Sarah Cooper is writing a book on 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. While waiting for the publication of the book she has listed (with some humour) ten of her favorite tricks for quickly appearing smart during meetings.
1. Draw a Venn diagram
2. Translate percentage metrics into fractions
3. Encourage everyone to “take a step back”
4. Nod continuously while pretending to take notes
5. Repeat the last thing the engineer said, but very very slowly
6. Ask “Will this scale?” no matter what it is
7. Pace around the room
8. Ask the presenter to go back a slide
9. Step out for a phone call
10. Make fun of yourself
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Image source: Flickr – Thetaxheaven (CC BY 2.0)
…This made me laugh!
I found the n.3 being especially (naively) brilliant… the classic situation in which the meeting becomes difficult, the arguments hot, and so it all shifts into a sort of ‘jungle-convention’ with chimpanzees (the [too much] talkative people), elephants (those who disagree and deprecate the opposing statements with sounding trumpeting, e.g.: “pfeh, meh, umpf”) and sloths (which only aim it’s simply avoiding all the useless chaos preferring to wait for a more civiled debate) — at least until these words comes out and freeze all the ‘folks’ suddenly and entirely!
It may sounds very hollywood-ish, but it’s just so!
Thanks!