Jason Howell Company

Yesterday I wrote about Carrying Yourself with Confidence as Way #1 to maintaining super power status. Today the excerpt from AMERICA: Still the Land of Opportunity, Always a Home for the Brave will focus on Way #2:

1. Carry Yourself With Confidence
2. Dress Like a Super Power
3. Identify What You Enjoy
4. Lead Your “Category”

Way #2 to identify yourself as a superpower that you are is to dress as professionally as you possibly can, while maintaining the corporate social norms.  Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.  Have you ever noticed that the executives at your firm tend to have the ability to dress casually but with a professional flair that maintains their hierarchical status?  A pair of cuffed khakis with polished dress shoes for example.  A button down dressed shirt without a tie, but dry cleaned with starched creases. Take your dress cues from management or executive management if that’s where your goals are.  If you are in business for yourself or in any kind of sales field, take notice of what your competitors and your customers wear, and do them one better.  I once met someone who told me how well his lawn mowing business grew not because he had the largest staff but in large part because his crew wore clean uniforms rather than the random casual dress of his competitors.  He went to gross over $1 million while in business. $1 million isn’t necessarily a lot of money in the 2nd millennium, except this was a story he told me, about his days in high school.

Regardless of price, your sense of fashion is the easiest and quickest way to make an impression.  Aside from proper hygiene, your fashion will be the most impactful element of your first, second and third impressions.  I do not expect my mechanic to wear a suit  - or even have clean hands for that matter – but I do expect an executive to appear “executive” even if that executive is currently an Accounting Clerk.  Just wearing a suit is not always the answer.  Working in staffing, I had the opportunity to rate hundreds of people on their appearance and though they did not always wear a suit to come see me, I could tell by the way their “business casual” clothes fit, whether they were current, or future executive material.  Clean shoes fit the part of a professional, not necessarily new ones.  Expensive versus inexpensive made no real difference.  A button down shirt is nice, but only if it is clean, pressed, and tucked neatly into the waist of your pants (even in the back).  Wearing a tie is great if you know how to tie one, including the difference between a double and single Windsor knot (and have experimented with which looks best on you).  And wearing that tie around the neck of a buttoned up dress shirt only adds executive flair if the neck size on that shirt isn’t too big or too small (or if your pant length hangs all the way past the ankle but not all the way to the floor).  It is not the cost of clothes that matters nor in some cases is it even the age of clothes if they have been properly maintained.  It is their level of cleanliness, style and fit that make the difference.

A person who cares about their appearance shows they care about the impression they make and because appearance is not always easy to maintain, people associate good appearance with power.  Customers want to be associated with companies that are well regarded in their communities; they will flock to these people.  Because employers want to be considered among the best in the world, they will hire these people, promote them and ask them to represent the firm to their clients personally.  They will also compensate them just a little better and put off, a lay off in their favor.

A couple tricks for keeping your shirt tucked in by the way is 1) wearing a long undershirt and 2) keeping good posture (while sitting or standing).  The undershirt is typically the first thing that gets “untucked” and it starts by puckering your clothing around the waist.  Once that happens it is pretty easy for the top shirt to follow suit.  If  however your undershirt is a little longer, it will likely be more difficult for it to come undone, making it less likely that your top shirt will.  This is dependent on whether your good posture is maintained throughout the day.    Maintain your posture and your clothes will better maintain themselves.

As it is with most mysteries of life, it is the little things that make all of the difference.  How you carry yourself and the close you wear of course are just the start of the overall impression and how your internal and/or external customers identify you.