Be Your Best at Meetings by Just Saying ‘yeah’

An MIT study found that there are about 11 million meetings each day in the U.S. Researchers tried to find out how they could make the meetings more impactful in lesser time. An analysis of 108,947 dialogues in meetings to evaluate patterns of what goes and what doesn’t revealed some startling insights.

They found that the simple word ‘yeah’ could solve the problem and make meetings shorter. Researchers said that people can get their ideas cross by just saying ‘yeah’. The timing of ‘yeah’ needs to be perfect, though.

Data mining experts analyzed the first scientific database of what works and what doesn’t in meetings. In their research, they found that “Yeah” turned out to be the most persuasive word you can use in a meeting, followed by “give,” “menu,” “start,” and “meeting.”

“The word ‘yeah’ seems to be used most often when someone wants to show agreement with what has been said in the past. You can use it to help attribute your idea to someone else, which might give it a higher chance of being accepted.”

Researchers used machine learning algorithms to analyze the persuasiveness of words especially when crucial decisions were made. In most meetings, wrap up times are unnecessarily long. They could use the help of computers to give a pop up message that the meeting is not getting anywhere and that they should hasten it up.

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Source-Medindia