes going for all three at once can result in some serious awkwardness, like this:
One thing is clear: Fist bumps are easiest to execute. Well-respected writers have toiled creating manuals on the art of the handshake. But even a child can throw out a perfect fist bump without any instruction. The point is, there are a lot of good reasons to support the fist bump. It’s equitable. It’s honest. But will it kill off the handshake?
“What you have posed is a very serious question,” Jesse Gaddis, the founder of a Brooklyn-based e-cigarette company, tells me over email. (I agree.)
When Gaddis worked as a creative director in advertising two years ago, he’d find fist bumps and other alternative physical forms of camaraderie acceptable around higher-ups and colleagues. ”Not so much with clients,” he says. “You always wanted to square up and give them a good shake.”
Now that he owns his business, though, he’s tried to set the tone. It hasn’t always worked.
“When you try to fist bump a bunch of investors, well, that doesn’t look so sharp,” he says. “Or when you try to shake an intern’s hand and suddenly you feel you aren’t cool anymore. The fist bump to someone new is kind of like calling your best friend’s dad by his first name, even though we all know he goes by Mr. _____ still.”
If you needed more proof that fist bumps are displacing handshakes — even more mainstream than Obama throwing them out — look no further than JAMA, the country’s most prestigious medical association. JAMA urged hospitals last month to ban handshakes altogether. Pretty soon you’ll be fist bumping your surgeon the way you fist bump your Lyft driver.
As weird as that sounds, there’s some health care logic to replacing the handshake with a fist bump. Researchers at Aberystwyth University in Wales published a study this week that advised people to opt out of handshakes. "For the sake of improving public health," the doctors wrote, "we encourage further adoption of the fist bump as a simple, free, and more hygienic alternative to the handshake."
It’s not just doctors and hospitals pushing for handshake bans, either. StopHandshaking.com is a non-medical group that admonishes handshakers around the world. The group suggests a host of alternatives: a Native-American “how,” a friendly bow or even a basic nod. And, of course, they like the fist bump. (They even sell lapel pins to support the cause.)
But hundreds of years of tradition don’t die easily. Plus, some people genuinely prefer a good handshake (even if it is gross). There are also those who think fist bumps are kind of lame — and swear off them altogether.
“Fist bumps were cool about a year ago,” says Keith Miller, who owns Bubbly Paws, a dog-grooming facility in Wisconsin. “Now the only people that fist bump are d-bags with Livestrong bracelets on their wrist. You see lots of fist bumping at the gym. … Keep it there.”
