Dress for success

Aug 5

Written by Donny Walford - Founder and Managing Director at behind closed doors

Recent studies have pointed to the fact that there may be some truth to dressing for the job you want, as noted by the Wall Street Journal.

Studies have shown that wearing nice clothes in the office can affect the way people perceive you, how confident you’re feeling, and even how you’re able to think abstractly.

In a study completed at Yale in 2014 that used 128 men between the ages of 18 and 32, researchers had participants partake in mock negotiations of buying and selling.

Those dressed poorly (in sweatpants and plastic sandals) averaged a theoretical profit of $680,000, while the group dressed in suits amassed an average profit of $2.1 million. The group dressed neutrally averaged a $1.58 million profit.

According to a co-author of the study, this shows that the poorly dressed participants would often defer to the suited ones, and these suited participants could sense this heightened respect, backing down less than they might have otherwise.

In another study, participants who dressed up were more likely to engage in abstract, big-picture thinking like a CEO, while those less well-dressed concerned themselves with minor details.

“People who wear that kind of clothing feel more powerful,” Michael L. Slepian, co-author of the study and an adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Business School, told the WSJ. “When you feel more powerful, you don’t have to focus on the details.”

How does this advice fit into your everyday style? In today’s casual office dress code or in a COVID work from home ‘outfit’, what you wear can have an even bigger effect.

Follow the “plus or minus one rule” for company dress. For example, if most people in the office wear button-up shirts, you might want to put on a blazer. If most people wear blazers, you might want to wear a suit. And so on.

I love this saying by Roy T. Bennett: “Stop trying to fit in, when you were born to stand out...” Dressing well ensures you stand out.

Why Dressing for Success Leads to Success

Research shows that when workers wear nicer clothes, they achieve more.

A number of recent studies suggest that dressing up for work in a suit or blazer could improve an employee’s productivity, whether going into a negotiation, making a sales call or even participating in a videoconference 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.

In a study published in 2015 in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, results suggested that people engage in higher levels of abstract thinking when they dress up, compared with when they dress casually. When some 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, like a senior executive, would deploy. After being tested in both formal and casual dress, another 88 subjects were quicker to see the big picture when they dressed more formally. The casual dressers tended to sweat the small stuff.

Power of the pressed

“When you need to think creatively, about the bigger picture, that’s when dressing formally will increase your productivity,” says co-author Michael L. Slepian, a postdoctoral research scholar and adjunct assistant professor at Columbia Business School. “People who wear that kind of clothing feel more powerful,” he says. “When you feel more powerful, you don’t have to focus on the details.”

In an office with a relaxed or business-casual dress code, “when you don’t need to wear formal clothing, that’s where wearing formal clothing can have a bigger effect,” he says.

What kinds of clothes qualify as formal or higher-status dress, of course, can depend on the industry or whom you talk to. Fashion consultants offer some insights that could be useful in any number of businesses.

If you are wearing pants and a top, pants and a shirt or a skirt and a top, the jacket is what gives you some finish and authority. Also, and I know this will be contentious, for females, wearing heels and they don’t have to be high heels, when it’s important is also advisable. If you don’t want to walk in heels all day, keep a pair at the office for that important meeting.

Tailored solutions

For men, a full suit, sport coat, or even a tie can put you in a more professional mind-set, says Julie Rath, a men’s style consultant and founder of NextLevelStyle.com, an online style course for men. If wearing a suit will come off too strong, Ms. Rath recommends focusing on fit (sleek and close but not tight) and quality (good cashmere, fine wools or 100% cotton). Wearing a high-quality dress shoe or nice watch can do the trick as well, she says.

Sometimes a small fashion adjustment can have big results. Don’t go looking too far afield if searching for a model of success to imitate. While Mark Zuckerberg seems to have done pretty well in business wearing hoodies and jeans, experts say he’s an outlier.

“Mark Zuckerberg is in a creative enterprise,” Yale’s Prof. Kraus says. “People like that are playing around with their status symbols. For most of us, high status means suit and tie.”

The key to all of this research is to dress for your audience. Whether you’re a man or a woman, arriving to speak to a creative start up in full business attire may mean you will not connect with your audience. The opposite could be said if you took the more casual approach when looking to borrow funds from the bank. Dressing as well as the audience, or slightly better, will help create an unspoken match. An inferior choice could seriously impair your chances to be taken seriously and, at worst, you will look as though you don’t belong.

Reflect your brand

Dressing to reflect your brand may not always be possible. There will always be occasions when dressing well will make the difference to, for example, a room full of investors. However, mirroring what your business represents is a powerful way for you to express what you are all about.