Dress for Success

The Best Decision I Ever Made

When I entered the world of business, I was a hippie. Now, I know many of you have probably never seen or met a hippie. I had long hair, a full beard and wore earth shoes. I did, however, also wear a pair of polyester pants and a clean shirt, but no tie. They hired me to write policy and procedure manuals and stuck me in a back room.

Two years later I made my first major change in my dressing habits. I put on a blue tie that I had purchased for twenty-five cents at a garage sale. My wife had given birth to our daughter and I thought it was the perfect time for a change.

One of my well-dressed colleagues had suggested that I consider sprucing myself up. We were working on a joint project and I had recommended that we needed to make the report look professional — that people judge a book by its cover. He told me that I should apply the same idea to myself. He made me look in the proverbial mirror.

Change often is a slow process. Three years later I took a promotion as a marketing consultant and attended a sales training seminar. The instructor talked about dressing for success and suggested that we read the book, Dress for Success by John T. Molloy, which I did. The research that Molloy documented in his book convinced me of the importance of dressing for success.

On my thirty-first birthday, I cut my hair and shaved my beard. I also purchased several suits, ties and a pair of Florsheim wing-tip shoes. The interesting fact was that 80% of the people at work told me they liked me better without my beard. Unfortunately, my wife was in the 20% that loved my beard. And even now more than thirty years later my wife prefers my beard.

This decision to change my appearance dramatically altered the trajectory of my career. I more than doubled my salary and was hired as a vice-president of marketing within three years. Dressing for success changed my life and was one of the best career decisions I ever made.

What I have learned over the years is that the world of business is as much about perception as it is reality. People do judge the book by its cover and make decisions on what they perceive the world to be. One manager I know would not hire a person if he came to the interview with scuffed shoes.

The irony is that several decades later another company that I worked for adopted business casual as its dress code. Mentally, I had a difficult time reverting back to casual dress. Dressing for success was ingrained within me. For years, I continued to wear a tie. I felt naked without it. Now, while I have taken the tie off for day-to-day work, I still put the tie on when I am speaking to a group or attending an important meeting. Habits sometimes die hard.

I have never become fastidious in my appearance. I don’t spend hours shopping for the right shirt or tie or suit. I don’t worry about sticking pins in my clothes or if my cuff is frayed. I avoid wearing suit coats because they make me uncomfortable. In fact, clothes remain unimportant to me. I dress for others. I wear ties that spark conversations. Maybe the hippie still lurks somewhere deep inside the business man.

Now, it is time for you to take a look at yourself. There is a lot of talk these days about having a personal brand. Part of your personal brand is your dress. What are you communicating to people with your appearance? How are they judging you? Like it or not, people do judge a book by its cover.

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Harley King has been speaking and training professionally for more than 25 years before groups ranging from 10 to 600. He has trained more than 7,500 people to speak and train.

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Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.