I spent some four years, of my employed career, as Group Training Manager of a major Paint and Protective Coatings company. When I joined, as part of my orientation program, I visited the company’s five factories, which were situated in different parts of the United Kingdom. At each of these locations, I was given a factory tour and a briefing on the activities of the various departments. At the company’s East London factory, my tour included the R&D laboratory, where I was to be briefed and introduced to members of the technical staff.
At the far end of the laboratory, a somewhat dishevelled and long-haired young man was working at a very complicated set-up of bubbling retorts, test tubes and bunsen burners. He looked little more than a teenager. The jeans, t-shirt and trainers that he was wearing were only slightly tidier than the heavily stained laboratory coat that hung loosely from his bent shoulders. His scruffy appearance didn’t seem to fit in to what was, otherwise, a rather sophisticated technical environment.
The tour, eventually, took me to that end of the laboratory. The Technical Director, who was conducting my tour, introduced me to the young man. “May I introduce you to Doctor Tom Davidson. Tom is our most gifted technical innovator. He has been, wholly, responsible for developing the advanced polymer materials that have made us market leaders in our Industry Sector”. Despite his appearance, Doctor Davidson turned out to be a very outgoing and personable young man: an extremely affable, if untidy, genius!
Personal appearance, particularly, the clothes that we choose to wear, is an important expression of who we are. We make a very powerful statement of our personality as well as our professional and social values, in the way that we dress. People, like Doctor Davidson, are an exception. He was such a gifted technician, his appearance was hardly relevant to who he was. Geniuses are allowed to dress how they like, whatever the societal context.
But, sometimes, people assume a style of dress in the belief (or hope!) that it will project an identity and personality to which they aspire rather than truly inhabit. Such optimistic role-playing can, easily, be detected, by an obvious disparity between a person’s attire compared to general manner, mode of speech or the extent of their knowledge. If there is any inconsistency, between what others perceive and the assumed image, the role-player is, quickly, ‘found out’. The outcome for that individual is, at best, personal embarrassment and, at worst, a complete loss of credibility.
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it isn’t, always, a duck!
Doctor Davidson’s wardrobe issues and those people who choose to project ‘counterfeit clothes identities’, both contributed to the DNA of the following Training Package