Chapter 11 Moving Toward Mastery 187

only would they work as a team, but they would stop periodically to reflect on what was occurring and what they were learning. IAG would be a good way to structure such a reflection period.

It helps if the project is one that is important but doesn’t have a tight deadline. Otherwise, the looming deadline will trump learning and all the time will be spent on getting the task accomplished.

Experiments

Gestalt psychology teaches that experiments are a great way to learn. These are not exercises or planned events, but experiments that are created on the spot to help you learn something more about yourself and perhaps your behavior. For example, let’s say you have a difficult time influencing your boss. When he begins to go all Alpha male on you, it triggers a knee- jerk reaction in you, and you respond by bringing out your Alpha male or female. You become like two baboons vying over a choice hunk of food.

You have a meeting scheduled for today at 10 and you kinda think that he will trigger you again. So you create an experiment. Here’s what to do:

1. Make it a safe emergency. Whatever you plan to do, you need to feel that it is safe enough to try it, but risky enough so that you can learn from it. You devise an experiment in which you will remain absolutely silent whenever baboon-man triggers your desire to meet force with force. When you do speak, it will be to the topic of the meeting and not to his provocation. That’s it. Youthink you can probably do that experiment—that’s the safety part. But you don’t feel all that comfortable remaining silent—that’sthe emergency. You promise yourself that you will do this at least once in the meeting.
2. You try the experiment. Your boss says something that triggers you. And you can feel your muscles begin to tense. Instead of speaking, you try to remain silent. That’s all there is to it.
   
3. When the meeting is over, you think about what just happened using the Identify—Analyze—Generalize process.

Experiments can be a great way to try out new behaviors with rela- tive safety. Perhaps you make the screen go blank on your PowerPoint just after the fifth slide. You step forward and ask the audience, “So, what do you think?” and then shut up until someone responds. For some people,