98. Secret Meeting Skills Nobody Teaches You (But Everybody Notices)
Episode 98
There’s more to meetings than just showing up and trying to sound smart. In fact, there’s a whole hidden curriculum in most meetings that is more about how you act than about what you say.
In this episode of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast, I’m sharing the secret meeting skills that nobody talks about, but that everybody notices. When you know these skills, you’ll start using meetings as a way to build your professional reputation and prove to others that you take your work seriously.
This episode is perfect for early-career professionals, students starting internships, or anyone without a lot of meeting experience.
What You Learn:
The hidden curriculum of meetings — unspoken rules that silently shape how others perceive you
How to present yourself professionally in meetings through posture, focus, and awareness
The importance of knowing your role in the room (and how to prepare for it)
How to listen and participate like a pro — when to speak up, how to ask smart questions, and what to avoid
The essential steps for following through after meetings so your reputation stands out for reliability
🔗 Resources + Episodes Mentioned:
⭐SchoolHabits University (Parents, go here)
⭐SchoolHabits University (Students, go here)
⭐The College Note-Taking Power System (Brand New Program!)
⭐Assignment Management Power System (Brand New Program!)
Episode 31 – How to Take Notes at Meetings
Episode 61 – How to Prepare for Meetings
Never stop learning.
❤️ Connect:
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The following transcript was autogenerated and may contain some interesting and silly errors. But in the name of efficiency and productivity, I choose not to spend my time fixing them 😉
Meeting Skills Nobody Teaches (But Everybody Notices)
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[00:00:00] Well, hello and welcome to episode 98 of the Learn and Work Smarter podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I am Katie, and this episode is gonna be a good one, but I do wanna be clear right out of the gate who my intended audience is for this particular episode. So most of my episodes can be applied to students and working professionals at all stages of their careers, and while the strategies and insights I share today can certainly apply to all of those groups, I am really focusing today's content on young professionals who are new to the workforce or maybe college students who are getting work experience maybe through an internship, but essentially anybody who doesn't have a lot of meeting experience.
If you're a longtime career veteran and you've had a million meetings under your belt and you're usually running them and you've got it covered, then you probably already know most of what I'm sharing today. I still invite you to stay because sometimes we just hear things said differently and for whatever reason, it lands more [00:01:00] palatably.
Right? But I just want to say that upfront. So, if you are a college student who's headed into the workforce, you are a new career professional, or you just haven't had a lot of experience with meetings, today's episode is for you. And if you know anybody who is like that, please share this episode with them.
Okay, so obviously you can tell from the title that today we are talking about meetings, specifically meeting skills. Because nobody teaches you how to act in meetings. Whether you're having an internship for the first time, or it's maybe your first job, you are going to be invited to meetings and essentially there is a hidden curriculum in all meetings and you need meeting skills to master that curriculum.
There is a way to be in meetings when you're early in your career, or really, I guess at any stage in your career, there is a way to act and present yourself and engage in meetings that you're a participant in. [00:02:00] Not meetings necessarily that you're running or managing, but meetings that you're invited to in some capacity other than actually running the meeting.
You know what I mean? And if you don't know how to act in meetings or what the expectations are, then meetings can feel really intimidating or confusing for early career professionals. There is etiquette and there is hierarchy and subtle dynamics that nobody tells you about. And sure you can kind of figure it out on your own eventually, but my job here is to help you take a shortcut and learn some of this stuff ahead of time.
Does that make sense? So today's episode is basically the meeting skills that no one talks about, but everyone notices and they can completely change how people perceive you. We have a lot to cover, so we're gonna get started. But always remember that everything I mentioned today can be found at the show notes at Learn andworksmarter.com/podcast/98.
If you are watching this on YouTube, you can find all the links in the description box. If you're listening on a podcast app and you haven't [00:03:00] yet subscribed on YouTube, I would love for you to do that. You can also find me on Instagram at SchoolHabits. That is a great way to connect as well. 'cause that's probably the place where I'm most active, sharing tips and strategies and things that help you learn and work smarter.All right, let's get this show on the road.
All right. In the first part of this episode, I'm going to address some of the, what I'm calling the hidden curriculum of meetings and kind of set the stage a little bit with some of the things that no one really talks about, but everybody expects you to know because the reality is that meetings have unspoken rules that signal your professionalism long [00:04:00] before you speak.
Now I talk about how to be professional, that's literally the title of episode 14. That's a good one, and I'm gonna link it of course, down below. But my first piece of advice here is to treat every meeting like an opportunity to build your reputation, because it really is that. Every meeting you attend in whatever capacity you're attending the meeting, even if you don't say a word the entire time, it's an opportunity to present yourself a certain way, which of course is connected to building your reputation. Your posture, your punctuality, what you do during the meeting, how you hold yourself, your ability to focus during that meeting, they all communicate to others as loudly as your words do. And whoever's at that meeting, whether it's your higher ups, your colleagues or people may be at a station below you, I hate phrasing it that way, but in reality that's kind of what it is. They all read the signals that your body language and these softer cues are giving out, so it's important.so more specifically, this sounds really basic, but let me [00:05:00] tell you how many meetings I have sat in where I look around and people aren't doing this. They don't know this good, smart people who have a ton of value and could have a lot to contribute to the room, but they're just unaware of how they're presenting themselves.
And I'm like, oh my gosh, like this matters. But anyway, so as basic as how you sit in a chair. Right, sitting up, not slouching. If you're in a swivel chair at the meeting around a table, no swiveling. Feet on the floor. It doesn't matter where your arms are, I guess your lap, the table, whatever, you know, taking notes, but no full on leaning on the table with your chin on your notebook.
Alright. It's, it's fine to have your elbows on the table. I think we're, we're all past that. In terms of the space that you're taking up, assuming that, you know, you're at a table and you have space in front of you on the table, be aware of how much you're spreading your stuff out. Kind of like a dining room table where everybody has a, you know, a, a place setting in front of them.
Like a, you know, a, a plate and then a water grass glass to one side and your silverware to either side. Okay. A meeting [00:06:00] table is similar. It is not a good look to plop down and take up an unreasonable amount of space, even if that space is available to you.
A, I don't know, reasonable amount of space is kind of to visualize if you were to put a laptop in front of you, whether you're bringing a laptop or not to the meeting, um, and then like eight-ish inches on either side of the laptop, that's a reasonable amount of space. Again, I didn't make these rules.
These are the unwritten rules of perception, of communication, of professionalism, and of reputation. So don't shoot the messenger. Okay. Obviously, you know this, silence your devices. If you're bringing a laptop to take notes, silence the browser that has your email open so you're not getting a ding during the meeting every time you get an email or a message.
And then let's talk about drinks and food. Unless it's a lunch meeting, no food at meetings. How long is a meeting? An hour? Eat something before you're not gonna die of starvation, right? And it's perfectly fine to bring a beverage. I literally never go anywhere without a water bottle. But there needs to be some [00:07:00] level of self-awareness with that as well.
Like if you have an iced coffee that you picked up before the meeting and there is condensation dripping down the side of the cup leaving watermarks and puddles on the table, that is not a good look. So bring your water or your coffee or whatever you want, but try to be discreet about it. I personally tend to travel with a big water bottle, like 32 ounces, like a Nalgene usually.
And if I'm in a professional setting or a meeting, I always put the water bottle on the floor and I leave my space in front of me for my laptop, my notes, or the meeting agenda. Right. It's not a big deal to just reach down and grab a water bottle and take a sip whenever you need to. Especially if your water bottle has like bumper stickers, or they're not called bumper stickers if they're on your water bottle, but like stickers and maybe like lipstick stains on it, and it's just, you know what I mean?
Like if you're gonna present an impression of yourself and of your work and what you bring to the table, literally and figuratively, it shouldn't, you know, come from your water bottle. Right. A few other things that we sometimes [00:08:00] do without thinking, things that can impact our reputation at meetings, usually for the worse chewing gum. Let's not do that at meetings. Alright. Again, how long is a meeting?
An hour at tops, right? You can pop a breath mint in before the meeting, but unless it's a huge meeting and you're sitting in the back row and nobody's really paying attention to you, chewing gum is just not a professional look. It's distracting and no one's interested in hearing gum noises that you're probably like not even aware of.
Also, your phone, I suggest just keeping it off the table. You probably do not even need to bring it to the meeting with you. But if for some reason you have to, keep it in your pocket, in your bag on the floor, and if for some reason you have to keep it on the table, which honestly I can't imagine any scenario in which you would, keep it face down, because every single time you get a notification and your screen lights up, people will notice, even for a quick moment, their attention is gonna shift away from [00:09:00] whoever is speaking and it's gonna dart to the glowing brick on the table Your phone.
And of course it's distracting to you as well. Also making eye contact with whosoever speaking. Now, yes, you're gonna have to look down at your notes, occasionally write it if, if you're taking notes, and we're gonna talk about notes in a bit. But if there's a point where you're not writing and you're just listening, make eye contact.
Now if the meeting is via Zoom, there's also some etiquette to keep in mind. Keep yourself on mute unless asked to come off for whatever reason. Be conscious of what's in the frame behind you. Be aware of your camera angle and your lighting. All of these small things, plus what people see in your background, right?
Communicate a lot about your professionalism. On a Zoom meeting, it is perfectly fine to, you know, take drinks of whatever it is that you're drinking. But again, if your camera's on, you shouldn't be eating a sandwich during the meeting. People are watching that, and as I said at the top of this episode, meetings are a valuable opportunity to build your professional reputation.
Of course, [00:10:00] there's other ways to build your reputation, but meetings are like a concentrated opportunity, a concentrated moment in time where you can really stand out. And if you're thinking, oh my gosh, Katie, you're getting a little petty saying don't chew gum at meetings. Hear me out. If you're sitting around a table with, let's say, I don't know, 12 people, and you're chomping gum with your mouth open, making smacking gum sounds, or you're Dunking Donuts ice coffee condensation, is creating a river running down the table that you don't notice, yeah, that's a big deal. It signals that you don't notice, things that you don't take yourself or your work seriously. Even if you do, that's not the signal you're putting out, and that's not a perception that contributes favorably to your reputation. All right, so the next thing I wanna move on to is knowing your role in the room.
I think this is really essential to performing well and showing up well to meetings, and honestly, it's another skill that people don't talk about.
If you're invited to a meeting, whether as an intern or a professional, whoever called that meeting believed you belonged there, [00:11:00] and that means that you're gonna have some kind of role in that meeting. You don't have to be, you know, leading the meeting to contribute, right? But just you being there, observing might be your role.
Listening might be your role. Taking notes might be your role. You could even be presenting something. Now, knowing ahead of time what your role is can help inform what you're gonna do during that meeting. I have a whole entire episode about how to prepare for meetings, where I talk about the various roles that you may have and what to do and how to prepare for each of those roles.
For example, if your role is to take notes, there's many things I suggest you do ahead of time to prepare for that role or if you're presenting how to prepare for that. Of course, leave that link in the show notes, but that is episode 61, how to prepare for meetings. But knowing that you have a role, even if it's an unspoken role, that's step one.
And then actually preparing for that role is step two. Okay. Now another tip related to knowing your role in the room is to keep learning the hidden rules of [00:12:00] each role during each meeting. Every meeting you attend is an opportunity to observe other people performing in a role that you'll eventually have.
You'll see other people be a note taker and you can observe what method they're using. Of course, they're using all of the strategies I teach you in my how to take notes at meetings episode, of course, that's episode 31, but is it general practice in the company to take notes in a particular way? Maybe, and you'd wanna pay attention to that and follow that kind of unspoken rule. Is there a hierarchy that's kind of implied? Try to notice that. Every company runs its meetings a certain way. Every department runs its meetings a certain way. Every manager runs their meetings a certain way, and it's your job as a participant to observe what that certain way is.
For example, some meetings are more democratic and everybody's talking openly. It's kind of like an open forum, maybe a sort of brainstorming vibe, more casual. But then there's other [00:13:00] meetings where only one or two people are leading and they're delivering information to the group. Maybe there's a pause once in a while for people to ask questions, but people aren't interrupting.
There aren't frequent interjections. An observation is a skill. You wanna pay attention to hierarchy, tone other people's behaviors and then adopt those habits yourself. Every company has its own meeting culture and learning that culture is part of your professional education. Alright, moving on to another meeting skill, I guess that's what I'm calling it, meeting skills.
'cause anything that's learnable is a skill. So we're gonna go with that, is to listen and participate like a professional. Fake it till you make it. You know, our professional presence in meetings is mostly about attention and not about air time. It's not about how much you speak or participate just for the sake of hearing your own voice in a room.
Alright? There's definitely a time and a place for asking questions and volunteering information and participating, but as I just mentioned in the previous section, every company has its [00:14:00] own culture and knowing that culture is your job. But listening actively and visibly is so important during meetings.
'cause oftentimes it's more important how you listen and, and present yourself than what you say. So active listening, what does that look like? It looks like eye contact. It looks like nodding at appropriate times. It looks like having your body face the person who is speaking, if it physically makes sense for you to do so at a table
or something like that. It's about taking notes in a way that's helpful to you, but not distracting and intrusive during the meeting. If you have a really click clack keyboard, then maybe not, that's not the device to bring to the meeting. Right? I've already mentioned this a few times, but I have an episode called How to Take Notes at Meetings.
It's episode 31 and I talk about the best ways to take notes in a way that's not, um, intrusive. Whether you're typing your notes or handwriting them, and then for a deeper dive into note taking at meetings, I have a really awesome concentrated note taking program. It is just [00:15:00] $47. Like honestly, that's a little absurd 'cause I wanted it to be accessible to everybody. It is super compact. It is full of strategies. You can get through the entire program in a couple of hours or less, and then you can start utilizing the strategies literally in your very next class or meeting.
In that program, one of the bonuses I include is a deep dive in how to take notes at meetings and other situations that aren't the classroom. I'm gonna leave the link to that in the show notes as well. It's collegenotetakingsystem.com. Ignore the college specific part because it really is for any level, including professionals. But when you're taking notes at meetings, it indicates that you're paying attention, that you care about what's being said, and then you have some intention to do something with that information, right? And that's all part of professionalism and using meetings as an opportunity to signal your professionalism to other people. Now, another point I wanna make about listening and participating like a pro is to contribute thoughtfully, not constantly.
It is a skill to know when to speak [00:16:00] up, how to avoid stepping on people who are higher up in the hierarchy. How to phrase what you wanna say concisely and professionally. It's not always easy, but if you're an early professional, you can observe, and that is a wonderful way to learn these skills. Watch everybody at every meeting you're in.
How are people contributing to the meeting? Are they raising their hands? Are they waiting until the person running the meeting asks if there's any questions? Are they saving it into the end? Are they just kinda like blurting it out because it's a, maybe it's a really casual meeting, right? What's the tone?
What's the vibe of the interjections? Are there certain people that nobody ever speaks up against? Right. For example, if you're meeting with the department head or a high level manager, maybe that's not the person you're gonna raise your hand and disagree with, right? So there's different rules for different kinds of meetings with different kinds of people, even all within the same company.
And one of the best ways to learn those rules is through observation. Also speaking of questions, some [00:17:00] questions are really great to ask out loud in real time, and some questions are better left, written down for you to get the answers to later by yourself. There'll be plenty of times when you're confused or you don't know what's happening, or you just missed something like you misheard it or literally just didn't hear it, and you might want to raise your hand and say like, can you repeat that? Like, wait, I don't get it. But it's not always the time or place for that. If you have a simple question or one that is tangential or one that maybe you can ask a colleague later, then I wouldn't ask that at the meeting. Save your basic and logistical questions for somebody else or figure them out on your own.
Things like, when's the next meeting? Or, where can we find that file again? Figure that stuff out. Asking those at a meeting isn't the time or place. Instead, you wanna ask questions that move the conversation forward or show that you're thinking critically. If you genuinely have a good question that's connected to something that you're expected to do or understand, find the [00:18:00] appropriate time during the meeting to ask it.
That is certainly okay, but it's usually not a good idea to ask questions or add feedback to the meeting just for participation points. 'cause it's, it's not like school where there's class participation credit. You know what I mean? And if there's something that you disagree with and it is an appropriate disagreement and the person running the meeting is asking for feedback or open discussion, then my suggestion is to start with curiosity.
Maybe something like I might be misunderstanding, but could you please explain how this fits with X? Right? Not just a hardcore, that's wrong, I disagree with that right out of the gate. We wanna practice concise, confident speech, not rambling, no speaking just for the sake of speaking. Understand what's an appropriate question to ask and when versus something that is a basic question that you can just get an answer to afterwards from a colleague.
Okay, we are at the final part of this episode, which is about following through after the meeting. 'cause that is a really great meeting skill to have because sometimes meetings aren't [00:19:00] just about the hour that you met, right? And the hour that you all sat around a table. During that one hour, ideas were generated, plans were made, tasks were given out, right?
So following through with those things after the meeting is often the most important part. I talk a lot about this in the episode where I teach you how to take notes at meetings, but sometime after the meeting, ideally that same day, you wanna review your notes, you want to extract the action items from your notes.
I teach you a strategy for doing this in that episode, and even more so in the college note taking power system bonus that I was talking about earlier. Some of your notes are gonna contain information, sort of like reference material, and some are gonna be action items and you need to extract the action items and put them in your task management system so that you actually do them right?
Like where are you gonna store your notes? Is there any reference information that needs to go somewhere specific? Were there any dates that came up during the meeting that you need to be aware of when add them to your calendar? If somebody asks you to follow up with something or get [00:20:00] them information after the meeting.
Alright, well those are all tasks that go in your task management system that needs to be handled. It is my strong, strong recommendation that you process your notes the same day you had the meeting because we will forget. As much as we tell ourselves that we won't forget, we will. It's just how our working memory works.
All right. Let's do a quick recap of what we covered today. I feel like the ending is like really abrupt, but I gave you the information now I'm gonna drop the mic and walk away, but lemme give you a quick recap. First, we started by talking about the hidden curriculum of meetings, the unspoken rules that communicate your professionalism long before you even say a single word.
Things like your posture, what you bring to the table, like literally like. Food, water, snacks, right? Okay. How much space you take up, whether you're chewing gum, checking your phone, making eye contact, and all of these little things send big signals about you and your work ethic. And we talked about the importance of knowing your role in the room.
If you're invited to a meeting, there is [00:21:00] a reason that you're there. Maybe it's to take notes, maybe it's to observe. Maybe it's to present something. But knowing your role ahead of time helps you show up prepared and confident. And then next we covered how to listen and participate like a professional 'cause remember, your presence in a meeting is more about attention than about airtime. You don't have to talk a lot to make a big impact. You wanna listen actively. You wanna take notes visibly. And then when you do speak, do it thoughtfully and concisely. Ask questions that move the conversation forward, and not ones that you could easily figure out later.
And then finally, we talked about following through after our meetings. This is where your reputation really solidifies itself. Review your notes, pull out your action items, add deadlines to your task system or your calendar, and actually do the things that you committed to, because the number one way to build your reputation is to do what you said you're gonna do by the time you said you're gonna do it.
All right. And when you put all of this together, the [00:22:00] professionalism, the awareness, the listening, the preparation, and the follow through, you will stand out in every meeting that you attend, even if you barely say a word. So my friends, that brings us to the end of this episode. I hope you found this information helpful, and if you know of any young professional in your life who could benefit from knowing some of this information, I invite you to share this episode with them.
You can do that easily from whatever platform you're listening or watching on just by finding the little arrow, whether that's on YouTube or a podcast app. There's always a little arrow somewhere that allows you to share this link with someone who deserves a leg up. Someone who could benefit from knowing these skills before they have to learn them the hard way.
Thank you so much for your time. Keep showing up. Keep doing the hard work, keep asking the hard questions, and never stop learning.
