Last week, Penelope Trunk wrote a post on BNET’s Personal Success blog, arguing that appearance is such an important factor in whether you do well in business that people should hire personal trainers and even get plastic surgery if they hope to succeed.
I’m not a proponent of that extreme philosophy, but I can’t resist a good controversy, so I put the story in the May 12 issue of NAWBO SmartBrief and posed a reader poll question related to it. The results were a big surprise to me:
How much of a role do you think appearance really plays in business success?
- 60.56% — A big one; people need to be good looking and physically fit
- 38.03% — A small one; people need to dress and groom themselves to look their best
- 1.41% — None; people can succeed looking any way they like
They weren’t quite as much of a surprise to Deborah Shane, who had me as a guest on her BlogTalkRadio show Monday.
Are you surprised by these poll results? How would you answer, and why?
Image credit: Neustockimages, via iStockphoto