Do you know who you are?
Are you a different person in different circumstances?
We all know we are different things to different people, for example, a mother to our kids, a manager to our team, an employee to our boss, the list goes on. We say we know who we are, but do we, when we have performed different roles at various times in varying situations.
There used to be a saying year’s ago, dress the part you want to be, not the person you are now. However, we still need to be able to express ourselves and be able to ‘wear’ whatever we want whenever we want.
In a working environment, we do have to act the role, wear our ‘mask’, ‘uniform’ or business ‘hat’ to help us get into role and perform the job or task in hand. If you imagine you are going to hear a presentation from a CEO of a large organisation and he or she turns up casually dressed in jeans and t-shirt with trainers, we would likely be very surprised, expecting the person to have arrived corporately dressed, not casual.
If we use another example of walking into an open plan office and wanting to speak to someone who can help us, we would likely walk towards the person who is dressed and looks the part, and of course, at this point we don’t really know if they can help us or not!
What we’re talking about here are a couple of things, one is assumptions. We only have one chance to make a first impression, and in those first seven seconds we’ve already made our mind up about that person in our minds. Therefore, the way we dress and dressing and acting the part in a work situation is of utmost importance.
The other thing we are talking about here is the roles we hold during any given day almost lends itself to determining what armour, uniform or hat is worn to help us ‘play’ the part and ‘be’ the part. Having a metaphorical hat or uniform can help us achieve what we need to in our roles.
