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    100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying
    100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying
    100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying
    Ebook233 pages51 minutes

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

    By Sarah Cooper

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    About this ebook

    You know those subtle tricks your coworkers are all guilty of? The constant nodding, pretend concentration, useless rhetorical questions? These tricks make them seem like they know what they’re doing when in fact they have no clue. This behavior is so ingrained, so subtle, and so often mistaken for true intelligence that identifying it, calling it out, or compiling it into an exhaustive digest has never been attempted. Until now.

    Complete with illustrated tips, examples, and scenarios, 100 Tricks gives you actionable ways to use words like “actionable,” in order to sound smart. Every type of meeting is covered, from general meetings where you stopped paying attention almost immediately, to one-on-one meetings you zoned out on, to impromptu meetings you were painfully subjected to at the last minute. It’s all here.

    Open this book to any page and find an easy-to-digest trick with an even easier-to-digest illustration, guiding you on:

    • how to nail the big meeting by pacing and nodding
    • most effective ways to listen to your coworkers while still completely ignoring them
    • the key to making your presentations “interactive.”
    If you hadn’t noticed these behaviors before, you will see them now—from your colleagues, your managers, and soon yourself. Each trick is a mirror to the reality of what happens in meetings, told in the form of hilariously bad advice—advice that you might just want to take. But probably not. But maybe.

    "Sly satire that will bring endless joy to anyone who has ever endured the drudgery of corporate life." —Dan Lyons, writer for HBO's Silicon Valley and New York Times-bestselling author of Disrupted
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAndrews McMeel Publishing
    Release dateOct 4, 2016
    ISBN9781449481858

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    Reviews for 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

    4/5

    22 ratings3 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I had so much fun and laughed a lot. Very funny and very true. Especially for people working in Tech. Loved the humour!
    • 5/5
      I feel like anyone who works in an office will appreciate this book. Made me laugh many times!
    • 5/5
      If only my razor were this sharpAs western civilization melts into oblivion, someone needs to record the proceedings and report on it. That person is Sarah Cooper, who has written a wonderfully perceptive, dangerously prescriptive and ultimately shameful book on meetings. It has been honed on her website TheCooperReview, and in her appearances, and it shows. The book is tight, direct, on target and all too true. It keeps its pace, never gets tiresome, and delivers knockout punches continuously.Cooper also illustrates really well, with a cartoon on almost every page. My favorite is the What To Do With Your Face section, where she shows the impact and importance of numerous facial expressions employed at meetings. Her economy of line alone is worth the price of admission. Hirschfeld would not disapprove.Cooper belabors the obvious to great effect (“Like most women, I’m not a man”), and her sarcasm could get anyone fired. It all makes for a delightful, effortless read that should replace the dreary One Minute Manager on every desk.David Wineberg

    Book preview

    100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings - Sarah Cooper

    1.png

    For my family, friends, coworkers, and

    especially the one who became all three.

    Today’s Agenda

    OPENING REMARKS

    Let Me Tell You What I’m Going to Tell You

    before I Tell You Again

    PART ONE: SETTING THE STAGE

    Conference Room Playbook:Entering the Room

    General Meetings: 10 Key Strategies

    for Appearing Smart

    Whiteboard Tactics: 21 Meaningless Diagrams

    You Can Draw

    One-on-One: How to Convince Your

    Coworker You Care

    Emotional Intelligence Plan: What to Do

    with Your Face

    Conference Calls: How to Sound Smart over the Phone

    Going Global: How to Appear Smart in Meetings

    around the World

    PART TWO: CORE CONVERSATION

    Conference Room Playbook: Owning the Room

    Team meetings: How to Manage Optics Like a Boss

    Leaning all the Way In: Attending Meetings

    in a Male-Dominated Workplace

    Impromptu Meetings: How to Handle Meeting

    Sneak Attacks Like a Ninja

    How to Make Your Meeting Seem Less Like a Meeting

    Even Though it’s Totally a Meeting

    Presentations: How to Nail the Big Pitch by

    Not Saying Much of Anything

    Meeting Speak Cheat Sheet: Deciphering What

    Everyone Is Saying

    Brainstorming Meetings: How to Be Perceived

    as the Creative Force on Your Team

    PART THREE: NEXT STEPS

    Conference Room Playbook: Leaving the Room

    Networking Events: How to Build Relationships

    with People You’ll Never See Again

    What to Do with Your Hands

    During a Networking Event

    Teambuilding Offsites: Joining the Corporate

    Culture Club

    Famous Meetings Through History

    Advanced Meeting Power Moves

    to Get You Promoted (or Fired)

    Business Dinners: How to Appear Smart

    in Forced Social Situations

    FOLLOW-UP

    In Between Meetings: Downtime Is Your Time to Shine

    Opening

    Remarks

    Let Me Tell You

    What I’m Going to Tell You

    Before I Tell You Again

    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, it’s 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, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a major player at your company without even knowing what that means.

    Can I ask you a quick question?

    Do you attend meetings?

    Do you want to get ahead in your career?

    Do you enjoy answering pointless rhetorical questions?

    Did you buy this book for you or for someone else?

    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 isn’t useless, and mostly because we couldn’t come up with a good excuse in time.

    It’s 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 wasn’t 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 you’ll be invited to, the more opportunities you’ll have to appear smart, and the sooner you’ll 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.

    time spent in meetings

    Source: TheCooperReview.com

    What’s in this book?

    I’ll 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 we’ll sync up on how you can look like you’re syncing up outside your normal work environment and even what to do when

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