{"id":266,"date":"2011-09-08T13:34:47","date_gmt":"2011-09-08T17:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/?p=266"},"modified":"2011-09-08T13:34:47","modified_gmt":"2011-09-08T17:34:47","slug":"what-shouldnt-you-wear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/what-shouldnt-you-wear\/266","title":{"rendered":"What shouldn’t you wear?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\u201cWhat should I wear?\u201d I asked the event organizer. We just agreed that I would speak at her winter event.<\/p>\n

She glanced up and down at me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re wearing now is fine. We\u2019re a very casual business.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was wearing dark jeans, fitted t-shirt, and blazer. So was she.<\/p>\n

In the olden days, an oft-repeated business maxim was always to dress professionally for a professional engagement. Suit, tie, button-down shirt. Well, you can throw out this rule, pronto.<\/p>\n

Fellow presenter Rich Hopkins<\/a> of Speak and Deliver<\/a> fame wondered in a Facebook comment today if the days of wearing suits are over. He noticed that two speakers at a Toastmaster\u2019s convention weren\u2019t wearing suits.<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

photo credit: deepglamour<\/a><\/p>\n

Dressing too far above the audience can be just as off-putting as dressing too far below. You might stand a better chance of connecting with your audience by matching their preferred style.<\/p>\n

Some businesses are casual. Some are business-casual. Some present themselves as very buttoned-down and professional. So what should the savvy presenter wear?<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t guess. Don\u2019t wring your hands. Just ask.<\/p>\n

Ask the event coordinator. In my experience, they are always 100% happy to tell you how to dress. And they have always been exceptionally accurate in their assessment. I have yet to show up to a scheduled performance thinking: \u201cWow, the event organizer really steered me wrong. I look woefully out of touch.\u201d<\/p>\n

It makes sense. If I look bad, the organizer looks bad.<\/p>\n

Starting today, I\u2019m formalizing my approach to the \u201cwhat to wear\u201d dilemma. Since dress codes are all over the map, I\u2019m adding the following checklist to my standard speaker agreement:\"\"\u00a0Why \u201cother\u201d? There are exceptions, of course. It might be entirely appropriate to dress like an astronaut for an audience of tweedy academics if you\u2019re discussing your recent space shuttle mission. Sometimes, the content of the speech requires more \u201ccostume\u201d than \u201cclothing\u201d.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your approach for today\u2019s \u201cwhat the blazes do I wear?\u201d question?<\/p>\n

And perhaps a better question: what should a business presenter absolutely NOT wear?<\/p>\n

(I\u2019ll put \u201cmessage T-shirts\u201d at the top of my \u201cwhat not to wear\u201d list! What about you?)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cWhat should I wear?\u201d I asked the event organizer. We just agreed that I would speak at her winter event. She glanced up and down at me. \u201cWhat you\u2019re wearing now is fine. We\u2019re a very casual business.\u201d I was wearing dark jeans, fitted t-shirt, and blazer. So was she. In the olden days, an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presentation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":272,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266\/revisions\/272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maniactive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}