One of my friends was interviewing for a big job recently – and the first round of interviews went well. Except, the feedback was that he didn’t quite look like VP material. They were referring to how he dressed. To be fair, he’s not a poorly dressed guy. But he didn’t quite match the straight-laced look of the other executives at the company.
He wasn’t out of the race, but it was a mark against him. He had another round of interviews, and had to make a decision – lean into his style, or conform to theirs? It was a crisis of authenticity vs the social pressure of fitting in.
My friend ended up taking the gamble of sticking to his style, and he got the job anyway. It’d be easy to say that the lesson here is to just “be yourself”, but of course we all know this could just as easily have gone sideways for him. In fact, I bet most of us know someone in a similar situation where things didn’t quite work out so well.
To navigate this sort of situation, you’ve got to read the room, and know when to stand your ground and when to concede. And the unfortunate news for those hoping for a rule of thumb is that this awareness only comes with lessons from practice and learning from failure.