Sarah Cooper - 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying

Like everyone, appearing smart in meetings is my top priority. Sometimes this can be difficult if you start daydreaming about your next vacation, your next nap, or bacon. When this happens, its good to have some fallback tricks to fall back on. This book will give you 100 fallback tricks to fall back on.

By learning, internalizing, and actionizing all of the strategies here, youll be well on your way to becoming a major player at your company without even knowing what that means.

Then this book is for you. Or for someone else.

WHY MEETINGS? SERIOUSLY, WHY?

There are a number of reasons. We go to meetings to collaborate, share information, prove to everyone our job isnt useless, and mostly because we couldnt come up with a good excuse in time.

Its estimated that we spend 75 percent of our waking lives in meetings, holding 11 million of them annually. But more than a third of those meetings are spent planning another meeting, while another sixth are spent asking someone to repeat what she just said because I wasnt paying attention, while still another three-sixths really should have been an e-mail.

No one pays attention in meetings. So, to get ahead, you need to not pay attention better than everyone else. The fact is meetings are one of the few opportunities you have to show your leadership potential, soft skills, and analytical creative thinking brain abilities.

The smarter you appear, the more meetings youll be invited to, the more opportunities youll have to appear smart, and the sooner youll be spinning in a chair while staring at the ceiling and whistling, like the CEO always does.

WHERE DID THIS BOOK COME FROM?

I wrote this book because someone paid me to. But I also wrote it because I had a deadline.

I began jotting down meeting tricks in the summer of 2007 while working for Yahoo!, as I observed them firsthand in meetings with Directors, VPs, Senior VPs, and Senior VP Directors. Seven years later I became a manager at Google and got invited to even more meetings than I ever had before. How did I achieve such an intense trajectory over the course of my luminous career? I went to meetings, and I looked damn smart in them.

WHATS IN THIS BOOK?

Ill be diving deep, deeper than any deep dive you could imagine, into every kind of meeting, from one-on-ones to presentations, showing you simple ways to nail your meeting game no matter what the situation. Then well sync up on how you can look like youre syncing up outside your normal work environment and even what to do when youre not in a meeting. And we wont skip the thorny, complicated mechanicslike what to do with your face.

This book will give you the tactics, methods, and other synonyms for strategy that you need to push your career beyond your wildest dreams but without ever having to apply yourself.

TO CLOSE WITH A MOTIVATIONAL SUMMARY

Perception is reality. I believe it was Christopher Columbus who said that. And he was right. Ive poured everything I pretend to know into these pages, and I sincerely hope these tricks do for your career what they did for mine.*

* I am now on permanent hiatus.

1. Enter the room; ask if anyone needs anything. ()
2. Leave the room, get some coffee, go to the bathroom,
   take your time.
3. Return bringing water and snacks, even if no one asked for any.
4. Sit near the meeting leader, so it looks like youre co-running the meeting. ()
5. Write a few key words up on the whiteboard. ()
6. Make eye contact with your nemesis.
7. Lean back and look up at the ceiling while clasping your hands behind your head, as if youre deeply considering something.

General meetings generally fall into one of three categories: painful, useless, or soul-crushing. But no matter which of these types of meetings you find yourself in, you can be sure that one of these 10 tricks will make you appear smart.

Draw a Venn diagram

Getting up and drawing a Venn diagram is a great way to appear smart. It doesnt matter if your Venn diagram is wildly inaccurate; in fact, the more inaccurate, the better. Even before youve put that marker down, your colleagues will begin fighting about what the labels should be and how big the circles should be. At this point, you can slink back to your chair and go back to playing Candy Crush.

Translate percentage metrics into fractions

If someone says, About 25 percent of all users click on this button, jump in with, So about one in four, and make a note of it. Everyone will nod their heads in agreement, secretly impressed and envious of your quick math skills.

Encourage everyone to
take a step back

There comes a point in most meetings where everyone is chiming in, except you. This is a great point to go, Guys, guys, guys, can we take a step back here? Everyone will turn their heads toward you, amazed at your ability to silence the fray. Follow it up with a quick, What problem are we really trying to solve? and, boom! Youve bought yourself another hour of looking smart.