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 1. CONFERENCE ROOM PLAYBOOK: Entering the Room 2. GENERAL MEETINGS: 10 Key Strategies for Appearing Smart 3. WHITEBOARD TACTICS: 21 Meaningless Diagrams You Can Draw 4. ONE-ON-ONE: How to Convince Your Coworker You Care 5. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE PLAN: What to Do with Your Face 6. CONFERENCE CALLS: How to Sound Smart over the Phone 7. GOING GLOBAL: How to Appear Smart in Meetings around the World PART TWO: CORE CONVERSATION 1. CONFERENCE ROOM PLAYBOOK: Owning the Room 2. TEAM MEETINGS: How to Manage Optics Like a Boss 3. LEANING ALL THE WAY IN: Attending Meetings in a Male-Dominated Workplace 4. IMPROMPTU MEETINGS: How to Handle Meeting Sneak Attacks Like a Ninja 5. HOW TO MAKE YOUR MEETING SEEM LESS LIKE A MEETING EVEN THOUGH IT’S TOTALLY A MEETING 6. PRESENTATIONS: How to Nail the Big Pitch by Not Saying Much of Anything 7. MEETING SPEAK CHEAT SHEET: Deciphering What Everyone Is Saying 8. BRAINSTORMING MEETINGS: How to Be Perceived as the Creative Force on Your Team PART THREE: NEXT STEPS 1. CONFERENCE ROOM PLAYBOOK: Leaving the Room 2. NETWORKING EVENTS: How to Build Relationships with People You’ll Never See Again 3. WHAT TO DO WITH YOUR HANDS DURING A NETWORKING EVENT 4. TEAMBUILDING OFFSITES: Joining the Corporate Culture Club 5. FAMOUS MEETINGS THROUGH HISTORY 6. ADVANCED MEETING POWER MOVES TO GET YOU PROMOTED (OR FIRED) 7. BUSINESS DINNERS: How to Appear Smart in Forced Social Situations FOLLOW-UP 8. 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 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 you’re not in a meeting. And we won’t skip the thorny, complicated mechanics—like what to do with your face. This book will give you the tactics, methods, and other synonyms for 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. I’ve 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. CAREER POSSIBILITIES Source: TheCooperReview.com HOW TO READ THIS BOOK PART ONE SETTING THE STAGE 1. CONFERENCE ROOM PLAYBOOK 2. GENERAL MEETINGS 3. WHITEBOARD TACTICS 4. ONE-ON-ONE 5. EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE PLAN 6. CONFERENCE CALLS 7. GOING GLOBAL CONFERENCE ROOM PLAYBOOK ENTERING THE ROOM During meetings, where you sit, stand, lean, or crouch may mean the difference between being perceived as a future vice president or a future senior vice president. Follow this sample play-by-play to enter the room literally reeking of intelligence. 1. Enter the room; ask if anyone needs anything. (See Trick #61) 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 you’re co-running the meeting. (See Trick #33) 5. Write a few key words up on the whiteboard. (See Whiteboard Tactics) 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 you’re deeply considering something.