You are what you wear.....or are you???

Formal, business, smart, smart-casual, casual......all ways of describing the type of clothes we wear!

Do the clothes we wear affect how we work?  Does it affect our influence on our customers or colleagues?  How we present ourselves.

From the little research I've done before writing this, it seems that the opinion is divided between those who think dressing for work should be smart and others who think casual is fine.  A question was posted on Twitter just recently regarding what smart-casual is and this blog post has come out of that.  There was a variety of responses.

It's an interesting subject to consider - in my office we have recently be advised that senior management in our head office have decided all the men should wear ties again (requirement for ties had been relaxed for some time, unless meeting with clients).  I had heard that some staff members (not from my office) had been away on business in a Southern Hemisphere country and had gone to visit their clients wearing shorts and t-shirts!  I have to wonder why these 'professionals' even considered this would be acceptable dress for a business meeting - never mind how hot it was!  It obviously didn't create the right first impression.

I also heard a story about a relationship manager going to meet their corporate client and turned up to their office to find all the staff in jeans and flip flops and felt it could have been the office of a well-known social media provider, rather than an office of corporate professionals managing their clients' millions of pounds!  Why did the manager feel that way? 

I had a look into what 'casual' means and came up with the following:

- being without ceremony or formalising, relaxed (casual events)
- being or seeming unconcerned or apathetic (casual attitude)
- shallow or superficial (casual affair)
- not serious or thorough, hasty and without attention to detail (casual inspection)
- without definite or serious intention, offhand (casual remark)

All seems to be negative in my opinion.  

I wonder if I'm slightly biased writing this - my own opinion is that working in a professional environment (for me it's facilities management within the finance industry) should mean we dress for that environment. Smart dress, smart mind!  Does sloppy dress mean sloppy work?  Does casual dress mean casual attitude?  That we don't work as hard?  Are we as productive wearing jeans and t-shirt as we are wearing a suit?  Do we work better if we feel comfortable in what we are wearing?

Personally, I feel better about myself if I make a little bit of an effort when I get dressed in the mornings.  Being very honest, there are very few times when I like what I see in the mirror and if I can feel confident in what I'm wearing then it helps with my confidence in the office and facing the variety of issues/dramas of daily life in facilities management!!  Something smart, high heels, hair done nicely and a bit of make up will make me feel a little more powerful.  Then there's the 'lucky pants'!  Actually I don't have lucky pants but a matching set of underwear is always a good way to start the day (however, if you ever meet me you can't ask me about it - I blush very easily!!!!!).

Let's get back to the point......perhaps there's an argument for wearing something in-between?  Smart-casual?  What about 'dress down Friday'?  I feel like I'm asking more questions rather than giving answers.  I don't think I have the answers. 

Should what we wear be a matter of personal choice?  Does it matter what our customers' think or expect?  What do we expect when we go into an establishment?  A bank or insurance office?  A hotel or restaurant?  I'm sure we all have expectations.....what are they?  Should we pay attention to our own expectations of others when we make the decision of what we are going to wear, how we portray ourselves. 

Please feel free to leave comments, giving your thoughts on this.  It would be great to have feedback!

The importance of management in FM

On Twitter recently there has been some discussion over what to call FM for the hash tag.....should it be #facilitiesmanagement or #facilitymanagement or even #facman?  Another suggestion was to forget management and just use #facilities.

It just so happened that at the end of last week I attended the quarterly training day of the BIFM's South West Region, which was held at the Bristol Hilton Hotel.  One of the speakers was the fabulous Liz Kentish (The FM Coach and deputy chair of the BIFM).  Liz's presentation focused on transformational skills and developing the leadership and management skills of facilities managers so they can be influencing and driving business rather than just supporting the facilities function.  

I think it is such an important point to remember.  Read the extract below.... I have to confess I can't remember where I got it from...(it was in an FM magazine a little while ago and I apologise to whoever wrote it for not acknowledging you - please let me know if it was you!!)

Don't get too distracted by the word "Facilities".

FM is primarily a management skill, the Facilities side is the specialisation of that skill. As a management discipline, many of the skills you could expect are commonplace in management disciplines; Communicating, negotiation, presentation, relationship management, people management, process management, resource allocation, prioritisation, etc. 

But, the Facilities part of FM is the specialisation. FM is a broad, varied & complicated discipline. Experience and knowledge give a big shortcut, but primarily I would say the skills required are practicality, tenacity, resilience, being able to work alone, good judgement, decision making, attention to detail and drive to specialise and improve your knowledge. 

No one is born knowing how the air-conditioning works (or perhaps more relevantly: why it isn't working right now), but a good FM will find out. They'll look into it, they'll ask people, they'll make their engineers explain it to them and they'll test the competency of "experts" by asking difficult questions until they are satisfied with the answers.

Let's remember that we are managing facilities services and work to develop the skills to do our jobs better.