Stay safe
Sure – it might have seemed like a clever or ironic idea on the drawing board over one too many glasses of wine to dress up as a sexy _____ or to mock a contemporary political or cultural figure. But if you choose to go a really riske route with your Halloween costume, you risk inadvertently making team members feel uncomfortable (or worse offended) by your creative choices. That’s just crappy and it’s definitely counter-productive if you want to build team culture and your own credibility as an open and inclusive person.
Stay functional
The best costumes are not only original and elaborate, but they are also functional. Less optimal are costumes that are so hot, disruptive, awkward or overly complex that they quickly fall by the wayside after the first 10 minutes of sitting in your cubicle. Having a costume that’s adjustable and can be scaled down is a good way around this. This means for the staff lunch you can be Gandalf, but for your meeting with vendors you lose the staff, take off the fake beard and hang up your awesome hat. One time John didn’t think his Halloween costume fully through. That’s because he had to tell his team they would be working overtime through the holidays dressed up as Alan from the Hangover with a pillow duct taped around my body and a fake baby in a carrier. Learn from John’s mistake – be ready to be like Batman and quickly transform into Bruce Wayne when need be.
Be inclusive
Some of the best costumes are team-costumes. The Ghost-busters, a Football team, the Scooby-Doo crew – sky’s the limit.The great thing about team costumes is that they build inclusion, shared purpose and collaboration. They also embrace different contributions – while one team member may be your creative genius and come up with the inspiration for the costume, other team members might be key to tracking down costume pieces or adding new elements to an already great concept. Creating inclusive Halloween costumes is a wonderful way to build the team in a fun and entertaining way.
Or just survive
Some people HATE Halloween costumes. They despise dressing up, but feel social pressure to do so in order to fit in with their colleagues. If you have a hint that this might be one of your colleagues, back it off and let them do Halloween their way. If you happen to be an anti-costumite, consider consciously embracing being outside of your comfort zone while also finding ways to limit the dress up where the embarrassment is just too much. Being a good sport is different from being a hard-core costume evangelical. Costuming up for the photo and then quickly adapting your outfit for the remainder of the day is perfectly reasonable.