Sample Topics - Personal Presentation

How do you measure up to this test?  If your boss has to select someone to represent your organisation externally, it should be you!  For the moment, we’ll take it for granted that you are a safe pair of hands in relation to the content of your job. 

What makes you the choice?

Personal Presentation and Style isn’t about personality or charisma.  All managers, in their own ways, can make the most of the advice this section offers and enhance the way others perceive them.  It’s all about attitude and practice.

Let’s deal with some personal presentation basics first of all.  Whether your culture is formal or informal, you don’t wear the same clothes all the time and they’re clean.

You bathe or shower every day, your perfume or aftershave doesn’t make your colleagues cough and sneeze and your nickname isn’t Buffalo-Breath.

How to deal tactfully with issues of personal hygiene is a perennial problem that often does not get addressed.

Your industry, profession or vocation has its own dress and appearance codes and you’re probably observing them.  Unless you’re required to wear uniform, there’s usually a range of acceptability.

Your objective should be to present yourself within that range as being ready for at least the next level up in your hierarchy.  You’ll judge what that means, or indeed if it’s relevant to your environment.

Your workspace is clean and tidy and you know where everything is.  You have outgrown the need to display pictures of celebrities, yourself at a fancy dress party or ‘amusing’ stickers and slogans.

You arrive for meetings before they’re due to start withyour papers in order.  You never have to say - “I’ve got it somewhere…” or leave the meeting to fetch missing documents.

When you meet people, your face and voice are welcoming and you make eye contact with them.  If you’re sitting at the time, you stand up and shake hands firmly (there’s nothing special about a firm handshake, but people think there is).

Watch news coverage of politicians greeting each other at international conferences for a lesson from the experts.  You’ll want to tone it down a bit, though!

If you’re receiving visitors, you show concern for them - good journey, bathroom visit, beverage or water, need to set up equipment.  If relevant, you’ll indicate the time you’ve set aside for their visit.

For longer visits, you schedule comfort breaks and possibly arrange for some food.

You’ve allowed some contingency time for the visit to overrun, but indicate pleasantly when time is up.  When they leave, you escort them to the exit or lift, thank them for visiting and wish them a safe journey.

If you’re a guest, you tell your host that you’re pleased to be visiting them and welcome the opportunity to discuss whatever it is you came for.  If appropriate, you enquire about the time they have available and adapt your visit’s aims to it.

You offer to end your visit when the time expires, and take your cue to remain or go from their response.  People can find it difficult when visitors outstay their welcome, and they will be grateful that you have saved them from any embarrassment.  

At seminars and courses, you’re an ambassador for your organisation.  You ensure you make contact with other attendees you should be talking to.

Whether you’re a host, guest, event participant or at a staff party, you don’t drink too much, tell jokes inappropriate to the group you’re with, make sexist, racist or religious comments, or criticise your organisation.

All overwhelmingly obvious?  It should be, but you can probably list people who forgot the rules.  Others didn’t forget their behaviour though, did they?

You’re taken seriously because your personal presentation and consideration for others is impressive and you’re always impeccably organised.

We’re going on to deal with some ‘being…’ issues – being assertive, being wrong and apologising, being consistent and being unreasonable.

In some way, they’re all related to personal presentation and style, so this seems to be a good place to discuss getting your overall presentation right.

Suggestions about Personal Presentation and Style

• Dressed in your working clothes, take a long look at yourself in a full length mirror.  How do you look - clothes, shoes, grooming - compared to your ‘role model’?
• Review your workspace and get rid of any clutter.
• Review how you organise your work to ensure you know where everything.  Arrange current projects for rapid monitoring.
• Make sure your diary, paper or screen-based, enables you to keep track of all the tasks a CYM manager needs to carry out.
• Practise your ‘welcoming’ communications with the people you meet.  Do it gradually if you’re not a naturally extrovert person. 

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