As a commercial lawyer I am often expected quite rightly to take a business approach to any legal of contractual problem.

However there are also advantages to being a member of a profession which it is important to remember. First taking a dispassionate and honest view of the facts and circumstances and giving a correct and unbiased view. You do your business client no favours by saying they have a good case if they do not.

As important in a negotiation which is stuck on a difficult technical point, maybe limits of liability or intellectual property if you are a lawyer, taking the other professional involved aside for a quiet word between two lawyers can often solve the problem First you are more likely properly to understand the issue which many of the other people in the room may not. Secondly  you will be able to avoid the sometimes inevitable show boating that goes on in front of clients.

Thirdly and most importantly your fellow membership of a profession allows you both to rise above the hurly burly of the discussions and genuinely to seek a solution that suits both sides.

Great speakers like Winston Churchill looked as if they are the most confident orators.

Yet one of Churchill's first speeches in the House of Commons was a disaster and he actually was speechless to his and everybody else's great embarrassment.

After that he always prepared meticulously and though he still got nervous his preparation and the need to communicate messages "that lit torches of hope in a dark and dangerous world" overcame all of this. 

So if you have an important presentation to make prepare and rehearse and hone the message you want to get across - and guess what nobody will realise you might be a bit nervous!

I am not a supporter of smoking at all but it does have one advantage. A long time ago in a negotiation I became concerned because every two hours or so the leading figure in my client's team and a couple of his colleagues would excuse themselves and leave the room for ten to fifteen minutes. I worried as their lawyer that they were using the break to set negotiating tactics without me.

So I joined them to discover that yes they were discussing the progress we were making but mainly they were having a cigarette. From then on I joined them in smokers huts and car parks and, whilst I may have shortened my life by passive smoking, we used the opportunity well to have a time out and set our strategy.

From a health perspective I recently read that even a short two minute walk away from a desk or meeting room every two hours increases your life expectancy. So why not have the break without the smoking? And it's a great negotiating strategy.

When things go wrong it hurts. We all take it to heart and feel the pain. The missed issue or error that leads to a major problem. We are all told to learn from our mistakes and spend lots of time learning the lessons.

But actually it is just as important if not more so to look for what goes right. Why did the transaction go so well? What did you do that contributed so much to the success of a deal?

It's harder to look for strengths because things go well. There is no embarrassment or criticism when things go smoothly so it does not make such a big impression. But it is just here that we can learn what we are good at and build on our strengths rather than, or at least in addition, to mistakes. Look for the success factors and learn from them. They are if anything more elusive and more important. Everybody says we learn from failure not success. True but we can and should learn from success as well.