Leadership Presence and the Dress Code: What You Choose to Make Visible

You want the next room to meet the woman doing the job now. Most conversations about leadership presence and the dress code stop at what's acceptable, which is the least useful place to stop.

Everyone in a building is sending a signal, and most of us inherited ours. The few who choose theirs have answered one question the rest of us skip: what do I want this room to know about me?

I once worked with someone who had. They chose which parts of themselves to show, and they showed them. Leaning into more of who they were made them a better leader.

This is the pattern I keep meeting in the leadership rooms I work in. A woman has a plan for the one room the feedback came from, and the other five she's in every week go unplanned: the video call, the hallway conversation, the networking function, the industry dinner. Each of those is a presence moment, and the unplanned ones are where the energy goes.

The clothes are simply where that undecided question turns up, because getting dressed is the one part of it you hold in your hands before eight in the morning.

So before your first meeting next week, what do you want that room to know about you?

Read the full article on Substack: Everyone in That Building Was Sending a Signal