Stop commenting on your team's appearance!

VICTORIA BROWN | MARCH 2023

This is one of my leadership non-negotiables.

😬 NEVER comment on someones appearance at work. 😬

Not only is commenting on someone's appearance at work highly unprofessional, but it blurs the lines between personal and work and sends harmful messages to your team about what's important to you. Let's dive into this topic a bit more...

The impact on that person

• You're placing a totally unnecessary mental burden on someone else that can be distracting and impact their effectiveness. Imagine if you wore a new lipstick to work, how frustrating would it be if EVERYONE you come across that day comments on your lipstick as one of the first things they say to you. It becomes a distraction. Most people are too polite to say "I don't want to talk about my lipstick, my makeup choices are none of your business" - and so instead, they grin and politely suffer through it. Rather than focusing on their productivity and results, they may be focusing on just getting through the next awkward discussion or tensing for the next person to comment.
• How other people look, and what others choose to wear is deeply personal. When you comment on someone's outfit, or skin colour or hairstyle at work, you're stepping into their personal space. This can damage your relationship with them, because it can feel like an overstep or a lack of respect for other's boundaries.
• There is SO much that we don't know about other people, and it's likely that you will cause unintentional damage.
  • You don’t know what process they go through each day to get ready. Perhaps they have body image issues that they're struggling with and just getting dressed is a personal win. Should you really be involving yourself in that?
  • Have they lost weight because they are really unwell? Probably not a great idea to compliment them on looking great.
  • Perhaps they have struggled with their natural hair for many years, and are now just coming to accept who they are - then all of a sudden you're commenting on their hair and putting in your opinion where it's neither wanted or needed.
• You’re assuming that person wants to talk about their outfit. I find that if someone wants to talk about their clothes, they will bring it up themselves. If they don't - why the heck would YOU be bringing it up?
• You can be discriminatory without even meaning to. Perhaps you might comment on their hair or the shape of their eyes. Maybe you have grown up in a predominantly white society, and so other people can seem 'exotic' and 'interesting' to you. If you think this might be you, it's up to you to read more about micro-aggressions and expand your understanding - for example this great article by Varsity that explains "No matter how positive the intentions behind the use of a micro-aggressive term (like exotic) are, they do not outweigh the negative emotions experienced by those impacted". This New York Times article is also insightful, listing out the most cringe-worthy race terms.

The message that it sends

• Is how someone looks important to you? Is how they look more important than the results that they achieve? Making comments about someone's appearance can be seen as unprofessional and may damage one's reputation as a serious and competent worker. Would you rather be told that you look pretty today - or that your latest report was so powerful that it secured additional funding for your project? Which one is more meaningful to your people at work?
  • Is how your team looks relevant to their job? If they have (in your opinion) lovely curly hair, how does that help them do their job? It doesn't. So you shouldn't be talking about it.
  • We want to build teams that champion merit, where people are rewarded for their results. As a leader, your words carry power, and so when you compliment others it will be seen as a type of recognition and reward. When you compliment someone for something that they had to expend little to no relevant work effort to achieve e.g. "Your shirt is really cool" - it can take away from the power of your words when you compliment someone for their work results. Make sure that you're giving recognition and praise for the right things (work stuff bb). 
• What bias is embedded in what you're saying? Unless you’re the most self aware person in the world, you will have bias that you know about and bias that is unknown to you that influences your preferences and behaviours. Let's use an extreme example, perhaps you compliment people in your team when they wear dresses, but then when one of your non-binary employees wears a dress you decide not to compliment them and it's very obvious to the rest of the team. Uh oh - your bias is showing! Not just showing, but also damaging your leadership brand as you won't be seen as inclusive. [As a sidenote, we should be interrogating our own thoughts and bias as leaders to ensure that we are inclusive - you can do that by broadening your self awareness and asking for feedback.]
• Blurs the lines between personal and professional. Someones appearance is a deeply personal thing as I mentioned before and it's often dictated by their experiences, their ethnicity, their gender etc. When you decide that it's relevant for you as a leader to comment on their appearance, you blur the lines of personal and professional. 
  • A question that can be helpful here is to ask yourself: "IS <thing you want to compliment e.g. their hair> ANY OF MY BUSINESS?" for example, "Is the dress they chose to wear today any of my business?" or "Is their nail polish colour any of my business?". When you put it like that to yourself, I doubt you'll ever decide that it is your business.
  • Allow me to be blatantly clear on one point - someone's ethnicity is 10000000% NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS at work and if you choose to discuss it as a leader with someone it can potentially make you liable for workplace discrimination.
  • Your people deserve to have a clear boundary between their personal lives and their professional lives. You are doing them a disservice by blurring those lines.
• You can offend others accidentally. What if you innocently compliment one person constantly because you just like their style, then never compliment someone else. How will that feel to those that never receive a compliment from you?
• You're assuming that everyone must care about your opinion. That's the message it sends. When you tell someone "oh i really like xyz" - you're assuming that they care about your personal opinion on that. I can think of some of the best leaders that I've ever worked with, and I valued their opinion on my reports, my thinking style, my leadership choices - but I absolutely was not interested in their opinion on my hair or makeup or outfit, and they never offered it. 

The only time you should comment on someones appearance at work is:

1 // If it affects their ability to do their job.

If there is a relevant concern about their appearance, then you can carefully approach this topic. For example:

• If their job involves climbing up ladders in a retail store to put stock away and install signage, then a short skirt is probably not appropriate. You can coach someone on that.
• If their job involves securing funding for a start up, and they need to meet with and influence suuuuuper professional people, but their normal work attire is tracksuits and t-shirts. You should raise this framed as finding the alignment between their personal branding as a promoter of the brand and the brand of your business in order to put forward the best impression.
• If it’s something they can change in 5 seconds like removing spinach from their teeth. I love this advice from Dr Desta [tiktok].

2 // If they are displaying an emotional response that I need to talk to for example, I can see that you’re upset - is there something about this project, topic, conversation that is causing that? You'll notice that this isn't specifically related to their appearance, but more about how they are displaying their emotions physically. I wanted to include this so that I could make that distinction. As a leader, and when you're managing others it's appropriate for you to comment on their displays of emotion - that's very different to you commenting on their shoes or eyebrows.

You may have the BEST INTENTIONS, but instead of commenting on someones appearance, give them an appropriate and far more powerful compliment instead. Intentions don't matter, all that matters is the reality that you create (as I often harp on about). 

Try this instead!

If you find yourself commenting on someone's appearance because you want to pay them a compliment or you want to bond with them, try some of these instead:

• Comment on their results. Give recognition for results that hit or exceed targets or expectations. You're showing that performance is important to you.
• Be specific with what you're complimenting. Instead of "great presentation", what about "I really liked the way that you followed up each point with data and insights, it made the message so much more impactful". You're giving some really solid feedback here, and in a way that helps your employee to continue to do more of what is working because you've told them what it is.
• Talk about hobbies.
• Ask them about their passions and what inspires them at work.

I hope that has been thought provoking for you and encourages you to reflect and change the way you think and speak with your team.

VB ❤️‍🔥