Episode 207: Your Silent Message

You’re being assessed before you even say hello and the timeline is brutal: less than a tenth of a second. That snap judgment isn’t fair, but it is real, and it’s happening in every conference room, networking event, pitch meeting, and hallway introduction you walk into. It's time to pull back the curtain on the “silent message” your appearance sends so you can stop leaving your credibility to chance. 

If you’ve ever felt “off” in a high-stakes room, we name what that feeling may be telling you and I give you three grounded questions to ask before you get dressed. Think of this as personal branding that feels like you, not a costume. 

If you’re ready to build a wardrobe strategy that helps you command the room before you speak, check out The Foundation Edit www.theeverydayicon.co/the-foundation-edit

Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s leveling up, and leave a review so more women can take control of their silent message.

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Transcript

Welcome And The Instant Judgment

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is the Everyday Icon Style Podcast, the space for style-conscious, career-driven women who are ready to look like the next level version of themselves. Each episode helps you build a wardrobe that reflects not only your executive presence, but your real life. With a little bit of guidance, intentional edits, and no full-blown transformation required. Let's elevate your style and your authenticity one outfit at a time. I'm Tiffany, your style coach. Let's get started. You walk into a room, you haven't introduced yourself, you haven't shared your title, and you haven't even presented not one single idea. And yet, every single person in that room has already formed an opinion about who you are. It's not a maybe, it's not a possibility, it's actually happening every time in every room that you walk into. And research says that it takes less than a tenth of a second. We're used to hearing five seconds or seven seconds or less, for someone to form a first impression about you. A tenth of a second. You don't even have time to smile, reach out your hand, and say hi because the judgment has already been made. So the question isn't whether you're sending a message before you speak. The real question is, do you know what message you're sending? So welcome back to the Everyday Icon Style Podcast. As always, I'm your host, Tiffany. And today, this episode, it's actually one that I've wanted to record for a while. And it's been on my mind, and I've probably recorded some episodes about it, but very loosely. But I think this one is a lot better, stronger to help us understand about what our message is saying. And it's usually a very silent message. Now, in this space, of course, I also talk about a lot about confidence, clarity, and even building a wardrobe that works for your life. And all of that's important. But in this episode, I want to discuss something very specific. And that is going to be your silent message. The one that goes out before you say hey, shake a hand, or before anyone knows your name, title, your ideas, or your thoughts, or just to get to know you, period. Because this is the message that is shaping your opportunities in ways that most people never stop to examine. And once you begin to understand what's actually happening in the room, you can't unsee it. So let's get started and let's talk about first the science of the silent message. So let's get some context around here. This is not about fashion or style. This is about how the human brain actually works. And sometimes we're always fascinated about how this works. Now, when we encounter another person, our brain does something really fascinating and crazy. It starts scanning for information, it's looking for signals and cues. Safe or threatening, worth my attention or not? And it's happening so fast, and because I think it's so normal, we don't even think or realize that it's even happening. And the brain can do this in milliseconds, long before our logic, rational part has a chance to gather more or additional information. And this is the snap judgment. It's already been filed. So the little pieces of information, they've already been filed away before we're like, hold on, pause. You know what? This is a safe space. Or you know what, this is worth my attention. It's going like a little mile a minute. Now, the biggest input in this snap judgment is your visual information, what someone looks like, how they carry themselves, and even including what they are wearing. And you've done this all the time. We all have, it just feels like second nature almost. So, how about this? Princeton researchers found that people from judgment form judgments about competence, likability, and trustworthiness from a glance at someone's face in as little as a hundred milliseconds. And while that study focused on faces, the broader body of research on first impressions is still consistent. Appearance is the loudest voice in the room before anybody speaks. There was a research years ago, I can't remember if it was, I believe it was Harvard, did it, and it was the white coat test. And they gave individuals, half the people individuals they gave white coats, the other half they didn't give them white coats. And they wanted to see what difference or what people would think about the two groups of people. So the people with the non-white coats that didn't have on white coats, people didn't think that they were important, that they were just there. They had no, they were just, they didn't know who or what they did based on their appearance. Now we go to the individuals that had on the white coats. The people thought that they were doctors, nurses, chemists, biologists, something important. Because remember, when we see white coats, the first thing we think of is, oh, you're a doctor, you're a nurse, you're someone in the science field. So of course, whatever you do, your work is important. But what if those individuals were all doctors that didn't wear the white coats, and the people that had on the white coats weren't doctors, but people assumed that they were just based off of what they had on. Now, what does this mean for you? It means your appearance is having a conversation on your behalf every day. And the question is whether that conversation is helping you or costing you. And most of the time, it's probably costing you. So what happens when you don't know the message that you're sending? Because a lot of us don't, or now we're becoming, I hope after this, you start to become aware of it. Now, many people are sending messages that have absolutely no idea of what they're sending. And those messages are creating friction in places they can't figure it out. Why? So here's an example. Let's talk about Bob the entrepreneur. Now, he's built a genuinely impressive business. He's smart, he's articulate, he's deeply knowledgeable in his field. But Bob feels like he wasn't being taken seriously as his peers in certain rooms. And many of you have felt this. So when he would have conversations with investors, it felt hard than what harder than what it should be. People would listen to him, but there was always this subtle moment where he could feel them recalibrating and wanting to go speak to somebody else. Now he thinks it was his presentation about his business and how he could help or how he why he should receive, say, funding. But his ideas weren't actually being conveyed. But none of this is true. It was how he presented himself, not the actual presentation. His clothes fit poorly, not terrible to say, but just off. His clothes were a size or two bigger than they actually needed to be. And what that communicated completely unintentionally was a kind of uncertainty. Like someone who hadn't quite settled into themselves or trusted themselves in the presentation, all by just how he presented himself. Now, in this case, he is sending a message that says, I'm not quite sure I belong here, before he ever sat down to the table, and that's what people saw. So now let's kind of switch it around and let's fix a few things. So, what can he do? He can elevate a few key pieces, nothing too dramatic, nothing that doesn't feel like who he is, and the difference in how people will respond to him in those rooms will be different. And investors will now see him differently and in a new light and probably give him all the money that he's ever wanted. And he will look competent and some and someone who they trust with their money. That is why sometimes, now I'm a fan of um documentaries like that deal with serial killers and true crimes and all of that stuff. And if you are too, I want you to kind of go back to some of them that you watched, and you'll notice and see they all looked good. And if they didn't look handsome, they looked and felt safe. And that is how people can sometimes get caught up in situations that we see in our true con in our true crime series, or my other favorite are the um con artists. And I know this sounds very crazy and very out and left field, but that's how I can relate to how people and the signals that people give off because of the fact of how they look and how they make people feel that they're not going to sense any type of danger in the situation or in those spaces. So, and that's just me bringing in, you know, what I like. So now let's talk about the four messages your appearance is sending right now. So the first message is about your relationship with standards. The way you dress tells people what you think is acceptable, what you think is good enough, and people use this as a direct read on the standard you hold in other areas of your work and your life. So if your appearance is careless, people assume your work might be too, even though it's impeccable and top-notch and better than anybody else's in the room. Next, there is a message about your relationship with you. Now, the way you dress communicates how you feel about you. Whether you think you're worth the effort, whether you believe you deserve to be seen. I see in most cases that people who are incredibly, incredibly accomplished, but still dressing like they're waiting for permission to show up fully, the clothes are almost apologetic. Even in life, there may have been situations, seasons of your life where you couldn't, where you had to go through some things, were told some things, were taught some things, were made you felt some type of way that also dictates how you dress and the relationship, and it correlates with the relationship that you have with yourself. And those are things that you have to unlearn and do deeper work for and deeper work to get to the root cause so that can change, so that you are okay with being seen. Sometimes it's not necessarily us that bring that on about ourselves, it's other people, outside voices, and they're fighting the voices that you have in your head that tell you, you know what, you are worth it, you're this and you're that. But we've been taught sometimes or told, or not even told, but just felt like we had to dim our lights or we had to fit into somebody else's boxes that they felt was what we should be in, which could also cause the friction with the relationship between ourselves. And that is when you have to do the work on the inside in order to clean that out so that the relationship with yourself and how you see yourself becomes better. Now, the third message is about the relationship with the actual room that you're in or going into. Are you dressed for the level of the conversation that you want to be in? People will dismiss you based on how you look and how you answer certain questions. But the question part, that's a whole other situation and a whole other conversation for another day. But based on how you look, that will omit you from conversations that you absolutely need to be a part of. Or are you dressed for where you were three years ago? Now, your appearance, it will signal whether you understand the environment you're operating in and whether you respect it enough to meet it. And I'm currently in the process of reading, or about to read, because I'm always about to read something, a book called Distinction by Pierre Bordeaux. And it talks about social classes, but it also talks about when you get to say the wealthy or the upper echelon, not even the upper echelon, but just as you go up how certain things and how you look can dismiss you from certain converse conversations, places, and people. And as I begin to go in and read that a little bit better, maybe once I'm done halfway through it, I will maybe give you a synopsis of how all of this actually correlates. Because in my space, I want to go much deeper than style and fashion because it is way much deeper than that. And there are other cues and clues out in the world that we also have to bring into consideration when we're dressing as to where we want to be and the level that you're at as executives and entrepreneurs and people in executive spaces, of how you need to kind of read the room, but also bring the message that you want to also bring. And the last message is about your relationship with power. And we are all powerful people. Power, real leadership authority, whether you are the executive, the executive's assistant, chief of staff, or even an entrepreneur. It reads as intentional. It reads as considered. People who dress with intention, who look like they made a decision this morning, communicate something very different from people who look like they just grabbed whatever, didn't iron it, and just put it on, rolled out of bed, and got to work or to a meeting. Intentionality is a power, it's a signal. That's it. It's a full period stop, pause. That's what it is. Now I want you to think about these. And if you have to replay this back, that's fine. I want you to. But which one do you think your appearance is communicating clearly? And which one or ones might be sending a message you didn't mean to send at all? And you can have more than one. So now let's talk about the rooms that are costing you. Now I am going to say there are some rooms that you should not be in that are costing you as well, but that's a little different. And it's not the cost of buying better clothes, but it's the cost of the silent message working against you. I want you to think about the last time you walked into a high-stakes room and felt off. It could it be a pitch you were going to? Could it have been a sorority meeting you were going to or an event? Could it be a networking event with people who were playing at a level you're reaching towards and you want to level yourself up and go into those rooms? That feeling is always going to give you information. And a lot of times, what it's telling you is that there's a gap between how you see yourself and how you're actually showing up. And the moments of hesitation, the slight lack of confidence walking into a room, the feeling that you're not quite landing the way you want to land, a lot of that is rooted in knowing somewhere in yourself and in your gut that your outside is not matching your inside. And I can tell you from a standpoint that I've been there many times, but I really get it now. As to I know that my insides do not match my outside. And that is the work that I am currently working on. And have had to do it many, many times. But it just feels for me in this stage and season of my life, it's completely different. It's sort of like I know how I want to show up, but I also want to show up as authentic to myself. Because as I always say, we always have the vision of what we want and how we want to dress to show up. It's in our heads. We just need to get it out of our heads and put it out there and start wearing it slowly. It doesn't have to, it's always remember it's a marathon, not a sprint. But we've been taught what to wear. With social media, we are taught to a degree that aesthetics is it. And personality has been taken away. But wonder if you put your personality back into it, that'll actually make you stand out. Because even with that, the silent message can and will work for you. It can walk into a room before you do and say, This person knows what's going on, this person belongs here, and this person is actually worth listening to. It's about starting to pay attention to what you're communicating when you go out into the world every day, especially when you're going to network events, sorority meetings, net uh different areas like that. That's what I want you to start thinking about. And the next time you get dressed, I want you to ask yourself three questions. Does this fit well? Does this feel like the most current version of where I am right now in my phase of life? And does this match the room that I'm walking into? And just say yes, no, or maybe. Now these questions alone will start to shift how you think about getting dressed. Because you're no longer asking, hmm, this is okay, or oh, you know what, this is fine. I'm just going to work. You're asking, is this working for me? So is it actually working for you? And if the answer, if the answer, if the honest answer is that you don't know, or that the answer is no more often than you'd like, then that's exactly where we can start to work together. So your appearance is always talking every day, even in your silence, even before you first, even before your first word. Stop leaving your silent message to chance. I want to repeat this and I will repeat this all the time. Your silent message is the one thing that you can control. You get to control how people see you and what you're communicating every time you get dressed. You have worked extremely hard. Hard for your reputation to be shaped by something you can control and you don't feel like or don't choose to do it. You have to now start to choose to do it, especially in this changing world with AI. If you're still seeking, you know, with jobs, and even as entrepreneurs, it is becoming, it's the whole we're seeing on the brink of a whole new shift that where sometimes in some cases you're going to have to stand out silently, and this is how that you'll be able to do so. So if you know that your message needs work, or I'm ready to actually do something about it, I invite you to click the link in the show notes of this episode to learn more about the foundation edit. Now, this is for professionals in executive spaces and entrepreneurs ready to lay the foundation for a wardrobe that commands the room before they say a word, and it'll begin to build credibility that outlasts any single role. This is the entryway level to work with me. Before we can get to levels two and maybe even level three, we have to start with the basics. And that is going through your closet, seeing what works, what doesn't, creating an essentials checklist that is for you and customized for you, not some generic checklist. Of course, going in and creating, because as you know, I believe at least 15% should be a capsule wardrobe, a basic capsule wardrobe for you, because that's going to tie everything together, as well as getting rid of things that are no longer you in this particular season. And we are laying the foundation for what we are to build upon as time goes on. So if this sounds this is exactly what you need, schedule your one-hour call today, and let's have a conversation about how I and the foundation edit can help you. So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And with all of that being said, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Stay healthy, stay safe, and I will talk to you guys next week in the next episode.