Top Ten Things NOT
to do/say in a meeting!
- Stand up and act indignant. Demand that the boss tell you the ‘real’ reason
this meeting has been called. - Spill coffee on the conference table. Produce a little paper boat and sail it
down the table. - During a meeting, each time the boss makes an important point, (or at least
one he/she seems to consider important), make a little inappropriate noise
showing you disagree in the comment. - Stay behind as everyone else, including the boss, leaves. Thank them for
coming. - Give a broad wink to someone else at the table. In time, wink at everyone.
Sometimes shake your head just a little, as if to indicate that the speaker is
slightly crazy and everybody knows it. - Arrange to have a poorly-dressed young woman with an infant quietly enter the
meeting, stare directly at the (male) speaker for a while, burst into tears,
then leave the room. - Bring a hand puppet, preferably an animal. Ask it to clarify difficult
points. - When there is a call for questions, lean back in your chair, prop your feet
up on the table, smile contentedly, and say, “Well, here’s the way I see it,
J.B…” (or any other impressive-sounding initials that are not actually your
boss’s.) - Complain loudly that your neighbor won’t stop touching you. Demand that the
boss make him/her stop doing it. - Bring a small mountain of computer printouts to the meeting. If possible,
include some old-fashioned fanfold paper for dramatic effect. Every time the
speaker makes a point, pretend to check it in one of the printouts. Pretend to
find substantiating evidence there. Nod vigorously, and say “uh-huh, uh-huh!”
Should you sell yourself at work? If you want to move up the corporate ladder and get noticed, then yes you should.
At the end of the day, we’re all salespeople no matter what job we do and in virtually all aspects of our life. We sell ourselves to potential employers, potential customers, potential significant others, and potential friends.
Selling yourself simply refers to showing others what you are capable of and promoting your skills and worth to others. In a work context, selling yourself could refer to letting your peers and superiors know about your skills and the reasons why you exist in the company.
If you work for a large company where it’s easy to get lost, the importance of some degree of self-promotion becomes even more important if you expect to get noticed by higher ups.
Do you work with people where you wonder exactly what that person does for the company? What purpose do they serve and would anyone notice if they stopped showing up to work? Learning how to market yourself is the best way to ensure you don’t become one of these people.
Here are a few suggestions to help you get noticed and to sell yourself at work:
Speak up in meetings
Obviously you don’t want to just speak for the sake of speaking, but how many times do you attend a meeting where you say nothing and let others do all the talking? Contributing during meetings is a great way to sell yourself and to get noticed by others. If you have something to say, say it. Not saying anything and not getting involved in meetings can be misconstrued by others as proof of indifference on your part.
Check out the Top Ten List of things NOT to do in a meeting.
Get to know people in other parts of the company
I once worked for a company with more than 5,000 employees on payroll. It was easy to get lost in the shuffle and it took me awhile to get to know people and for them to know me. That changed when I was nominated to work on a project that involved several other departments.
Pretty soon, I had people from departments I’d never heard of contacting me to discuss my work and to learn more about what I was doing. I very quickly started to get known in parts of the company that would never have known me if not for me being nominated for this project.
Moral of the story: Look for ways you can nominate yourself for projects that will get your name known in other parts of the company.
Offer to work on a project or task that no one else wants to do
I once worked on a project that no one else wanted to do, a project that several other people had already tried and failed completing. I started working on the project and quickly managed to push it farther than anyone else had in the previous three years and received a great deal of praise from superiors because of it. I also got to know people in other parts of my company and they got to know me, too.
The best part of this task was that even if it had have failed, it probably wouldn’t have looked bad on me because several others had already tried and failed, too. Succeeding where others have failed is a great way to sell yourself!
Make sure you get credit when credit is deserved
Ensure that you market yourself with the work that you send to others. Your work shouldn’t come from an anonymous source. Ensure that your reports show that you wrote them and when possible make sure your boss (and their boss if possible) see what you are doing. There is no better way to sell yourself than by consistently completing good work but no one will know it’s from you unless you tell them.
Grete Ruder, Celebrity Staff Recruiter
About Grete Ruder
Grete joined Celebrity Staff in 2005 and has helped build its Kansas City office from the ground up. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Kansas, has served as Chamber Champion for the KC Chamber of Commerce for two years, and has completed numerous training sessions on professional cover letter and resume writing.
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