Look Like a Leader

There are two steps to becoming a leader:

  1. YOU have to believe you CAN be a leader.
  2. THEY have to believe you ARE a leader.

Simple, huh? The purpose of this email is to help with #2.

This may seem obvious but ... people WILL treat you differently depending on how you dress, conduct, and present yourself.

Toastmasters is a professional development organization. You come here to learn skills to help you advance in the workplace. Does dressing that casually and informally help you achieve that? If you want your boss to consider you for a promotion, they have to see you as a leader first.

Put yourselves in the shoes of a guest that's coming to your club to learn how to grow their communication and leadership skills and they see a room full of people dressed in jeans, shorts, t-shirts, sneakers, or flip flops. Do you think they're going to feel confident that you can help them achieve their goals?

This is especially true if you're a club officer. You should aim to dress a little more formally than your members. I'm not going to go into specifics of what you should wear, there are plenty of websites for that, but try to keep in mind that in order to BE a leader - people have to SEE you as one. And their first chance to do that is from what you're wearing when you enter the room.

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