I spent years as a suit and tie guy.
It kind of went with the job. I'd travel up and down the country, and fly around the world, putting on that uniform and doing my thing.
Back to the old uniform
Then I left the corporate life, and after a short break I started doing my own thing. For a while it was strictly jeans and T-shirts.
But then the stages I was being invited to speak on changed. Bigger rooms. Corporate audiences. And for a short while, without really thinking about it, I went back to the old uniform.
Until it dawned on me. I kept telling people to show who they really are. To stand up and be seen in a way that put them in their power, as their best self.
And I wasn't doing it myself. I was still dressing the way I'd been conditioned to.
Jeans on the big stages
Once I'd noticed that, I couldn't un-notice it. So I started speaking at events in jeans again. First on my own stages. And later at some of those big corporate gigs where I'd always worn a suit and tie in the past.
And here's what I noticed. The more I dressed as me, the better I showed up as me. And the better I showed up, the more the audience got from it. They got Neil, with nothing in the way.
The weekend my suitcase didn't make it
I'd already had a lesson in this a couple of years earlier. I just hadn't joined the dots.
It was a weekend in 2018. I was flying back to Heathrow to deliver three days of training. My flight had a bunch of delays and changed connections, and I finally landed at about 11:30 at night. Sound checks were due about eight and a half hours later.
My suitcase didn't arrive.
I managed to get hold of some toiletries, got clean and shaved. But if I'd gone off to find clean clothes, I'd have had to delay the start of the course. And the people in that room had given up their weekend to be there.
So I made a decision. I walked out on stage in the clothes I'd been travelling in for two days, and I asked my audience whether they were OK with that.
They were. My bags did turn up eventually. And it was a brilliant weekend, with some big breakthroughs for the delegates. Many of those delegates I now call friends.
Nobody's breakthrough that weekend had anything to do with my shirt. What mattered was that I turned up, told the truth and did the work.
I'm not saying I'll never wear a suit on stage again. But if I do, it'll be because I chose to.
This goes way beyond clothes. Plenty of us have a uniform we put on for work that has nothing to do with fabric. A voice we use. Words we'd never say at home. A version of ourselves we think the room expects. Sometimes that's useful. Often it just puts a layer between you and the people you're trying to help.
People ask me whether I'm the same off stage as on it. I wrote about that in "You're just like you are on stage".
So what's your version of the suit? The thing you do because it's expected, rather than because it helps. Try one meeting, one call or one post without it, and see what happens.
