My friend Darryl is one of the funniest guys at work. It's not just that he tells great stories or makes hilarious comments, but he also has a few quirks that add to his appeal. Case in point is his approach to attire.
A few months ago I ran into him in the microkitchen at work to find him wearing a very expensive, very sharp-looking suit. At my Silicon Valley hi-tech company, most people wear jeans or khakis to work, and it's only a little less common to find people wearing shorts and a T-shirt -- as I wore today. Wearing a suit is highly unusual. So my immediate response to seeing Darryl all decked-out was to ask him, tongue-in-cheek, "You interviewing someplace?". He laughed it off -- and responded similarly when the next two people to walk into the microkitchen asked the same question. Darryl explained that he was dressed as he was in preparation for a negotiation with a major potential partner of the company. We asked him if the negotiating team from the partner was in our building. To our surprise, Darryl smiled broadly -- and explained that the negotiations were actually going to be conducted via conference call!
Assuming then that he was dressed to impress his client, I asked him if the rest of our negotiating team was camped out in a nearby conference room. Darryl smiled broadly again -- and told us that the client was in another buidling and that he would be taking the call from his desk! It turns out Darryl was indeed dressed to impress -- but the person he was impressing was himself!
Darryl is an excellent negotiator, and it's true that dressing the part can help you better play the part. In my book, however, shorts and a T-shirt are almost always preferable to a suit. Darryl did insist that a $2,000 suit could be just as comfortable as shorts and a T-shirt. That very well may be true, but I can buy a hecka lot of pairs of shorts and a hecka lot of T-shirts for $2,000!
