What They DO Teach You About Being in a Effed Up Meeting

Larry Chiang character compasses which means reading the vector and direction of a business executive’s soul. He only wants to get mentored by the best. Peek into some of the best business minds via his column

By Larry Chiang

I saw the movie Horrible Bosses where Jason Bateman quotes me and my book. He said: “How do YOU adapt to an asshole boss. THAT’S what they don’t teach you in business school.”

Street smarts is chapter 12 in my last book and my next book, “What They Don’t Teach You at Stanford Business School” and “What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School” (which comes out 11-11-14). All my chapters are parallel to my mentors book “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School”.

Here are a handful of tips, strategies, ideas and, more importantly, countermeasures for when a meeting is starting to tank

-1- Utter, “This meeting is over”

Walk away power is tantamount but rarely used by young, academically smart execs at their first job or first startup.

School is different from work. In school, administrators have massive power over you so you sit for whatever and leave when you’re excused. Work is not school. Begin to be curious about these very clear and blatant subtleties

-2- Document it.

Taking notes is incredibly powerful.

“There is power to the pen”, according to Tina Seelig. She runs a great workshop on brainstorming. During brainstorming sessions, the person taking the notes welds much power.

On the flipside, when you’re in a meeting where you’re getting pig barreled in a mudbath you did NOT make, you better document. It preps you for…

-3- Ambush countermeasures

Some pig barrel meetings are mere formalities to an eventuality that has a high likelihood of occurring.

Remember my newly minted engineer, muggers and rapists have rapped and mugged 2-200x before their attempt to mug or and rape you.

The score is you, 0.
Mugger, 200

This post is meant to mentor you. My Asian academically inclined, PhD’d parents didn’t teach me this. The street did.

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Editor of the BusinessWeek Channel “What They Don’t Teach at Business School”
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Author, NY Times Bestseller
http://whattheydontteachyouatstanfordbusinessschool.com/blog/?s=Ny+times+bestseller

“What They Will NEVER Teach You at Stanford Business School” comes out 11-11-14

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