?Sabotage!

The world of corporate meetings is always fascinating: it is a cosmos with its own fauna and its own rules, which, depending on how they are used, can destroy your well-prepared meeting. Learn to identify these profiles with three of these typical typologies.

What are the most common tactics to ruin a meeting - and a project - ?

• Let me play devil's advocate: Typical and topical, it is a prospective way of knocking down an initiative by going point by point, looking for any crack (real or imaginary) in it.

Here's how to fix it: Quickly isolate the person trying to monopolize the meeting with a, usually, long speech going over everything you've said and refer him to a separate meeting to "discuss the details and improve the proposal." Most of the time, that meeting will not take place.

• The infinite number of grey areas or how to add scenarios that are not plausible: Yes, between black and white there could be a situation in which there is a monkey juggling hand grenades.

It is solved in the following way: Request the percentage estimate of whether that fantasy scenario will occur and let the rest of the attendees judge for themselves.

- The off-topic question at the end of a presentation: You finish your presentation and someone asks an off-topic question just right after, something like "By the way, where do we have the team lunch in two weeks? And where?"

The solution is as follows: Immediately jump and tell the person that you will give them that relevant information, but now is the time to discuss your proposal. You have to be quick, if you get stuck, the conversation will move on to that topic.