Seem Smart in a Meeting
Leading a meeting is all about making an impact whilst making your point. If you really want people to listen to you and pay attention to what is being said, you have to express yourselves in the most interesting manner possible. Following are a few tricks and tweaks to appear smart and intelligent when leading a meeting:
Steps
- Know how to use simple charts to make your points. Drawing a Venn diagram in a meeting is a great and easy way to get people’s attention. Even if the diagram is very inaccurate and ill drawn, people will start to argue over the statistics, labels, and the size of the circles as soon as you put down your marker.
- Use fractions instead of percentages. If you are supposed to say, “20% of the population uses a product”, you may instead say “every one in five people use the product” or “one-fifth of the population uses this product”. Moreover, if you use one of the later statements right after the first statement, you can pull off being a math whiz.
- Take a step back. There might come a time in the meeting when no one is listening to you and everyone is chiming in. The agenda of the meeting has been forgotten and the data and the milestones are being disregarded. At this point saying, “Guys, guys, guys, can we take a step back here?” will get everyone’s attention.
- Another suggestion regarding the issue at hand will further give you another hour of smart talking.
- Very slowly repeat what the engineer just said. The engineer in the meeting is usually quiet, but when he speaks, everything that comes out of his mouth is sheer brilliance. Hence, wait for his moment; as soon as he says the divine words, you can say “Let me repeat that for you” and then repeat the exact same words to the audience very slowly. There are high chances that when the people look at minutes of the meeting, they might attribute that idea to you.
- Ask important questions and develop intelligent catchphrases. For example, ask, "Will it scale?" This question essentially asks whether an idea is executable. But the phrase sounds very intellectual and it will get all the technicians and engineers thinking about it. Asking questions to provoke that kind of thought will make you seem like you've already been thinking about these things, which makes you seem smart.
- Pace around the room. During the meeting, at an intense moment, get up from the table and walk around a bit looking at the ground with a slight frown on your face. Go lean over the corner of some wall. No matter what you’re thinking but, you’ll appear smart as soon as you do that.
