Legal Research

"How to Be a Tall Person at Work"

Posted by Penelope Trunk: "The Institute of Social and Economic Research recently published a study about the connection between popularity in high school and earning power later in life. New York magazine, information source to the rich and popular, summarized the study like this: "This study may seem to burst our Revenge of the Nerds fantasies, but it's logical that people who are attractive, likable, and socially comfortable--the class officers, the cheerleaders--should get ahead in corporate settings."

There is absolutely irrefutable data to support the idea that good-looking people do better in life than everyone else. Gordon Patzer, in his book, Looks, draws from a wide body of research to describe the advantaged life of a good-looking person from the time they are a baby (good-looking babies get better parentings) to the time they are in sales (the whole sales team performs better if there are more good-looking people on the team.)

As a result, I have jumped on the plastic surgery bandwagon. Super-smarty Chelea Clinton got plastic surgery before she entered the work world. We should all do that. And while I haven't taken my own advice, I do find myself pinching and pulling at my nose to see what it would look like after at $10,000 investment.

But wait. Before you take out a loan to straighten your nose, maybe you should just start thinking like a tall person. Being good-looking means having the right mix of a lot of things, and for you, being tall might be the final keystone to hold it all in place. (Wondering if you're already tall? Fast Company has the answer: over 6'3" for men and over 5'9" for women, which, by the way, makes me half-an-inch into the land of the tall.)

Tall people make $789 more per inch per year, and are 90% more likely to ascend to the CEO chairs of Fortune 500 Companies, according to Arianne Cohen, author of The Tall Book. She scoured the sociology, psychology and workplace research to determine why tall people succeed (she herself is 6'3"). And Cohen discovered that the behaviors tall people display can be mimicked by anyone in order to get the career benefits of being tall.

Here's what Cohen says to do, based on the research she's gathered:

Be unforgettable...

Act like the boss...

Find a way to look down on coworkers. Literally...

Guard your personal space...

Don't be shy...

Focus on image rather than competence...

The active links are available at the source site listed below.

Source: Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist, 16 June 2009

Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on June 17, 2009 (boomark / email).