7: Body Brand
View the warning on the contents page regarding "facts" presented by this author.
Personal fashion used to be well-considered. In their personal lives people would "dress to impress," and in their professional lives, there was a distinct uniform worn by everyone in a firm, from the chief executive to the janitor, that identified their company and impression.
This has changed: in their personal lives, people dress for comfort: people turn up at the theater or a three-star restaurant wearing clothing in which they should be embarrassed to be seen at a flea market, and business "professionals" slouch about in blue jeans and tee-shirts in their corporate offices.
There is very little concern for visual appearances anymore. But after a few decades in which professional attire gave way to "business casual" and then to "wear whatever you want to work," there is evidence this attitude is reversing: school uniforms are making a comeback and, according to a 2005 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, only 41% of US companies continue to allow casual dress in the workplace.
The author questions whether "random and casual" has been carefully considered, and implies by means of a few rhetorical questions that it has not: they are merely indulging their employees, have not asked customers if they care about the appearances of the employees that serve them, and assume that it's OK for their employees to be sloppy because other companies are doing it.
One exception appears to be the retail sector, for employees who interact directly with customers. Store employees, wait staff, and airline crew still wear uniforms because companies acknowledge the need for customers to be able to recognize them as employees. It may also be because of it that office workers, who consider themselves to be of a higher caste, have such disdain for being told how they are expected to dress for work.
(EN: Adding an observation to this: there is also an unwritten dress code for the higher echelons of employees. In firms where employees are "allowed" to turn up in blue jeans, the managers wear slacks and the executives still wear suits - and this expectation is often communicated orally but never written down as policy. So as with many things in the HR world, companies do not provide explicit rules for attire, but that is not to say there are no rules - they are tacit, and employees are left to figure them out for themselves.)
The author recalls an incident in which he made a suggestion to a staff of client service managers that they introduce a uniform look that supports the brand of the firm, and met with immediate resistance, "we don't work in a supermarket." When he suggested that the uniform could be designer clothing ("How about if I gave all the me Armani suits and the women outfits from Donna Karan?" - stress on "gave" and not "required to buy out of your own pocket") with a coordinating element such as company neckties or lapel pins, the employees were much more amenable to the idea.
How style and fashion fits with your BodyBrand
The author refers to the advice of a styling and brand consultancy "stylisa" (EN: Whose Web site is defunct - as, I expect, is the company - so what follows should be taken with several grains of salt).
A line is to be drawn between the concepts of fashion (being artful and following trends) and style (using visual elements to intentionally convey a given impression). The latter is clearly relevant and applicable to brand, and can be an asset if managed carefully. How you dress as a person communicates information about who you are as an individual - on the rare occasions when people "dress up" anymore, it's clearly evident they recognize this fact. How a person dresses when acting as an employee of a firm communicates information about who they are as one who provides service to customers, which is also clearly evident in the attention some companies give to employee dress.
Of key importance: do the clothes you wear make a statement that you wish to convey about yourself? Do you look the part of a competent professional? You may wish to dismiss this as irrelevant, but appearances matter, and have a strong impact on the perception of a person (or a brand) by the customer, prospect, and public.
There is also evidence from psychology that a person's dress influences their behavior. A person who is dressed well tends to behave well - they have greater poise and self-confidence - which is noticeable by others who interact with them.
While the author obviously sides with the notion of professional attire, he does not advocate a complete reversal to the suit-and-tie standard of decades past, though admittedly it still projects a strong professional impression, but likely the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction - "casual is not another word for sloppy" - and some concern should be given to the way that attire communicates quality about the person and the firm they represent.
Myths about visual communication
The author changes channels to discuss nonverbal communication: posture, gesture, and expression. These elements send signals, even when a person isn't speaking at all; and when a person is speaking, it's been demonstrated that the nonverbal communication can send a contradictory message that invalidates the actual content of the message.
However, he does dispute the conventional wisdom that only 7% of communication is the actual words (intonation being 38% and nonverbal being 55% of total impact). This goes back to a 1972 study by Albert Mehrabian, intended to determine what elements lead a person to "like" or "dislike" a given speaker. Mehrabian himself has commented that the results of his study have been widely misunderstood and misrepresented.
In terms of communication, the content of the message still drives the listener's understanding of and reaction to what is being said to them. Gesture, expression, posture, tone, and the like can support the message, or can work against it, but without the context of a message, they are not as significant as some would suggest them to be.
(EN: I heard a very compelling refutation of the argyment by an experiment with three groups: the first watched a video with sound, the second heard only the sound and didn't see the video, the third saw the video with the sound off. Those that got both audio and video scored best on recollection, those that got audio only did almost as well, and those that got video only were clueless as to what was actually said.)
Loose Bits: Eye Contact, Posture
While nonverbal communication does not dominate the content of a message, it does send cues that are noticed, even unconsciously, but others.
For example, a salesman can tell of a customer, or a customer of an employee who serves them, whether the other party is engaged by the eye contact they receive and the facial expression the other party makes upon being approached. Before any word is said, they can tell whether they are welcomed or unwanted.
Eye contact alone is a very delicate matter. Too little eye-contact suggests a speaker is dishonest or a listener is disinterested; too much and the tone of the conversation becomes hostile and aggressive.
Some of this is determined by culture (in certain Asian cultures, any eye contact is considered to be insubordinate), some by the individual personality (some people are more shy or introverted than others)
Another bit of information about posture: a person who is slouching suggests being uninterested or bored, leaning backward defensive, and so on. Standing too close to someone invades their personal space and makes them uncomfortable.
In general, the author advises service professionals to maintain a physical distance that is comfortable for the other person, and leaning slightly forward to indicate interest.
There's another bit about handshakes - whether the other person feels like you are being overly rough with them or handing them a dead fish. He indicates "good handshakes ... are few and far between."
(EN: This goes on for a while, with random smatterings of information about bits and pieces, that really aren't that stunning or original, but are often neglected or forgotten. I'm going to stop taking notes, as I think the point is made, and he's serving thin gruel - consult other sources on points of etiquette, protocol, and interaction.)