Appearances

In the last couple of days I have come across some points about appearance that have surprised me. I am a firm believer that appearance is important, more later, but both these points although they seemed minor, appeared to create quite an impact.

I was reading a book on persuasion (I like to keep an eye on what the competition is up to) and the author (James Borg) commented that if you tore a sleeve or got a spot on your tie before an important meeting, you should comment on it. His point is that otherwise, it becomes a visual distraction which can prevent the other party from hearing your point of view. I was interested in this as I am the sort of person who, through experience, has learned never to eat egg mayonnaise sandwiches before a meeting. I am currently working on my insane belief that it is possible to drink coffee on a train without throwing it down me but addiction interferes with both logic and experience. I have been a subscriber to the viewpoint that people are not actually that perceptive and will not notice what is not pointed out to them. Perhaps in these days of hyper sensitivity to image, this is no longer the case. Anyway, he made me think.

The next day I read about a recruitment consultant who did not recruit (female) candidates with with either unpolished or brightly polished nails. Clear polish was her rule. This struck me as scarily specific. Whilst I have written elsewhere about the impact of makeup, I have not come across this degree of precision in criteria for acceptability. It makes psychometric testing look positively slapdash.

More decisions than we probably care to acknowledge are made on emotional, rather than logical grounds. Gut feeling, the more acceptable name given to an emotional reaction, is definitely more openly discussed in business circles (think about the popularity of Blink by Malcolm Gladwell). We can never be sure about the reaction we will invoke but these two examples demonstrated to me that the smallest things can make the difference between a success or failure.

The same magazine article mentioned another recruitment consultant and his criterion of shoe cleanliness as a guide to employability. Now this is more predictable, and therefore easier to get right. And whilst many of you may despairing about the superficiality of this, I can confirm from my personal experience that shoes count. I run many training courses in recruitment and frequently use shoes as an example when discussing the issues of bias in recruitment. I choose shoes because I have found that they provoke strong and often extreme reactions. Every time. Shoes are not neutral. And many people firmly believe that this is a perfectly sound and rational bias on which to base their recruitment decisions and so refuse to give it up.

In fact clothes are not neutral. Clothing is symbolic. People read your shoes as a signpost to an aspect of your personality. This may not be fair but it happens. Neither is it new. Alison Lurie makes the point that humans have been communicating via the medium of clothes for thousands of years and quotes a similar view from Balzac written in 1839. Anthropolgists agree that clothing has only 3 functions and these are common across cultures. They are to demonstrate status, socio-economic group and tribal affiliations. Lurie also points out that little recognised fact that if clothes are a form of communication then there are rules, vocabulary and grammar that accompany them. This means of course that we can be misunderstood and we can also trick others with our use of vocabulary. We can polish our shoes – or our nails - to disguise our sloppy attitudes.

Some folk don’t notice dirty shoes or split infinitives. Some are rigid and precise in their application of the "grammar" (which would be my guess about the clear nail varnish recruitment consultant). When we go to a meeting we do not necessarily know the expectations or sartorial imperatives of the other parties, but we still have choices in how we present ourselves. You can play safe, abide by the rules or express your true personality and maverick tendencies. Or anything in between. Whatever you choose, it will be interpreted, often unconsciously. If the medium is the message, in a meeting you are the medium.

I have given guidelines elsewhere for playing safe and according to the rules. But my advice, should you find someone riveted to the spot on your tie or the ladder in your tights, then perhaps you should mention it and get it out of the way. Personally, if they appear oblivious I would keep quiet. Mentioning it might in those circumstances be like apologising needlessly which can undermine your authority and credibility.

Follow eye contact. If someone appears focused on your eyes and not your nails, then all is probably well with your manicure. Above all, take heart. I once left the house in two similar, but not identical, shoes. No one noticed.

References

• Persuasion, James Borg
• Blink, Malcolm Gladwell
• The Language of Clothes – Alison Lurie