TJ Walker explains how to dress for speeches and presentations. Wear a notch above your audience without confusing them, stay consistent with your brand, and pick clothes comfortable enough that you stop thinking about them while speaking.
How should you dress before that big speech or presentation? There is a school of thought that's put out in a number of books that go out and get yourself a new fancy outfit. The most expensive outfit, a tailored suit if you're a man. A Chanel suit if you're a woman. I don't subscribe to that theory because if you're not comfortable in the suit, if you haven't worn it before, you may feel uncomfortable when you're giving the speech or presentation. You want to feel comfortable in whatever you're wearing. Here's the general rule of thumb I give my own clients. You want to dress generally a notch above your audience. One consideration, another consideration. You want to dress in a way that doesn't confuse your audience. Number three, you want to dress in a way that's consistent with who you are. So for example, the well known sales guru and fabulous public speaker Jeffrey Gittamer dresses in what looks like a workman's outfit with the name, because his whole image is about hard work. Focus on your customers on the ground level. And he looks like a guy coming to repair your air conditioner. He's there to repair your sale. So it is 100% consistent with his brand and his image and what he's all about. What is your brand? What is your image? Now, for many, many people in the business world, finance, consulting, services, energy, if you're not in the high tech field, people wear basic suits. With women, there's a little more latitude. With men, it's a suit, a tie, dress shirt. My recommendation is make sure you've given thought to it, that there's nothing distracting, that things fit properly and that you're comfortable, you're not dressing below the audience you have now. You don't want to dress too much beyond. If your audience is in sports coats and you're in a tuxedo, you're going to look like a pretentious fool. If you're addressing a high tech audience out in Silicon Valley and Mark Zuckerberg's there with his hoodie, and there's other billionaires there with their T shirts and you're in a suit and tie, you will look like an idiot and you will lose face. So you've got to ask yourself, what are the norms of your audience? If you are addressing a crowd of designers, an artist wearing a suit and tie could be the kiss of death. You will seem like some boring, uncreative stooge. So you always have to ask yourself, what does the audience expect from you? What's consistent with your image, what's going to show proper respect to your audience and put it all together in a sensible plan and then dress accordingly? Apologies to those of you listening on itunes and Stitcher, but for those of you watching on YouTube, Facebook, Vimeo and other places you can see I'm wearing a traditional suit jacket, solid blue shirt, and a solid tie. The reason I do this is because most of my clients are in businesses where people, the men in the businesses, wear suits. So I'm dressing so that my clients feel comfortable and prospects feel comfortable with me and. And feel like if they brought me into their organization, it wouldn't be awkward or weird. So that's why I'm dressed this way. You've got to figure out what works for you. If you're 26 years old and you're positioning yourself as the voice of millennials and you're going to help Fortune 500 companies market themselves to millennials, well, by all means, don't wear a tie and a suit. That would be crazy. Give thought to what you want to wear and then wear it so you don't have to think about it. Once you're up and speaking.
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