Details, details: success in the workplace takes more than a resume - it takes polish

Men's Fitness, Sept, 1998 by Steve Mockus

Nick was one of the best copy editors at the downtown San Francisco publishing company I used to work for: quick, thorough, dependable. But he would not, under any circumstances, look anyone in the eye. A chat with the guy involved him staring at the floor, his shoes or an empty space over your shoulder. It was unnerving - and no one in the department (except maybe Nick) was surprised when his repeated applications for promotion stalled once he met each new hiring manager and gave them the freak-eye.

Although Nick is an extreme example, the image you present of yourself at work is based on a whole range of unconscious behavior, from personal quirks to habitual patterns. This image, though shaped by a collection of relatively trivial idiosyncrasies, can give people an enormously wrong impression of you and hurt your chances for advancement - no matter how good your work is.

"To some extent, these behaviors creep through and we don't even know it," says Anne B. Lovett, EdD, co-author of The Career Prescription: How to Stop Sabotaging Your Career and Put It on a Winning Track (Prentice Hall, $14). "If someone's missing the polish, if he's just off and someone else hasn't pointed it out, he can start to pay the price for it. It can be a real career-stopper."

"Often, there are unconscious, unstated things that go into our impressions of an individual," says Betsy Collard, director of strategic development at the Career Action Center in Cupertino, California, a consulting firm working primarily with employees of Fortune 100 companies. "If we're not aware of this, it can be very limiting. We all make judgments on this sort of evidence."

But how can you know if you're doing something unconsciously alienating? Psychologist Robert Chope, director of the Career and Personal Development Institute in San Francisco, suggests looking for signs that co-workers are avoiding interaction. "Watch the way people engage or don't engage with you. If you find yourself tuned out of the loop, if your boss or co-workers go to others and aren't seeking you out, you may have a problem," Chope says.

Lovett suggests finding a trusted friend, girlfriend or wife, someone you can ask, "Am I doing anything really dumb?" Striking a deal with a co-worker to warn each other of quirky behavior is another good strategy, but you must both be comfortable with complete honesty - and that's not always easy. We, your trusted friends here at Men's Fitness, can help. We've consulted the experts and compiled a list of tips to ensure that you present your best possible self in the working world.

Your space

Clean and sober. A neat desk is an efficient desk, or so it appears. If your boss cruises your office or cubicle while you're away and can't find something in your haystack filing system, it won't matter that you know where everything is; he may think you're disorganized. "Although some people simply file on top of their desk, other people may interpret a messy desk as a symptom of poor management," Lovett says. "A boss may feel that it's a reflection on the person's performance; that if the desk's a mess, then the person's head's a mess."

The solution? Order your space enough so that a logical search by a co-worker would yield logical results: Wouldn't it make sense to find the sales reports filed together in chronological order rather than scattered around your desk? It's not enough just to have everything under control; it has to look that way, too.

Personal professionalism. Because most employees personalize their work area, a stripped-down Zen approach to cubicle and office decoration can seem unsettled, transient, even antisocial in comparison. If you're new at the job, a little customizing will help announce that you mean to stick around for a while. "Your workspace says something about you, and it's a place where people can find out more about you - what kind of books you have, what family pictures," Lovett says. "A space that deliberately says nothing can seem negative."

Bring in a few pictures and knickknacks, but don't overdo it: An office full of extracurricular clutter can make it seem like you're not interested in work. Whimsy suggests approachability and a sense of humor, but it can also make you seem like a flake. Go light on the comedy.

Your style

Clothes count. According to Burton Kaplan, author of Winning People Over (Prentice Hall, $13), "Clothing reveals in a glance what words alone cannot convey: your present economic level; your capacity for success; your social skills; and most important, your promotability." The expectations of the traditional office are well understood: slacks, shirt, tie, maybe a jacket.

And that's what makes this one easy, Lovett says: "The good thing about conventional business clothes is that they're like a uniform and you don't have to think about them much."

Casual days, ever growing in popularity, are more open to interpretation - and personalized disaster. "What you wear is very important, even if it's casual, because clothes are like a picture frame. There's the attitude that because it's casual, it doesn't matter, but it does matter," Lovett says. Some guidelines: