Dress for Success
April 16, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
I’ve always lived by the maxim “Dress for the job you want, not the job you have” and wear a dress shirt and dress slacks every day, with a few exceptions where I wear a tie and a few Fridays where I go a little more casual. My manager typically wears business suits, and my manager’s manager is most comfortable in a logo polo and a pair of slacks.
I have some of the folks on my team who dress much more casually (some forget to change out of their sneakers when they come in from the parking lot or after they take a walk at lunch) and some who dress more casually. I don’t care what my team wears, as long as it complies with our dress code.
I worked at a place where a shirt and tie was the norm for men, with a business suit and blouse for women, and I found that not only did I act more professionally, but I actually FELT more professional than when I wore a polo and a pair of khakis. Most of the people I worked with admitted the same thing.
I’m curious what your experience has been for you, and for those you manage.
- Do you really need to “dress for success” or does any old things work?
- Do you care how your team dresses?
- Does it make a difference in their performance?
You can go too far the otehr way as well! The work environment I’m in is casual. The only exception to this is upper management who often wear a shirt & tie or suit.
One quarterly meeting (on a Friday) one of the groups in our division came in with all of them wearing suits and ties! Everyone else was wearing causal! As a result, everyone was mocking the one division behind their back. It make the one group look like they were “too good for anyone else,” a ’superiority’ overtone, and worse!
Granted that ‘dressing down’ for casual is one thing but so is the opposite! … Now we are wondering when this group is going to come in with tuxes!
That’s cool!! :-)
Do you get the point?! The manager’s manager – the entreprneur wears the Polo… ;-) Awesome!! :-)
Greetings, André
Never trust a man in a suit. Salesmen wear suits because they needs to impress. What they wear, the first impression, is the only thing their only marketable ‘product’.
The unfortunate news is that things like commitment, professionalism and talent are invisible. This means you actually need to get to know the people around you to understand their capabilities and talents.
While your choice of attire is a potential indicator of your sensibilities in other areas, it’s really just another example of clean desk, messy desk. There are a lot of very capable committed people who don’t give a damn about trim of their clothes or the messy pile of papers on thier desk.
First, let me say “Whoa!” Nice photo. Wonderful business dressed man on top and sharp dressed lady on the bottom.
So, interesting post. In the far past there were books written on dress for success. We drift away from business formal to business casual, and then business slacker. Now that the economy is shifting, I see more people at work dressing sharper. The competition is on. I have decided to put away the jeans and begin wearing more dockers and polo shirts.
I suspect this trend will continue. In my honest opinion it is a good trend.
Great post.
I sometimes tend to believe that a man who needs to wear a suit is covering for something lacking in other departments! Having said that, some items are definitely not proper business attire (such as flip flops, light jeans, etc.).