Using Style Choices to Make a Great Impact

You only have seven seconds to make a great first impression! If you’re a listener of my Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast, you might remember this insight from guest Sylvie di Giusto, who joined me to chat about the factors that go into creating a memorable and successful first impression.

One of the biggest factors is appearance, or the way you dress and present yourself to others in your life and workplace. To learn more about how appearance plays a role in how we present ourselves, I spoke with the expert: Morgan Wider! Morgan is personal style expert, speaker, and the founder of Wider Style, where she uses her decades of retail leadership experience to help others increase their performance through their image. She’s also the author of Worthy Wardrobe: Your Guide to Style, Shopping, & Soul.

Why is Appearance So Important?

On the podcast, Morgan delves deeper into why appearance is such a key factor in creating first impressions and presenting ourselves in a respectable, successful way. Here are just three of the key points she highlighted.

1. Show Your Own Authenticity
Your style choices, from the shoes you wear to how you style your hair, are a way to show your authentic self. Through style choices, you have a chance to give others a peek into your personality, including your passions, hobbies, and the way you interact with the world around you.

2. Let Your Personality Shine Through
Similarly, paying attention to your personal appearance gives you the ability to stick out. This can be especially important for women in manufacturing and other male-dominated industries. Oftentimes, women in industries like these feel the urge to blend in with their male counterparts, and may avoid more feminine style choices. However, this can actually stifle their own personality, making it harder for others to get to know and respect them.

3. Improve Your Productivity
When you’re comfortable and confident in your clothing choices, it increases your productivity and gets you into a ready-to-work mindset. You’ll also feel happier and more confident. If you’re a leader, dressing in a confident and empowering way can also encourage your team members to show their own personalities, boosting morale for your whole team and organization.

Morgan’s Style Tips

After sharing some great insights on the importance of style and appearance, Morgan also offered some of her favorite tips for dressing for authenticity and success!

Honor your personality, but also honor other factors, like your age and body type. By being mindful of your own body and needs, you can create a style that captures your authenticity while still honoring and respecting your body and your environment.
If your workplace requires uniforms, there are still ways you can show your unique style, like through hair or makeup choices.
Remember that different audiences might require different appearances. For example, working on the floor with your team might require a different style than meeting with an important client.
Always put in the effort! By putting time and effort into your appearance, you gain more control over how others perceive you and your work.

Learn More on the Podcast

To hear more great style insights from Morgan Wider, check out her Mindfulness Manufacturing podcast episode here.

At Manufacturing Greatness, Trevor Blondeel works with manufacturers to connect the top to the shop. If you’re ready to improve your own organization, contact Trevor to learn how Manufacturing Greatness can help you build stronger leaders and develop a dynamic, high-performing workplace.

Mindfulness Manufacturing

Our show is about providing listeners with real stories that come from a place of experience, transparency, and authenticity. Most importantly it’s about what we learn from these stories and applying Mindfulness in our everyday work and personal lives.
Our intention is to create an environment where people can learn through open honest discussions on how we apply Mindfulness. Although our experiences and stories come from time in a manufacturing environment hence the title “Mindfulness Manufacturing”, we still see our discussions and topics relatable to any organization or profession.

When a mistake occurs on the plant floor, your mind might jump to one question: who caused this issue, and should I write them up for their mistake? But there’s a more productive approach you could be taking—and in this episode of Mindfulness Manufacturing, guest Dr. Jake Mazulewicz breaks it all down!

With a background as a firefighter, EMT, and military paratrooper, Jake knows the challenges of high-hazard industries, and works with organizations to reduce errors and create safer, more reliable workplace environments. In this episode, Jake shares why you can’t procedularize everything, including the way you handle errors and accidents, and offers great insights and stories about how to use connection and curiosity to improve safety, address errors, and strengthen your organization.

3:35 – Procedures and policies are the work that is imagined, and on the floor is how the work actually gets done

4:19 – The work as-done is almost always radically different than the work as-imagined

5:20 – Even when you have standards and people show up wanting to do a good job, you can still see issues that need to be addressed

6:44 – There will always be areas that absolutely need to have procedures in place

8:02 – There are also adaptive jobs, which leans less into procedures and more intro troubleshooting and tacit human knowledge

10:56 – In an ideal environment, both mechanistic and adaptive models are used and respected and needed

12:11 – There are four levels, ranging from strict procedurals to looser guidelines that show what to do, but not how to do it

15:36 – Tacit knowledge gets shared through conversations

16:22 – A way to share important information is to have frontline experts record videos sharing their insights to problems, especially those that are not covered in procedures

19:44 – Through conversation and connection, more knowledge is shared

21:58 – Debriefing also plays a central role

23:45 – If you have strong discipline, you’ll find more freedom

25:31 – In most situations, errors are signals, not defects

27:07 – When an error occurs, be curious and find the deeper cause of the problem

Connect with Jake Mazulewicz

Find him on Linkedin

Visit his website