Sharing our insights, ideas and experiences on a broad range of business, organisation and inter-personal challenges and opportunities
A User Manual for Yourself
Your washing machine has one.
Your flat pack furniture has one. Even your car or motorbike has one.
Do you have one for yourself or your team? A user manual for yourself.
This is a guide or manual to explain how best you operate and work. A guide to what is the best working environment for you to be successful. A guide for others to help them ‘walk in your shoes.’
What sorts of things does a user manual for yourself include?
What motivates you?
What are the best and worst ways to communicate with you? Perhaps you need time to settle into your day, answer some e-mails, grab a coffee and then you are ready to go. Or, perhaps you are ready to go from minute one.
How do you like to participate in team meetings and workshops? Maybe you need time to think before answering a question or maybe you like to be the ‘devil’s advocate’ in a meeting.
How do you like to receive feedback? If you are going to receive feedback, especially negative feedback, what is the best way and environment for you to receive that feedback?
What else do you want people to know about you? For example, do you have a weekly commitment of some sort that if you don’t attend to, it puts you off track for the rest of the week.
How would you answer these questions? What would be in your user manual?
You can use your user manual to introduce yourself in your new role or a new workplace, or just get to know your colleagues on a deeper level. We’ve recently used user manuals as a way for a team to get to know each other and work more collaboratively, even after several years of working together.
Connect with us to learn more about how to develop a user manual for yourself and your team.
Do you sometimes feel like a fraud at work or in life?
Does your self-talk often include phrases such as telling yourself that your recent success is “just luck”, “I feel like a fraud” or “one day I will be found out”? If you recognise your own self-talk and feelings, rest assured that you are not alone. I can relate because I have been there myself, and many times!
These thoughts of feeling like a fraud are indicative of ‘imposter syndrome’. Imposter syndrome manifests itself in a range of different ways. These range from feelings of being inadequate, a sense of not belonging, to a constant worry that one day you will be ‘found out’. People with imposter syndrome feel that despite all of their professional achievements their success is a result of good luck rather than your own hard work and talent. And you’ll typically feel that one day somebody, somewhere, will catch you out. The Harvard Business Review defines imposter syndrome as someone suffering “...from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence” (HBR 2008).
You might be thinking that imposter syndrome only occurs in people with low self-esteem or a lack of self-confidence but that’s not true! High-achieving, highly successful people often suffer from imposter syndrome (HBR 2008). These feelings are not gender specific and if you are recognising yourself at this point, you will know that managing these self-doubts can be mentally draining and that you are likely to take criticism very personally. You may also overwork yourself to the point of exhaustion in an effort to ‘prove’ yourself to yourself and others. You’re likely to have high expectations for yourself and for others, so when you don’t achieve these expectations this may just reinforce your own feelings of inadequacy.
Believe it or not, it’s not all negative though, there are some positive ways to view your own imposter syndrome, including:
Your feelings are a way of actually challenging yourself
You’re likely to demonstrate a great deal of humility, empathy and emotional intelligence as you won’t fool yourself into thinking that you are better than you are You will always be looking for ways to develop yourself
You will continue to work hard and be motivated by the fear of failure. This fear will mean that you’re more incentivised to prepare well and perform well.
If you need to manage your own imposter syndrome, here are 3 ideas to help you get started:
You don’t have to do everything alone. Ask others for help. Most people will happily give you help, so all you have to do is ask for the help you need; whether that be to help ease your workload, provide input or just listen.
Stop comparing yourself to others. In our social media driven world it’s easy to compare ourselves to others. Try not to fall into this trap and remember that no one is perfect, regardless of what you are seeing. you are on your own journey so believe and trust in yourself.
Don’t forget to celebrate your successes and reward yourself
Andrew recently appeared in an episode of The Career Rockstars podcast. Listen to Andrew share his career journey, saying yes to new opportunities and the importance of understanding ‘why?' Just click on the image above to access the podcast on Spotify.
Using a Red Teams approach to challenge your team’s thinking
In the movie Wold War Z (stick with us here!) the character played by Brad Pitt learns about the concept of The Tenth Man, a fictitious concept that proposes that if nine out of ten people have the same information and they arrive at the same conclusion then it is the duty of the tenth man to disagree, not matter how improbable it may seem. Whilst this concept may be the product of Hollywood screenwriters it’s not too far from the truth. Several militaries, companies such as Ford and technology companies use a version of the Tenth Man doctrine to challenge prevalent assumptions and strategies. The Red Teams or Devil’s Advocate teams are used to find and exploit vulnerabilities by using a range of techniques to overcome unconscious biases and group thinking that can skew our decision making without us being aware of it. Applying Red Team techniques help us to become aware of and overcome these biases and limitations.
“Adopting a red teaming mindset involves taking nothing for granted. It means questioning the unquestionable, thinking the unthinkable, and challenging everything….. It means examining problems from the point of view of your competitors, your suppliers, your employees and other stakeholders.”
- Bryce G. Hoffman, 'Red Teaming: Transform your business by thinking like the enemy’
There are many bias and blindspot hotspots in your customer work including during account planning, strategic planning, project management and project reviews, relationship building, during negotiations and tender responses, action planning, and when making short and long term decisions to name a few. What are some potential bias hotspots, group thinking and logical fallacies in your sales and marketing processes?
We’ve been working with clients using a Red Teams approach to help understand, challenge and strategise projects, negotiations, account plans and commercial decisions. We thought this approach might be helpful to you and your team, especially at such an uncertain time, so we will be sharing our approach to Red Teams and the tools that you can use in a series of insights right here. If you would like to discuss Red Teams and how we can help you or your team, we’d love to chat.
Tools to challenge your thinking -
Pre mortem analysis
There’s a wide range of tools that Red teams use to challenge their assumptions and strategies and so we wanted to introduce you to the tools and techniques that both our clients and our team have found most helpful and that you might find useful too.
The first technique that I’d like to introduce you to is the Pre-mortem analysis.
A post mortem analysis is when a team is formed after a plan has failed in order to figure out why it failed. You may have even been a part of post mortem teams in your own work. When your manager says that we need to figure out what went wrong then you’re performing post mortem analysis.
Imagine if you could do this analysis before anything occurred. Well you can, this is where a pre-mortem analysis can work for you and your team before you implement that plan or undertake that negotiation. A pre-mortem analysis assumes that your plan has failed and not just failed, but failed in the most disastrous way. Imagine that instead of winning that tender and gaining new business you have instead lost your entire business with that customer and you will no longer be a supplier to them in 3 months time. Once you have thought about what disaster looks like then the challenge that you set for the team is to think about the reasons why the plan has failed.
If you’d like to use this technique here are some key steps to undertake:
Form your team and ensure that it includes diverse functions and experiences.
Present your plan or strategy to the team in a 5 to 10 minute presentation.Imagine that you are X months or years into the future and that your plan has not just failed, it has failed miserably and in ways that you could never have seen.
Identify all of the possible reasons that this occurred and write these down. Ask everyone for their thoughts and ideas, one by one.
Share all of these ideas and then pause, sit and think. Which of the ideas are most likely to cause your plan to fail? You can use dot voting to identify the most likely possibilities.
Once you have done this, work together as a team to identify ways that you can change your plan or your strategy. How can you mitigate these factors?
From our experience, you don’t need an extensive amount of time to run a post mortem analysis and you’ll be surprised what you can identify in an hour. If you’d like to learn more about Red Teams, this or other techniques you can connect with us at:
Tools to challenge your thinking -
Four ways of seeing
The four ways of seeing is a relatively simple and easy tool to use and it can help you gain insights into how your competitors, customers and others see your company.
You begin this approach by identifying the most significant groups of people that would be impacted by your strategy, idea or decision. You then create a 2 x 2 chart to analyse each group’s perspective.
Start in the top left corner and ask how you really see yourselves. It’s really important to make an unflinching assessment of your goals, your culture and whether you are really prepared to take risks?
Then moving to the top right corner think about the group that you are analysing. This could be a customer or a supplier for example. How do they see themselves, what do they stand for and what do they want?
Then move to the bottom left and this is where you can start to have fun and think really deeply and critically. How does your organisation view that group? Ask yourself questions such as what do you really say about that group behind closed doors. Be honest!
And finally, in the bottom right quadrant, continue to be open and honest you will reveal even more insights as you ask how that group views you and your organisation. Be brave, ask yourself what they really think of your company, your products and your services.
Once you have completed this, stop and reflect. It’s often helpful to take a break at this point or implement a no speaking approach for 5 minutes. What are the disconnects that you see? How can you bridge any divides? Or, how can you capitalise on any divides?
B2B Sales and Marketing Excellence Programs - Five keys to success
As the number of buyers involved in B2B purchasing decision increases and an increasing number of buyers don’t see sellers as a resource to solve business problems, many companies are turning to sales transformation and excellence programs. It’s easy and tempting to try and ‘boil the ocean’ when setting out to transform your sales and marketing capabilities by trying to do everything at once. We’ve been involved in many sales transformation programs and we have found that there are five keys to real, ongoing success:
1. Best practice reviews
Often, we don’t know what we don’t know. We have found best practice visits to other companies including those in adjacent or different industries will help you gain a perspective of what is and is not possible, expose you to new ways of thinking and to ultimately help you define your own program priorities.
2. Get your leadership team involved
Your leadership team is important in setting targets, modelling behavioural changes and maintaining the momentum of your program. To demonstrate their commitment to change we have found that it’s best practice to have your leadership team highly engaged in the change process. They can do this by participating or undertaking the training themselves or even delivering some of your training. This ensures that they are actively involved, are exposed to any challenges that your teams and business may face and sends the clear message that change is occurring and should be embraced.
3. Set and track targets
Some of the most common questions you will be asked is how do we know it’s working and what’s the real benefit? It’s therefore really important to establish a baseline before you commence your journey. The baseline could include measures of customer satisfaction, employee capabilities, customer retention rates or sales and margin levels. You should then set and communicate targets clearly. Tracking your progress will help you understand and articulate the benefits, what you have achieved and where you are in relation to any targets that you have set.
4. Build capabilities
It’s important to invest in your sales team’s capabilities. This not only addresses the ‘what’s in it for me?’ question that we all have when undergoing a change process but it will help your sales and marketing teams develop new commercial capabilities that are needed in the increasingly complex world of B2B sales.
5. Embedding the program
Embedding commercial changes is often easier said than done. To ensure that your commercial teams adopt (and continue to adopt) new ways of working you may want to consider conducting regular customer account reviews, refresh existing content and capabilities, add new and interesting content, establish reward mechanisms and where needed, develop new talent.
If you’d like to find out more about our experiences and where we may be able to help you on your sales excellence journey, we’d love to talk or meet with you.
Confronting the imposter in ourselves
We recently wrote (article below) about the feelings many of us have in our careers of being an imposter and that one day you will be ‘found out. Imposter syndrome manifests itself in ourselves in a range of different ways from feelings of being inadequate or feeling that despite all of our professional achievements our success is a result of good luck or good fortune rather than their own hard work and talent.
So if you recognise imposter syndrome in yourself, what can you do to confront the imposter? Here’s six ideas to get you started:
Your achievements don’t have to be perfect all of the time.
You don’t have to do everything alone. Ask others for help. Most people will happily give you help so all you have to do is to ask for help; whether that be to help ease your workload, provide input or just to listen. The more you share and talk to others you may just find that other people are feeling the same way as you.
Don’t forget to celebrate your successes and reward yourself. Take time to celebrate your success and don’t just dismiss your successes as sheer luck. You worked hard to achieve each goal so reward and congratulate yourself.
Be fairer and gentler to yourself by not classifying everything as either a win or a loss. Some failures may have happened for reasons outside of your control. And if they haven’t, reframe them in your mind as learning opportunities.
Stop comparing yourself to others. In our social media driven world it’s easy to compare ourselves to others. Try not to fall into this trap and remember that no one is perfect, regardless of what you’re seeing. You are on your own journey so believe and trust in yourself.
It’s ok to be out of your comfort zone. Growth comes from being outside of our own comfort zones.
Do you feel like a fraud at work?
Does your self talk often include phrases such as telling yourself that your recent success is “just luck”, “I feel like a fraud” or “one day I will be found out”? If you recognise your own self talk and feelings then you’re not alone. I know because I have been there myself (many times!).
These thoughts of feeling like a fraud are indicative of ‘imposter syndrome’. Imposter syndrome manifests itself in a range of different ways. These range from feelings of being inadequate, a sense of not belonging, to a constant worry that one day you will be ‘found out’. People with imposter syndrome will feel that despite all of their professional achievements their success is a result of good luck rather than your own hard work and talent. And you’ll typically feel that one day somebody, somewhere, will catch you out. The Harvard Business Review defines imposter syndrome as someone suffering “…from chronic self-doubt and a sense of intellectual fraudulence that override any feelings of success or external proof of their competence” (HBR 2008).
You might be thinking that imposter syndrome only occurs in people with low self esteem or a lack of self confidence but no, high achieving, highly successful people often suffer from imposter syndrome (HBR 2008). These feelings are not gender specific and if you are recognising yourself at this point, you will know that managing these self doubts can be mentally draining and that you are likely to take criticism very personally. You may also overwork yourself to the point of exhaustion in an effort to ‘prove’ yourself to yourself and others. You’re likely to have high expectations for yourself and for others, so when you don’t achieve these expectations this may just reinforce your own feelings of inadequacy.
Believe it or not, it’s not all negative though, there are some positive ways to view your own imposter syndrome, including:
Your feelings are a way of actually challenging yourself
You’re likely to demonstrate a great deal of humility, empathy and emotional intelligence as you won’t fool yourself into thinking that you are better than you are
You will always be looking for ways to develop yourself
You will continue to work hard and be motivated by the fear of failure. This fear will mean that you’re more incentivised to prepare well and perform well
In my next article we will take a look at six things that you can do to confront this imposter.
Before then though, remember that true imposters don’t suffer from imposter syndrome!
Podcast interview - Sales and marketing excellence programs
We were recently interviewed by Nick Jonsson from EGN Singapore on all things related to sales and commercial transformation programs. In this podcast episode we discuss the keys to success, why companies undertake commercial transformation programs and we talk about what has changed in the world of B2B sales.
If you would like to tap into our experiences and ideas for sales and marketing excellence programs or to talk about your own program and ideas, don’t hesitate to contact us.
The importance of Emotional Intelligence (EQ) in the workplace
We recently chatted with Chew Wui Lynn and Stanley Leong on Channel News Asia 93.8fm about the importance of EQ in the workplace. We also shared some tips and tricks about how to develop your own EQ. The good news for all of us is that EQ skills can be developed.
If you’d like to find out more about how we can help you and your team develop your EQ capabilities, please contact us.
You can also listen in or watch the interview by clicking on the link below.
Using energisers and icebreakers
Each meeting, workshop or training session is different and for workshop leaders themselves, one of the most important questions to ask during the preparation phase is which Icebreaker and Energiser activities will you use?
We’ve participated in workshops where we built towers with marshmallows and spaghetti, played human bingo, built rope bridges, had to do ‘trust falls’, ‘Amazing Race’ style activities, built bicycles, tied ourselves in knots and even made dumplings as an energiser activity. You’ve probably done many of these things as well. All of this got us thinking about what is your go to activity to inject energy into a room or break the ice?
Here are a few of our favourites:
Alternative uses for a paper clip? Used to spark creative thinking and if you provide the participants a physical paper clip they will typically start to develop quick prototypes as a part of their thought processes. Some of the most unusual suggestions we have seen include using the paper clip as a finger splint, fishing hook and some participants have even suggested using a paper clip as a wedding ring. As we said at the time, good luck with that!
‘Show and tell’ - ask everyone to bring their favourite product / design to the workshop and share with the group what they like about the object they brought in. This is a really good activity to start a brainstorming or ideation session.
Two truths and one lie - everyone shares three things about themselves, two of which must be true and one that must be a lie. The rest of the participants then have to guess which of the three things is a lie. This is a great way to find out really interesting and often unknown details about your work colleagues. It can take some time to complete this activity for everyone in the room so you can always spread it throughout different parts of the day(s).
What’s your favourite flavour of ice-cream? Everyone loves ice-cream (well, almost everyone) so this simple question when people are introducing themselves, can be a unique way to get some energy in the room but it can also be used to break large groups into smaller working groups. For example, everyone who loves chocolate ice-cream is in one group, anyone who likes Durian flavoured ice-cream is in another group, and so on.
Gallery walks - place customer or employee quotes, survey results, or ideas around the perimeter of a room and conduct gallery like tours where you walk and talk small groups through the insights you are sharing. This is a great way to build a common base to start developing ideas, seeing a problem in a fresh way or identifying what really needs to change
What do you have planned for your next team meeting or workshop? If you would like to know more about how Wasabi Consulting can help you facilitate your next workshop, training or team meeting, please contact us.
Understanding Introversion and working with Introverts
We were recently interviewed on radio CNA938 in Singapore about understanding and working with Introverts.
Introverts have a number of unique skills so listen in as we discuss Introversion, working with Introverts, finding your voice as an Introvert and a number of tips and tricks.
The building blocks of a successful Value Proposition
Maybe it’s a coincidence but we have seen a lot of references recently to the old adage that ‘people buy people first’. This may be true but people also buy ‘value’ and this applies whether you are buying as a consumer or as a business. All of this reminds us of the Warren Buffet quotation that “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get”
If value is key, then you need to be able to demonstrate and articulate this to your customers. Quite often, this is done through a Value Proposition.
If you type ‘what is a value proposition?’ into your search engine, you will find around 167 million responses. It’s clear that there are a lot of different opinions about what a value proposition is and what they look like. We have been in situations where Account Managers explain that their value proposition to their key customer is that “we have good relationships”, “we have capacity” and “we have good people”. In our experience, all of these examples don’t address the four critical building blocks of a Value Proposition.
Customer Needs. Most importantly, you need to uncover and understand your customer’s needs. A strong value proposition will directly address your customer’s needs and demonstrate that you understand them. Open ended questions will help you uncover the customer’s needs and their pain points. Don’t hesitate to be inquisitive and understand what your customer’s needs are. It’s also helpful to try and uncover your customer’s personal needs that may drive their decision making.
Your capabilities - what capabilities do you have that meets the customer’s needs? It’s important not just to list out all of your capabilities and potentially demonstrate to the customer that you have applied a ‘cookie cutter’ approach to their needs. A strong value proposition will clearly demonstrate how your products and services meet and even exceed the customer’s needs and expectations.
Benefits. Now that you have demonstrated that you understand the customer’s needs and how your capabilities can meet their needs, you need to be able to explain the benefits that the customer will receive from your products or services. The benefits should address all of the customer’s needs, including the ease of doing business, personal needs, higher level needs….
Why you? To reinforce your value proposition you need to be able to demonstrate why you or your company can deliver your capabilities better than any other supplier. Is it your past experience, industry and market knowledge, your manufacturing expertise, quality focus, your intellectual property and know-how, location footprint, past client work, etc. Many people forget this building block so it is important to differentiate yourself and your capabilities to complete your value proposition.
And one more thing from our experience, your customer’s value proposition is all about your customer and what you can do for them. It should not be an explanation of your needs. As the saying goes, ‘It’s not about you!’
Don’t just meet, facilitate
Tired of meeting after meeting? Don't just meet - use facilitation techniques to get all of the pieces to connect and work together.
In our experience, facilitation is very different from running or managing a meeting in that it involves you using your process skills to guide the meeting or working session through a problem and to decide a course of action. A skilled facilitator understands that they don’t have to have all of the answers themselves (remember the saying “we don’t know what we don’t know”), stay neutral, focus the group on problem solving, draw out ideas and solutions, and get everyone involved and keep the group moving forward.
A good facilitator will focus not just on the meeting itself but they will also focus on the process prior to the meeting. They will pay particular attention to things such as choosing the right room and location for the meeting, ensuring the right tools are in the room, planned the layout and breakout / working areas of the room, and planned their techniques for setting the right ‘climate’ for participation both before and during the meeting.
Once you get to your facilitation session, one of the models that we find useful is the G.R.O.W. model (Landsberg 2003). The is a great conversational model for facilitating problem solving and consists of four distinct steps:
Goal - What is the goal of the workshop / group working session Realities - What is working? What is not working?
Obstacles and Options - What obstacles do we face? What options do we have? What ideas and recommendations do you have?
Way forward - agree priorities and next steps, agree what will happen, who will do it and when
This may sound simple but give it a go next time you need to facilitate a group problem solving session. Like us, you will hopefully find that the model is an effective tool to keep the group focused, aligned and looking forward.
Finally, an expert facilitator will also develop their ability to deal with disruptive people in the room, run brainstorming and prioritisation sessions, set a common understanding of the problem, challenge the group, and effectively use ‘energisers’ to keep the momentum in the room.
If you would like to know more about Wasabi Consulting and what we can do to help you and your teams with your facilitation skills, we’d love to hear from you.
Need to have a difficult discussion? Avoidance is not a strategy
In business and life, one of the things that we all fear (or at least feel very uneasy about) is having a difficult discussion. Before any difficult discussion we may feel uneasy in our stomachs, we may rehearse and rehearse, we may try and practice for every possible response or we may just decide not to have the discussion at all. From our experience, avoiding a difficult discussion is not a sound strategy as you are either reinforcing the behaviour you need to address or creating an even larger issue to deal with later. If you are prone to delaying or avoiding difficult discussions, here are our top four tips to help you have a difficult discussion.
1. Think of the longer term benefits
Quite often we expect a difficult discussion to be a negative experience and it may well be a challenging experience. If you find yourself feeling uncomfortable we have found it helpful to focus on the longer term benefits such as a deeper personal connection and your ability to make more informed decisions. And if that doesn’t work, you may have to remind yourself that the most important work is done when you are feeling most uncomfortable.
2. Be curious
Bring curiosity and respect to your difficult discussions. Find our what the other person thinks, find out what is behind their behaviour or the issue, and ask lots of open-ended questions to help you be curious, solicit more information and to be better informed. For example, during the discussion you can ask questions such as “how does this make you feel?” or “what impact is this having on you?” to help you uncover more information.
Open ended questions - who, what, when, where, how and why - will also help you guide the discussion through to discussing and planning the next steps. For example, a simple “what steps could we take?” or “what options do we have to help fix this?” will help you move the discussion forward and help you both to focus on future solutions.
3. Manage the space
Think about and plan for your discussion to be held in an environment that is comfortable for both you and your counterpart, is free of distractions and creates a psychological ‘safety zone’ for you both to talk openly and actively listen.
4. Actively listen
You may be thinking about your next question, still hung up on a previous comment, or even planning your next meeting when you are in the middle of your difficult discussion. If you are prone to doing any of these things, you are not actively listening and you are certainly not hearing everything that is being said, and you are certainly not hearing anything that is being unsaid. Park those other thoughts, stay in the moment and really listen to what is being said and the non-verbal cues that you are observing.
* And the significance of the picture? Give yourself time to breathe, think and create space for your counterpart to talk during your discussion. Taking a sip of your drink will help you do that.
Having difficult discussions - What happens when things go wrong?
We recently wrote about how to have difficult discussions and our top 4 tips to help you have difficult discussions - think of the long term benefits, be curious, manage the space and actively listen.
One of the questions that we are commonly asked is what happens when things go wrong in a difficult discussion; what do I do? Despite our best intentions and efforts, difficult conversations can go wrong or become even more difficult as the conversation progresses when you either become distracted, or frustration, resentment, and even a sense of wasted time and effort finds it’s way into the discussion and your mind.
Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that things can and will go off the track at some point in your difficult discussion. Acknowledge it and acknowledge it out loud. Once you have begun to acknowledge and accept this, there are a few things that we have found helpful in getting your conversation back on track.
Physically reposition yourself. You can even do this by moving where you are sitting to sit alongside the other person which also demonstrates that you are adopting more of a partnership approach.
If this doesn’t work, take a break from the discussion or change the location altogether. A ‘walk and talk’ is a great way to change the location of the discussion and to re-set the discussion.
You can also reposition yourself mentally by putting your views on hold, at least temporarily. Your conversation may have gone off the tracks because you are focused on getting someone else to adopt your approach or accept your point of view. It’s important to explore and understand how the other person sees a problem before you can solve it, so putting your views on hold, at least temporarily, allows some space for the other person to share their thoughts and for you to be curious as to the other person’s position. By moving into a learning mode you might find some common ground or some common ideas that allow you to move forward.
Re-focus the discussion on the future. Rather than dwelling on the current realities for too long or even just digging into the past, switch the discussion to be a forward looking one. Focus on the options that you both have or ask your counterpart for their help in problem solving. Asking questions such as “how can we move this forward?” or directly asking them for their suggestions such as “what are some of your suggestions for addressing this?” will help you direct the discussion to be forward looking.
By their nature, difficult discussions are exactly that, difficult. Your discussion may go off the track at some point and if that happens, acknowledge it and try one or all of these techniques to get your discussion back on track.