I know I am a few weeks late but I can't shake the image of Sarah Palin blowing a kiss to the audience before the VP debate. Oh, and winking repeatedly during the debate itself.
As I watched her do it, I cringed. I am no career expert but I know enough to understand the importance of body language in the workplace. If you want the job, start with a firm handshake. If you want to be heard, state your ideas sitting confidently and upright on the edge of your chair instead of slumping down and making your statement a question.
And if you want to be taken seriously by your coworkers and clients — or say, by 70 million people watching you on TV — don’t wink during a heated political discussion and don’t blow kisses to people you don’t know.
Now, I am no dummy. I know that this extremely casual body language, manners as well as peppering speeches with colloquial phrases like “You betcha!” is both part of Ms. Palin’s personality and the image that she is aiming to build of someone who is one of us, a regular person who just happens to be running for Vice President. But I don’t buy it. If you’re running for office you should not sound and act like a regular person in a casual setting. Because you’re not a regular person, you’re a Vice Presidential candidate and when you’re out there on some international mission, talking to world leaders as an American representative, I definitely don’t want you to act the way you might around your family.
Sorry to lecture, Ms. Palin, but after seeing women sabotage their success in the workplace by the way they talk and hold themselves, I care about this stuff. Fair or not, women have to jump over a higher bar just to be on par with men in professional settings, which means there’s no room for overly-girly body language or expressions that make you sound juvenile. When I was starting my career I was lucky to have one woman boss who took me shopping for a serious suit. “How you look matters, whether you like it or not,” she told me as I invested in my first-ever (and last-ever) Ann Taylor skirt suit.
Your suits are fine but in my not-so-humble opinion, you need to act as serious as they look.
(For the record, I tried to find images of other VP and Presidential candidates blowing kisses and was only able to locate this one of Rudy Guliani doing it during a rally. Still wrong, in my opinion.)
Nataly Kogan is the co-founder and CEO of Workitmom.com, an online community and helpful resource for working moms.
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