What to wear for a presentation - 3 reasons you should care

You have your speech prepared and ready to go. Just one question left to answer… for the love of sanity, what on earth do you wear? What to wear for a presentation can be a tough question to answer. The problem is, most don't even ask the question because most don't know how important it is for their success as speakers.No matter what your speech is about - might be a million-dollar sales presentation, a project update at work, a speech at a wedding, a keynote address, a Toastmasters project or simply a toast at a party. How you appear will make an impression and an impact.In this series of articles, I will talk about why what you wear matters and why you should care. And then I will give you some solid guidelines to help you choose an outfit that ensures you project the right image. Let us begin.

3 reasons why you should pay attention to how you dress for a speech

1. Your audience expects it

As a speaker, you are a leader – if only for the duration of your presentation. You are speaking and the audience is expected to listen. You are leading. Therefore your audience expects you to look the part. There is a way the audience expects a leader to appear and this will vary with each audience. To be effective, it is important not to disappoint that expectation.

2. Your message needs it 

Dressing inappropriately can be very distracting for your audience and this hurts your message. If your audience members have to shift constantly between the coffee stain on your collar, the flapping of your flip-flops and your PowerPoint slides, you are doing a disservice to yourself and your message. Not to mention possible damage to your reputation. To learn more about some mistakes you could be making in your presentation, download my free ebook – 5 deadly mistakes and what to do to avoid them.

3. You deserve it

Presenting yourself well is a mark of respect to your audience. But it also makes a statement about your respect for yourself and your message. Appearing in neat, clean and appropriate attire says a lot about you even before you open your mouth. It does wonders for your credibility – and credibility is priceless as a speaker. There is another surprising reason you might want to dress it up a bit for your next presentation. Read my article on that here - Can dressing up make you smarter?In the meantime, let us discuss some potentially confusing issues.

But isn’t it about my content?

Your content matters. But it is not all that matters. A solid presentation is bipedal. It stands on two legs – your content and your delivery. Your outfit is a big part of that second leg – your delivery. The best content in the world with poor delivery will fall flat. And empty words delivered with flash and flair will nauseate an intelligent audience. But great content delivered well has the power to make a powerful difference. That’s why it is called a presentation – you are presenting – yourself and your message. 

Get Real

It would be great if people did not judge you based on what you wear. It would be great – but it is also a fantasy. The reality is people need a way to determine if they can trust you or not. And because we are highly visual beings (the brain dedicates about 10 times more cells to processing visual input than auditory), how a person looks carries a lot of weight in our judgement of them. More so than what they say - at least at first.This is why it can be very difficult to take a person seriously if they look like a joke. Picture a person in a clown outfit vigorously discussing government policy.Yes, I'd have a hard time keeping a straight face too.

 A quick experiment 

Let us try a quick experiment.Think of a homeless person. That’s it. That’s the experiment.And now for the result. Did dress or attire form a large part of your thought? I’m willing to bet it did. First, notice that I did not ask you to “picture” a homeless person – I asked you to “think” of a homeless person. Yet your brain quickly conjured up an image – not a concept - an image. Maybe even complete with tattered clothes and a scraggly beard.

We all do it

We all judge by appearance. And it is not a bad thing – entirely. Our brains do this because we need to be able to identify positive signals and take appropriate steps to derive benefit from the situation. This is the side you want to be on as a speaker. But there is the other side as well – visual assessment also helps us identify threats and take appropriate avoidance action.This is all well and good and is actually necessary for intelligent navigation of our physical and social world. However, this quirk of our brains means we make judgements of character based on appearance.This is where grey gives way to black and white. We start making unfair judgements - and it takes a lot of conscious effort to project the right and positive thought to others regardless of how they appear.   

Make it work for you – not against you

Overall, realizing that your audience will make judgements about you based on how you present yourself is the hard truth. And the sooner we accept it, the sooner we can take steps to ensure that we present our best selves – not only for our own sakes, but for the sake of our message and even our audience. Therefore it is crucial for the success of your presentation that you look the part.Your audience expects it, your message needs it, and you deserve it.In the next post, I will share with you three solid guidelines for selecting a winning outfit for your presentation. Until then, speak with skill.