Which Costume Should You Wear?

I bristle at those who say to presenters, “Just be yourself.”  Which self?  The self that converses with my best friend’s grandmother at her dining room table, or the guy who teases his teammates and drinks beer while taking off his hockey equipment in the locker room?

What if my self lacks expressiveness, intellectual clarity, empathy for others, a sense of humor?  Should I just be me and hope for the best?

The fact is, I’m a lot of different people and I wear many different costumes.  I don’t go to weddings wearing my running shorts, and I don’t go to the gym wearing my tuxedo.  I have costumes and behaviors for various functions.

In fact, most of us are offended by untucked shirts, short skirts, and baseball caps at the opera or a graduation ceremony.   And most audiences experience a nonrational annoyance at speakers with inappropriate presentation behaviors and clothing.

This is because style communicates character.  Every presentation is a mingling of fact-based argument and impressions.  Shrewd observers discern character traits in how we dress and present ourselves.  The words we use, the intonations and pacing of our speech, our body language, the frequency of our blinks, of our “ers and uhms”–they all add up to the audience’s perception of our abilities.  The French naturalist Buffon concluded that “Style is the man himself.”

Should we tell cell-phone manufacturers not to worry about style.  “Just make plain old phones, don’t worry about how they look.”

Shall we tell Ford, GM, and Chrysler to fire all their designers and give us boxey vehicles in one shade of black?

Shall we all give up on fashion, and wear identical burlap sacks?

I don’t think we want to do any of these things, and we don’t want to “just be ourselves” when we’re presenting. We want to win the assent of others.  We want to induce belief when we speak.  We want to inspire trust, loyalty, respect.  We need to use all the arrows in our quiver.

There are many (some in high places) who scorn any proficiency in adding force and color to a presentation.  These people are often completely ineffective themselves.   They scorn the persuasive arts and their audiences may very well dismiss them as irrelevant.

The suppression of style is itself a style.  Remember Senator Sam Ervin, who brought down the Nixon White House with his, “Aw shucks, I’m just a country lawyer” style.  Very effective.  The stealth approach.

The bottom line is that you can’t affect others with your idea if you yourself are not affected by it.  Your listeners cannot tell if you are affected by it except by your language and expression.  The main reason we make presentations is to demonstrate not only our mastery of the idea we’re presenting, but our ability to overcome the obstacles, the passions and fears of others who may get in the way of it’s implementation.

In other words, the audience is looking for good ideas and someone to make them happen.  Your style is a big chunk of your substance.