Ladder of inference
You saw something, picked out part of it, added meaning, assumed, concluded, and acted, in about a second. Climb back down before you speak.
For a Conversation · Chris Argyris, 1970s · takes fifteen minutes
How to run it
- Bottom rung. Write what a camera would have recorded: the words said, the things done. No adjectives.
- Next rung. What you noticed out of all that. You did not notice everything, and what you picked out is already a choice.
- Next. The meaning you gave it. "She was late" is data. "She doesn’t take this seriously" is meaning.
- Next. The assumptions that meaning rests on, then the conclusion you drew, then what you now believe about the person. Write each rung separately; the point is to see how many there are.
- Now go down the ladder with them. Start from the bottom: "What I saw was this. What I made of it was this. Is that how you saw it?"
- Expect their ladder to have different rungs from the same bottom step. That is the conversation, and it is usually shorter than the row would have been.
Where it falls down. Starting the conversation at the top rung, which is where you already are and where they cannot follow you.
With a pen
What I believe about them nowThe top rung. Write it, then climb down
The assumptions it rests on
What I noticedOut of everything that happened
What a camera would have recordedThe bottom rung. Words said, things done, no adjectives
My opening line, from the bottom"What I saw was... What I made of it was... Is that how you saw it?"