TJ Walker recalls hosting a political talk show in Tallahassee in the late 1980s when a viewer complained his paisley tie was ugly. He uses the story to explain why people in public roles should dress blandly: anything that stands out pulls attention away from what you're actually saying.
Questions this video answers
In the late 1980s.
Tallahassee, Florida.
Chapters
Many years ago, in the late 1980s, I was hosting a weekly TV political talk show. It was syndicated throughout Florida, and I was living in Tallahassee, Florida, the capital of the state. This was back before the days of email and text messaging and all that. So when you got viewer mail, it was literally mail. Someone had to write a letter, type it, find an envelope, put a stamp on it so, you know, they really wanted to communicate with you. I'd finished a show one week, and I thought, boy, I did a good job. I said so many brilliant, interesting, fascinating things. I'm sure there's going to be great commentary in the viewer mail a couple days go by, go to the mailbox, open it up. Sure enough, something that's clearly handwritten from a viewer, I open it up. Dear tj, why did you wear that ugly tie last Sunday? Here I thought I had all these brilliant comments people would want to praise me for what stuck out was my tie. Here's what I found in working with people, preparing for TV interviews, being on TV myself. It's not that there's one perfect thing to wear, but if you have one thing that stands out, that's the only thing anyone's going to notice or talk about. So if your tie is loose, if you have jewelry that's so much more interesting than anything you say, if you've got a collar up, there's anything that stands out, that's what people will notice. So it is really important for you to figure out what's the image you're trying to project. If you're not specifically trying to sell yourself as a fashion designer or an artist or a really creative type, and you're not in a specific job, like doctor wearing a doctor's outfit or fireman in a fireman's outfit, if you're just a typical business person or someone in government, then in general, you need to dress in a way that's somewhat bland and doesn't distract people. It's not that you can't have personality, but you don't want to distract them. And that was the problem. I wore a tie. I think it had paisley. So it had two too many colors, too many small patterns. It jumped around and it just captured too much attention. Okay, so why do I tell that story? I tell that story during a day of media training when I'm instructing people on what to wear for tv, because I want to drive home the importance of really thinking about what you're wearing, because you don't want to go to all the trouble of brainstorming on messages for two hours, brainstorming on sound bites, practicing rehearsing. You do it, everything goes according to plan, and then the only thing family, friends, colleagues talk about is the fact that your shirt was sticking out or the stripes were dancing on the screen.
