Pretending to understand

Post date: Jul 21, 2011 7:44:01 PM

Sometimes we don't understand anything at all, but we behave in a manner that we do. (This is such a typical behavior that there should be a word in English for this. I don't know if there is already one !). In such cases generally, we smile... in chat boxes, we reply something like 'he he' or 'ha ha'. In other cases, we try to divert the topic to something related...

but it becomes funny when we speak of something which is not related to the topic at all or if we try to show that we are an expert even without any clue :)

Similarly, At workplaces, some people don't even know about their work, and in meetings, they say "yes we have this ready"..., and after such meetings, all burden goes to their juniors... while other smart people (even if they have it ready) say... "we need a couple of days to finish this" :)

We should try to admit that we don't know... but it is challenging to do. We don't want to be left out or look alien in the discussion, but sometimes its better to be left out than sounding funny!