208: Dress For Presentation Success

<p>There is an old saying about lies, damn lies and statistics.  An often misquoted statistic in the presenting world is that 55% of your impression on an audience is based on how you are dressed.  Some coaches are advising on this basis and it is only partially true.  Professor Mehrabian’s research at UCLA did nominate that particular percentage, but he did so with an important caveat.  When what we are saying is not congruent or matching with the way we are saying it, then the audience gets distracted and starts focusing on how you are dressed 55% of the time.  When he published that research there were no uber powerful  thermonuclear distractors like we have today, in the form of smart phones.  These instruments of presenter attention destruction are rapidly connecting us with the internet and whisking us away from the speaker.</p> <p> </p> <p>If we are doing our job properly as speakers we will not be losing our audience.  One of my team attended a presentation I gave recently and she reported to me that the audience members were listening to me all the way through.  That is what I thought too, because the entire speech had me focused like a hawk on my audience, to make sure I was holding their attention.  I don’t mention this to say what a smarty pants I am, but just to highlight how difficult it has become for all of us to hold an audience today.</p> <p> </p> <p>My style of presenting is extremely high energy.  My karate training background has taught me how to harness my “ki” or “chi” and channel it to the audience.  I still have pretty good tonal variety so I can really work on keeping the audience with me.  The downside of all of this is that I generate a lot of heat.  Often when we are presenting on stage there will be spotlights trained on us and these can make us feel very hot as well.  When I am getting dressed that day,</p> <p>I always make sure of a couple of things for my presentation.  A white shirt is an absolute must.  I love my blue business shirts, but what I found was the heat generates swea