During my second year working at Zillow, our Chief Business Officer made a comment in a meeting one day that started a bit of a revolution.
“Sales leaders wear sport coats”
A fashion trend was started immediately.
Until that day, we dressed fairly casually in the office, depending on your role and title. I usually wore jeans with a button-down, and that ranged from dress shoes to sneakers, pending the look. I of course rocked the finance bro vest situation too as that became a staple in the office.
But when Greg all of a sudden mentioned that good sales leaders should wear sport coats, a trend was born.
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What’s wild is that little off-hand comment all of a sudden caused all of these dudes to go out and start buying jackets, and that included me. In fact, I went wild. I decided to have an assortment of jackets, and I wasn’t afraid to rock a wild gingham print with some bright colors. It sort of became a fun little way to rock a sport coat and create a brand out of it.
There are two things that stood out to me about that whole moment in time.
The first is how one comment can cause so much change. Literally overnight, every sales leader in his org started showing up wearing sport coats, and it was all because of one comment he made. This isn’t the only time a leader has made a comment that sparked massive change; in fact, it often doesn’t take much, as a leader’s words can be so powerful.
Second, that dress code changed in a way that literally shifted the culture. You could walk through the halls and notice the sales leaders at all levels, from Manager to VP, as a result of this moment in time. Which wasn’t a bad thing. Dress code matters, and how you dress and show up says a lot about you no matter where you are in your career.
The real lesson, though, was not just about leadership. It was about how quickly people pick up on signals inside a company. Everyone is watching what gets noticed, what gets rewarded, what gets repeated, and what seems to matter. Sometimes those signals come from executives, but sometimes they come from managers, peers, top performers, or even the person everyone quietly respects on the team. Culture is not only shaped by the person at the top. It is shaped by what people copy.
That is what made the sport coat moment so interesting. Nobody sent out a memo. There was no formal dress code change. There was no HR policy update telling sales leaders to dress differently. One comment created a signal, and people responded to it. They wanted to look the part. They wanted to be seen as serious. They wanted to show that they understood what the room expected from them.
“How you show up says something before your results are ever discussed.”
That applies whether you are a manager, an individual contributor, or someone trying to grow into the next role. How you show up matters. The way you dress, prepare, communicate, follow through, speak in meetings, respond under pressure, and carry yourself all says something before your results are even discussed. Your work matters most, but the way people experience you around the work matters too.
This does not mean you need to wear a sport coat every day or become someone you are not. That is not the point. The point is to be intentional. If you want to be taken seriously, show up seriously. If you want more responsibility, act like someone who can be trusted with more responsibility. If you want to be seen as a leader, do not wait for the title to start showing leadership habits. People notice those things long before a promotion conversation ever happens.
I still think about that comment years later because it reminds me that your career brand is being built in small moments. Sometimes it is built through your results. Sometimes it is built through your reputation. Sometimes it is built through how you enter a room, how prepared you are when you sit down, and whether people believe you understand the moment. The sport coats were funny, but the bigger lesson was real. People are always giving off signals, and the best ones are intentional about what those signals say.