Here's what will really happen: After four months of secret meetings and public blamestorming, the Legislature will adjourn, having done some favors for powerful special interests and approved a budget that spends hundreds of millions of dollars more than the state will take in.

If staff meetings that turn into blamestorms have become all too frequent and familiar in your office, or if relationships fizzle out before their time, your communication patterns might be the cause, says Anna Russo of Success Strategies in Troy.

Blamestorming: To sit around and discuss why a deadline was missed or a project failed and who's responsible. Like brainstorming, from which it is derived, blamestorming is done with little regard for the quality of contributions to the discussion.