10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings

10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings How many hours do you spend in meetings every week? How many of those meetings are actually productive? If your answer to the first questions is too many, and your answer to the second questions are too few, then youre not alone. A global productivity survey by Microsoft suggests that 69% of professionals feels meetings are a waste of time.  Epson and the Centre for Economics and Business Research  found that ineffective meetings costs UK businesses £26 billion every year. So you should probably look into getting that stuff fixed. Like, seriously. While Im not going to help you fix your disastrous meetings, heres the top ten tricks to appear smart in meetings by the Cooper Review. Here are the top  10 tricks to appear smart in meetings: 1. Draw a Venn diagram The perfect distraction tool, which will make you look smart and give you some time to sit back and relax. Draw up two circles that intersects, write the current issue in circle 1 and  let the other meeting attendants  jump in and start fight about what should be in  circle 2. 2. Translate percentages into fractions Be the human percentages to fractions calculator. Show off your extreme math skills, and demonstrate your deep level of involvement  in the meeting. 75 percent? THATS 3 IN FOUR!  Thanks, Captain Obvious. 3. Encourage everyone to take a step back This ones best for those situations where the other meeting attendants are getting close to actually doing something productive, and youve been quiet for too long. By asking everyone to take a step back, you can make yourself look smart immediately. It will also set the meeting back by at least 30 minutes, which will give you more time to make yourself look smarter by saying the exact same thing 30 minutes later. Its almost like cheating, and you might find that youll seem scary smart if done too many times. But  beware; use this line too frequently, and  people might start asking questions 4. Nod continuously while pretending to take notes Bring a notepad, lean back, scribble intensively and flip pages often to make sure the people sitting close to you cant see  that youre actually just writing the word boring over and over. If youre ever put in the position where you have to show your notes, resort back to #1. 5. Repeat the last thing the engineer said, but very slowly The engineer is probably the smartest guy in the room, so repeating whatever he or she says makes you the second smartest person in the room. At least. 6. Ask Will this scale? no matter what it is Its the pizza and beer of interrupting meetings its always good. No one really knows what it means anyways, so give it a try when you feel you dont come across as smart enough. Its also a good way of driving engineers up the wall. 7. Pace around the room Stanford found that walking improves creativity. In fact, you can increase your creative output by as much as 60% IN ADDITION TO  making yourself look super thoughtful and important. Woah. Try taking some deep breaths while staring out the window for extended periods of time. I wonder what shes thinking, theyll ask themselves. After walking around for a while, you can impress everyone  with all the super creative insights you  gained from all that creative boosting (No, not really.) 8. Ask the presenter to go back a slide The best thing about this one is that you dont actually have to comment on anything. When they go back one, or more, slides, you can either say; Im not sure what these numbers really mean, or Oh okay, never mind. 9. Step out for a very important phone call Many professionals, especially CEOs and people from upper management are under the impression that you shouldnt take your phone with you to meetings full stop. This is of course completely wrong; you should answer every single call, and excuse yourself in a way  that says this phone call is SO much more important than this meeting. This will impress everyone at the meeting, because you obviously got extremely important stuff happening in your life that needs to be addressed ASAP. 10. Make fun of yourself Making self-deprecating comments and cracking jokes all over the place is probably the best way of showing how confident you are. Especially if your jokes are balancing between Oh jesus, thats way too much information and I think I need to speak to Susan from  HR. And thats it; enjoy becoming the smartest person in the meeting room! Which kinds of behaviours annoys you the most in meetings?