Dressing like your boss can boost your career prospects.

I was stunned to witness a clone invasion while lunching in the City recently. 

A bunch of people on their work break came in, all wearing identical outfits!

Every single man wore a suit with a pale blue shirt. 

And every woman wore a pencil skirt, heels and trench mac. It was sartorial monotony gone mad.

So, with my fashion psychology hat on, I pondered.... what’s with the dressalikes?

Forget putting in the hours and hitting targets, new research suggests that dressing like your colleagues is the way to boost your career trajectory.

Debenhams surveyed 2,000 people on work place dressing recently.  Six in ten people (61%) said that dressing like their colleagues created a better team spirit and a higher level of productivity.

 

Debenhams designers, all dressed refreshingly different!

Perhaps this explains the office trend of 'work twins'. Could this be a key look for the new season?

• More than half of those surveyed said that they were heavily influenced by what their managers and colleagues wear to work.

And a third (33%) said their team deliberately bought the same clothes and wore them on the same day! Apparently ‘Checked shirt Fridays’ and ‘Blue Mondays” were popular with men, while female workers were fans of ‘Monochrome Mondays’ and ‘Floral Fridays’.

• Interestingly the majority of managers surveyed (68%) also said that staff with a similar style to them gained brownie points and were more on their radar. 

There's a psychological reason for this. Humans tend to be drawn to people who are like them, since difference can be perceived as threatening. People feel safer when they dress alike. They are signalling their need to belong to the group. A team that chooses the same style of dress for work is indicating their cohesiveness and could reflect a wider collaborative culture within the organisation or a high need for conformity. 

It’s well known that bosses often appoint and promote people who are like them. 

Boards are renowned for electing members that resemble existing ones. 

Clothes are a shorthand for who we are and what we are like, and research shows clothes  can also change the wearer’s personality.

So dressing like the boss may bring out a person’s leadership behaviours. It could even subconsciously influence others to see them as management material.  You could say that people who dress like their superiors have found a smart way to get noticed and accepted.

This story ran in the press last week and the Independent showed that copycat dressing extends beyond the workplace. Apparently Gareth Bale, when waiting for his dream move to Madrid, started dressing like his new teammate Cristiano Ronaldo in the run-up to the deal!

One of my Twitter followers, a guy, pointed out that he wouldn’t be dressing like a boss – as she’s female. Fair enough.

And when I did a Jack FM radio interview about this story the interviewer told me their boss is a keen cyclist. They were all thinking of coming to work in Lycra the following morning. I wonder what that did for their promotion chances?

How to dress for success

Watch a video here about first impressions and how to dress for success.....



it's great to see our University of Hertfordshire research featured in this video, which reinforces the message conveyed in an earlier post that dress disasters can ruin your job prospects ... without you even knowing it.

Disastrous dress undoes job prospects

I was chatting about fashion psychology yesterday with a friend who works at a very prestigious university, when suddenly her face lit up.

“We’ve just made an appointment,” she said  “and now it’s struck me that we appointed the best dressed candidate.”

Each applicant had to give a presentation to a panel and an audience of peers. 

The first candidate, she said, had obviously borrowed his suit. It was at least three sizes too big, the sleeves hung down over his hands and the jacket almost reached his knees. 

“It swamped him,” my friend told me, “and now I realise he seemed diminished by it in so many ways, he came across as completely powerless.”

The next candidate, a woman, was smartly dressed except her blouse didn’t quite meet the top of her trousers. 

“We were seated right at mid-rift level, the woman was standing up and her bare belly was in our eye-line. I’m afraid it detracted from what she was saying…could we really work with someone who had exposed so much flesh at our first encounter?”

Apparently the third candidate matched the first two on experience and credentials, plus he was also dressed appropriately; good fitting suit, clean shoes, open-necked shirt. 

He got the job.

I've come for the job

It’s so easy to overlook sartorial turn-offs like these. No one ever mentions them in the rejection letter ("We're very sorry but.... that suit... what were you thinking???")

Anyway the impression is mostly subliminal, exerting its effect unconsciously. 

Yet recent research I’ve been involved in is showing just how much these things matter in the job market. 

Shabby suits on men spell failure, not success (see earlier blog)

Exposing too much flesh marks a woman out for a low status job and scuppers her chances of reaching the top, as we've reported here previously.

In 2009 Wookey et al found that a provocatively dressed female Chief Executive Officer was rated as less competent than a professionally dressed CEO, a professionally dressed office assistant and a provocatively dressed office assistant.

They conclude that: “…sexiness is associated with social ability in low-status jobs, but when a woman is in a position of power, sexiness may be viewed as dysfunctional and inappropriate."

Wookey, M. L., Graves, N. A., & Butler, J. C. (2009). Effects of a sexy appearance on perceived competence of women. The Journal of Social Psychology, 149, 116-118.

  

THE BEST THINGS COME TO THOSE WHO ANTICIPATE

Here's a quote I came across recently by the managing director of Harrods, Michael Ward, who apparently said:

“What luxury is about is having the most beautiful experience,

 that’s what people love.”

Is luxury just a beautiful experience - or more than that?

Do you agree? I think he’s only partly right. Because experiences, however beautiful, are also often fleeting, transient, gone in an instant.

Real luxury, I would argue, is about anticipating the most beautiful experience.

That’s because brain research now tells us that pleasure isn’t just experiential. It’s anticipatory. We know our brains have pleasure detectors. When we acquire an object of desire, or see a lover’s smile or taste a wonderful champagne, a rush of happy chemicals go sloshing through the brain.

But those happy chemicals also get released when we anticipate something we love. In fact we get a bigger rush from anticipating than we do from experiencing.

Scientists from the University Medical Centre in Hamburg recently conducted tests that measure brain activity and found that our brains experience more pleasure when we are working towards something than when we actually achieve it.
(So that's why makers of designer handbags create waiting lists)

That’s why luxury in the form of real quality brings lasting satisfaction, it’s why craftsmanship persists and why bling will only ever bring transient satisfaction, to the producer and to the consumer.

Science has proved that it’s anticipation that makes us happy, that long-termism always trumps short-termism and that a delayed reward brings more pleasure than an instant reward.

Interestingly the scientists found also discovered that regular hints about the upcoming reward can boost our feelings of pleasure, when people in the lab were reminded of something that was worth waiting for the pleasure centres in their brains lit up.

So if you have a special bottle of GH Mumm champagne tucked away for a special occasion, having a quick peek at it on regular occasions will be sure to boost your happiness levels.

Dreaming about future pleasures can bring more happiness than experiencing them. 

Think about holidays too. We’re all supposed to love holidays.  Do you like planning a holiday, looking at images of tropical beaches, beautiful sunsets, sumptuous hotels, imagining a place where the sun always shines and you’ve left all your worries behind in Heathrow’s departure lounge? 

Well researchers in the Netherlands recently showed that we get a larger boost in happiness from planning a holiday than we do from the holiday itself. They studied the happiness levels of over 1000 Dutch adults and found that happiness levels were highest when people were planning their holiday.

In fact they argue that if you really want holidays to make you happier you shouldn’t just have one long one, you should have lots of shorter ones so you maximise the time spent in anticipation.

Intuitively we all know this and evolutionary psychology accounts for why we’re drawn to products that embody this waiting process, that stand for timelessless and are characterised by tradition and craftsmanship.

Ironically though nowadays we are rarely encouraged to wait. We live in an immediate gratification society, instant messaging, fast food, ready credit and computer games where you can kill your enemies at the touch of a button.

Are we all going to lose the ability to delay our pleasures? During boom times that is always a risk but during a recession different types of processes operate. That’s when delayed gratification comes to the fore.

  

Because psychological research shows being able to delay gratification is a sign of higher cognitive ability, one that’s more recently evolved. A sign of maturity that’s even linked to quality of life.

Resisting temptation is hard if you like immediate gratification. 

You may have heard of the famous marshmallow test that an American psychologist called Walter Mischel carried out on children in the 1960’s. Mischel offered young children, around 3 and 4 years of age, a marshmallow. He put it in front of them and said they could eat it now OR if they could wait while he stepped out for a few minutes when he came back they could have two marshmallows.

Most children couldn’t wait. They either ate it as soon as he was out of the room or sat and squirmed for a while and then caved in and ate it. Some covered their eyes with their hands or turned their back on the marshmallow so that they can’t see it.

One girl stroked the marshmallow lovingly; another boy looked carefully around the room to make sure that nobody could see him then picked it up sucked it and put it back!

Some children managed to wait 15 minutes.

But about 30% of the children wrestled with temptation but stuck it out for a full fifteen minutes. They were ones who could delay gratification in return for a second marshmallow. Years later the experimenters followed up the children to adulthood.

The ones who could wait did better at school, were more successful in their careers and in their relationships.

The instant gratifiers, the ones who couldn’t wait, on the other hand were more likely to have behavioural problems at school, or problems at home.

The moral of this story is that waiting is a higher-cognitive skill, a sign of maturity and those who can delay gratification have a better quality of life.

Delayed and immediate gratification originate in different parts of the human brain.

More recently brain researchers have found the key to the link between delayed gratification and intelligence. Different parts of the brain get activated by immediate and delayed rewards.

The need for immediate reward is driven by the more primitive part of the brain – the part that might impel the purchaser towards quick fixes, impulse buys, bling and disposable luxury.

But when people choose longer term options they use the frontal-parietal part of the brain, that is situated in the more recently evolved pre-frontal cortex - the part that differentiates us from animals and from our ancestors – it gives us the ability to reason, to plan ahead and exercise self-control.

So delayed gratification and the ethic of the craftsman overlap and reinforce each other in that both require a certain construction of the future, a certain ideal of stability and longevity.

That’s why brands that are associated with longevity, with craftsmanship and tradition, will continue to have lasting appeal whatever the economic climate but especially when people want every penny they spend to have value.

So Michael Ward was only partly right when he said that luxury is having a beautiful experience, it’s more than that.

The best things come to those who anticipate….

 This is the talk I gave to the G.H. Mumm Perrier-Jouet Champagne Assembly on 27th January.

PS When researching this article I discovered there's even a magazine called Delayed Gratification. I thought it might be found right on the top shelf of the newsagents, or only published every other year, but it seems it's out quarterly and rather sensibly measures news in months not minutes. Like all good things in life it says it is beautiful, collectable and designed to be treasured.http://www.dgquarterly.com/

Tall, attractive, left-handed man with tidy home wanted.

Cor, what a nerve! The indignation in the voices of the people answering the radio interviewer’s question was palpable:

“I’d prefer not to say”

“That’s confidential!”

“It’s not appropriate to discuss that”

“I’m not prepared to tell you”

............................

     

Is money the great taboo?

What topic had Daniel Finkelstein probed them about for his programme Can Pay Will Pay? 


That brazen broadcaster had the nerve, the sheer bare-faced gall to accost complete strangers - and ask them how much they earned. 


The responses that could be broadcast consisted of polite but firm refusals.
Why is money such a great taboo? 

Actually, as DF pointed out, it’s the great British taboo. A Polish girl was quite happy to reveal all and was shocked by the anal Brits’ secrecy over the size of their pay packets.

Here are 10 fascinating facts about people’s earnings that you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask:

1.       The UK earnings average is just under £26,000 p.a.
2.       Most people earn between 15k-35k
3.       If you earn over £51,000 you’re in the top 10%
4.       Women make up the majority of the paid less group
5.       Ethnic minority groups and people with disabilities are overrepresented in the low earners group
6.       Taller people earn more  than shorter people (an extra inch of height results in an extra 2.5% of earnings)!
7.       Ugly people earn 10-20% less than the average
8.       People with tidy homes earn more than messier people
9.       Lesbians earn more than heterosexual women while gay men earn less than heterosexual men
10.          Left handed people earn more than right handed

So if you’re a short, ugly, right-handed, messy, heterosexual woman from an ethnic minority group your pay-prospects don’t look too good. But one consolation is you’ll probably hush up your low pay. Unless you’re Polish of course….

One research finding that might console the low paid is that you’ll only be unhappy about your low pay if you discover that someone is earning more. Relative earnings, rather than absolute earnings, are what make people happy, apparently. Perhaps that explains the pay-talk taboo. If someone else is earning more, we'd just rather not know thank you very much.

Nifty bit of tax advice for high earners.

Simonne says:

High earners can avoid a 60% tax rate

There was a change in the Budget which some may not have noticed. Anyone earning more than £100,000 may effectively pay as much as 60% in tax because the personal allowance (the amount you can earn without paying any tax) is now gradually being snatched away for earnings in excess of that sum. Those earning £112,950 or more will lose their personal allowance completely, otherwise £1 is knocked off for every £2 earned between £100,000 and £112,950.

But the good news is that this can be avoided by making additional pension contributions. For example, if your taxable income is £105,000, by making a £5,000 pension contribution your taxable income would fall to the £100,000 threshold. At £100,000, your take home pay would be around £65,000 after tax and national insurance, compared to £67,000 with a £105,000 income. This  means that the £5,000 pension contribution would only have ended up costing you £2,000 -  in other words, worth 2.5 times more than the amount you invested. Pretty cool way to avoid extra tax!

Anyone who can work that out deserves to be paid at least £100k to my mind - Karen :o)