Hello everyone!
As beautiful weather surrounds us with its warmth I thought an article on dress in the workplace and in everyday circumstances was a perfectly fitting topic to write about. Just recently I started a LinkedIn account and saw an article regarding how we dress, and it inspired me to do my own research and to share my thoughts on the subject.
From an article in the WSJ reads: “A number of recent studies suggest that dressing up for work in a suit or blazer could do wonders for an employee’s productivity, whether going into a negotiation, making a sales call, or even participating in a video conference with business associates.”
Using a number of measures, including simulated business meetings at which subjects wore formal and more casual clothing, the studies offer indications that wearing nicer clothes may raise one’s confidence level, affect how others perceive the wearer, and in some cases even boost the level of one’s abstract thinking, the type in which leaders and executives engage.
Hearing those things: Do you think dressing well could be beneficial? ABSOLUTELY.
I think one thing to be remembered which I spoke about in a previous blog is “confidence is key”. How we think we look and how we portray our actions is based off of several key elements, one of which is dressing. When a person is dressed nicely and looks decent, they FEEL GOOD about themselves which automatically puts them on a superior level to one who just rolled out of bed to face the day pj status. This takes us back to the simple idea regarding the foundation in our roots: The stronger the foundation we build, the more solid we will be down the road.
Dressing well also assumes that we are the type of person that prepares. In the business world, companies and upper management want to know you prepare because it not only benefits your abilities, but also puts forth an attitude of stability and respect, necessarily bringing out the traits of the individual who aspires to be that difference and achieve great things.
Take the business portion out of this article completely. Everyday life. Take 100 people walking down the crowded streets of New York City and imagine if I asked you who were the most successful in your eyes… the response would most likely be “the people who are dressed the best”. Yes in a way this could be stereotyping, but the point is that whether successful or not, it is the mindset they have behind it which matters. The foundation that wakes them up dressing to look their best and trying to be 110 percent everyday, proves their persistency to be better than average.
They did a study that was published last year in the journal Social, Psychological, and Personality Science, results from which suggested that people engage in higher levels of abstract thinking when they dress up, compared to when they dress casually. When 361 participants were asked to complete tasks, the ones dressed more formally engaged in the kinds of abstract thinking that someone in a position of power, i.e. a senior executive, would deploy. After being tested in both formal and casual dress, another 88 subjects were quicker at seeing the big picture when they dressed formally whereas casually dressed, they tended to sweat the small stuff.
As you can see from multiple studies and from personal experience, dressing well can be only beneficial to us whether it be what gets us to the next interview, the girl of our dreams, or even just that satisfactory grin in the reflection as we turn to face the day!
So get out of bed and….DRESS UP.
Comments