IT Dress Code
Dressing appropriately at work will not necessarily help you, but not following your company’s unwritten dress code norms can negatively affect your upward mobility and your opportunities to move into IT leadership.
Certainly there are general business rules that define what is and is not acceptable to wear in the workplace—and the technical environment as well. Every company is different, so be careful and adapt this advice to your specific work environment.
As an individual contributor in IT, you are primarily judged on how well you perform a specific task. If you are a programmer, you’re judged on the quality of your code. If you are responsible for the network, you’re judged based on how well you deal with network issues and tasks.
However, as an IT manager, you are viewed through the lens of your judgment and decision-making ability; this includes ALL types of judgment, including what you wear. After all, if you don’t have the common sense to wear something appropriate to work, how can you be trusted to make good business decisions? This question may seem superficial, but most often it’s also very true.
Consider the following:
- If you are an individual contributor and would like to get promoted, observe how your manager and his/her peers are dressed.
- If you are a new manager, observe how your peer managers are dressed.
- If you want to get promoted to the next management level, see how that level above you dresses.
As silly as this dress code stuff may sound, (Truth is, it originally sounded a little funny to many of us) it’s true. For example, let’s say that the first time you went to your boss’ staff meeting you wore jeans and everyone else was wearing a suit and tie, how would you feel? You would most likely feel out of place. This would also send a clear message and signal of how you see yourself to the leadership in attendance. If you aspire to a “seat at the strategic IT management table” your dress can be an unspoken sign of your goal.
If you want to be seen as a candidate for management and leadership development, give the culture of dress at your company some thought. In addition to maintaining your superior technical skills, when senior executives discuss retention management and succession planning, you want to be sure you have done all you can to be a candidate for the lists they will develop containing that elite group of individuals!
For additional information on this topic, check out The Etiquette Advantage in Business by Peggy Post & Peter Post, or Beyond Business Casual: What to Wear to Work If You Want to Get Ahead by Ann Marie Sabath
Eric Bloom
President and founder of Manager Mechanics, LLC
Eric is also a nationally syndicated columnist, entrepreneur, speaker, award winning author and trainer in IT management skills. By pioneering IT leadership education in traditional classroom settings, as well as online platforms and advanced virtual worlds, Eric’s team provides strategic education to firms who value superior IT leadership, a strong teamwork ethic, IT innovation for competitive advantage, and planned succession to consciously control recruiting and retention.
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