Dress For Success-What's Your Secret?

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I say ‘The dress to success’……the business suits…?

However, Dressing for success does not only means your “dress” but it involves everything that your opponent (your client, your partner, your employees or your competitor is going to see and feel when he meets you.

What are the things that you notice when u meet someone? It’s not only what he/she is wearing but more importantly it’s the energy that they transmit and the attitude that they reflect.

So let’s discuss the secret to the getting dress for success.

Rule # 1: Fill yourself up with all the relevant information so that you appear confident and subtle during the meeting

Rule # 2: Make sure your head is full of positive thoughts ( try listening to some favorite music or something u enjoy doing to set up your mood). Unless your head is thinking in positive direction you can never exhale positive energy.

Rule #3: Match you dressing with the attitude you want to wear….decide what do you want to be suitable candidate for job, caring company, honest/reliable partner or a leader. What you wear should reflect your message, ensuring nobody gets the wrong message.

Rule# 4: Remember, ‘If you can’t sell it to yourself, nobody is ever going to buy it!’. When you are ready to go, brief yourself the points you want to discuss at the meeting in front of the mirror. Analyze the energy you are emitting, honestly analyze what impression your audience is going to get. There’s plenty of time to fix this impression so try changing your facial expressions, your tone, your movements or other non verbal gestures until you are sure that you are transmitting the correct feeling. Remember always unless you connect with your audience in the first 10 minutes of your meeting you are never going to be able to sell your thoughts.

Rule #5: Always praise yourself in front of the mirror (ladies don’t get overwhelmed) before leaving; recheck that you look what you wanted for this particular meeting. Appreciation always boosts confidence so appreciate yourself (positively) to spray that final dash of confidence.

Rule # 6: The Golden Rule: Wear your best smile. Even if the situation is too dramatic and messed up a smile on your face would give comfort to others and you never know it might set up a mood of problem resolution rather then problem discussion. There might be some situations where you think a harsh one is unavoidable but remember that hurting anyone’s ego and self esteem doesn’t mean that you are stronger. So keep yourself calm and composed through whatever situation you are in.

With no offense, sometimes ladies get too involved in what they will wear at a certain meeting rather than deciding what message they want to be reflected. This behavior is not only truly unprofessional but it sends out wrong signals for all the women in business.

The matter of fact is that nobody can recall what you wore to a certain meeting but everyone would remember how you acted through that meeting. So keep your focus on what would be associated with your personality for a longer period.

So maybe not the best suit but let’s wear the best attitude to the next meeting.

Strategic Vs Social Networking

We all know that women are naturally better at meeting, greeting people and making acquaintances as they are made of care and passion. Women are better listeners and can be better at counseling. We are naturally programmed to dress and portray ourselves differently as in a crowd full of people every women can be easily described as compared to men. Inspite of all this why is it that we women tend to be less successful in professional networking as compared to the men.

Where’s the gap?

The gap lies in the fact that there’s a difference in social networking and strategic networking. I’m sure everyone of us is aware of these terms but do we fully differentiate them practically.

The matter of fact is that we are no doubt amazing at social networking. We are great at meeting and making friends and friends of friends as it requires us to be ourselves that is caring, attentive and passionate.

Strategic networking is when we are required to be more assertive, to-the-point, professionally proficient and well aware of the professional field that we represent.

Begin with the end in mind

To succeed in strategic networking the rule of thumb is to know and understand the outcome you want out of that meeting.

For every strategic networking opportunity you come across give special consideration to the following:

• Analyze the kind of guests at the event
• Explore who do you know would be there.
• Dig about the speakers/chief guests that could be beneficial for you to start a conversation.
• Ask yourself why I want to go and what should I have when I get back?
• Prepare well in advance, if the event will have Q&A session make sure you make yourself standout by asking some intelligent questions.
• Stay attentive when other people introduce themselves during the Q&A or at your table as you could find a potential customer right there if you know what are the business and challenges the person sitting next to you has.

What’s the color of your attitude?

Stand Out with the right color!

Ever since little girls we are taught to be very submissive and polite but believe me we fail in strategic networking by being polite.

You are a smart, intelligent and very professional woman and you know what you are talking about. If you want to portray this character you have to be assertive, be straight forward, be brave enough to ask and most of all be confident to standup to disagree If you believe so.

Stop judging yourself!

Yes, why do we want to be the nice one all the time, why do we want everyone like us?

People will disagree and challenge you sometimes with a reason to clarify and many times just to misbalance your confidence..that’s how the business world works.

So stop judging yourself and be impulsive when you want to make a point. Don’t hesitate to interrupt what you don’t agree to and don’t let people run over your vision cause you are as important as anyone else in that room.

The e-networking

With everything 2.0 around us strategic networking is mostly done through the web. Make sure when you join such network your profile reflects how you want others to see you.

Think about it, give it time and don’t hesitate in mentioning how important your role has been in so many positions. We women tend to be little shy when describing ourselves as it might look very odd but that’s another area where men take a leap. Try going through several profiles of some successful professionals and you would see that men would easily elaborate their roles and skills, they even might state their skills and experience with much exaggeration that helps them to create a bigger picture than actually is but that’s what all of us want.

Take yourself seriously

Even after all these measures there might be instances when you would feel that your opponent isn’t taking you seriously enough. Remember if you want to be taken seriously you have to give yourself all the credits first.

How much we appreciate ourselves is easily viewable on how do we carry ourselves, so at every networking opportunity make sure that your complete attire speaks your attitude and your vision.

I hope this can be useful for all of us and last but not the least let’s support and promote the strong professional women like us everywhere.

Share your thoughts on improving the strategic skills or share your best practices so far.

With love for the Women 3.0 (one step ahead)

The World's Most Powerful Women-----News Clip

News Courtesy Forbes.com

Hopeful signs for women: Our fifth annual ranking showcases women who have beat out men for top posts this year, including Lynn Laverty Elsenhans (No. 39), the new chief of Sunoco; Gail Kelly (No. 11), who heads Australian bank Westpac; and Jane Mendillo (No. 42), who was just named to run the $35 billion Harvard University endowment.

In total, the women ranked on this list control $26 trillion worldwide.

The tenuous state of the world economy, however, has many of the world's most powerful women in the same precarious positions as their male peers. Economic woes this year have already claimed the jobs of Patricia Russo, who headed the troubled Alcatel Lucent, and Zoe Cruz, former president of Morgan Stanley. Other highly placed women could be in jeopardy as well.

But while individual female leaders continue to climb higher, women as a group are making only modest gains. Women have hovered for a decade around 46% of the American labor force, but they hold only 15% of top corporate jobs; less than 3% of the country's biggest companies have female chief executives, according to research nonprofit Catalyst.

The most powerful woman in the world, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, tops the list for the third year running as the ranking democratically elected female leader. Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the embattled U.S. bank-deposit insurer, debuts in second place as she tries to stave off financial panic amid a worldwide credit crisis.

At No. 3, Indra Nooyi of PepsiCo is the highest-ranked woman in business as she expands the food and beverage giant internationally to counter a decline in Americans' preference for soda and chips.

Angela Braly (No. 4), the head of big health insurer WellPoint, suffered a setback this spring when her downward revision of financial forecasts caused a stock tumble, sparking investor and employee ire.

At No. 5, Cynthia Carroll is leading mining giant Anglo-American to riches in the commodities boom. Kraft chief Irene Rosenfeld (No. 6), is slowly turning around the mac 'n cheese maker in her second year on the job, scoring a big hit in China with a new Oreo.

In the last few months of her tenure, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (No. 7) faces a myriad of diplomatic flare-ups: an unstable Pakistan, a bellicose Russia and the long-smoldering Middle East peace question. Ho Ching (No. 8), the head of Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek, has been moving more of the city-state's money abroad and now owns 15% of Merrill Lynch.

In France, Areva head Anne Lauvergeon (No. 9) has been dealing with public fallout from this summer's leaks at two nuclear plants, even as France has announced plans to build more. Anne Mulcahy (No. 10) has doubled her research and development budget to focus on color printing and eco-friendly technologies.

These women top a far-flung list that comprises 54 businesswomen and 23 politicians, with the rest being media execs and personalities and nonprofit leaders. A third are newcomers to the rankings; this reflects not only new top positions for women, such as Starcom MediaVest's Laura Desmond (No. 55) and Enterprise's Pamela Nicholson (No. 93), but also the increasingly global reach of this list, with more women from outside the U.S. rising to worldwide prominence.

Just under half the women ranked this year are based outside of the U.S. Top countries represented include the U.K. (five women), China (four), France, India and the Netherlands (three apiece). Morocco has its first ranked woman this year: Hynd Bouhia (No. 29), director-general of the Casablanca Stock Exchange.

Candidates for our list are globally recognized women at the top of their fields: chief executives and their highest-ranked lieutenants, elected officials, nonprofit leaders. They don't have to be rich, but they do have to wield significant influence. This year, an architect, a war correspondent and several foundation executives all won spots on the list.

We measure power as a composite of public profile--calculated using press mentions--and financial heft. This year, for instance, the woman with the highest public profile is Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, No. 28, who garnered intense media scrutiny for her failed U.S. presidential bid.

The economic component of the ranking considers job title and past career accomplishments, as well as the amount of money a woman controls. A chief executive gets the revenue of her business, for example, while a Nobel winner receives her prize money and a U.N. agency head receives her organization's budget. We modify the raw dollar figures to allow comparisons among the different financial realms so that the corporate revenue that an executive controls, for instance, is on the same footing as a country's gross domestic product, ascribed to prime ministers.