So now you understand the theory of the Ladder of Inference it’s time to learn how to use it. The ladder will help you make better decisions and validate or challenge other people’s. It’ll do this by making sure you use only the truth, facts and reality. Once you learn how to use it, the ladder will allow you to look at the data presented to you in a reasoned and objective way. Making decisions will become easier and you’ll be able to challenge others and reach a shared conclusion without conflict.
Are you asking questions?
Most decisions are made quite easily – if you are given the facts to work with you can make a decision based on them. The problems arise when you try to make decisions when you don’t have, or don’t try to find out, all the facts. When this happens your decision making process starts to go off-the-rails as you are basing it on assumptions and beliefs, not reality, facts and truth. An indicator of this happening is when you find yourself asking questions, such as the ones detailed below, during your decision making process:
• Why do I think that?
• Where has that assumption come from?
• Is this the right thing to do?
• Do I have all the facts here?
If you do, it is time to stop, evaluate your position and consider your reasoning process
What’s next?
Once you realise you have a problem, you need to discover where on the ladder your thinking has reached. Are you developing beliefs, being selective with your facts, interpreting the facts you have or forming conclusions?
Now you know which rung you are on, you should work backwards down the ladder, using your reasoning. Use the question ‘What am I thinking and why?’ This will allow you to see what facts, reality and truths you are really working with. You can also use these questions to help you discover where you’ve gone wrong:
• Have I chosen the correct course of action?
• What other courses of action are available?
• What are the real facts here?
• Are facts missing that are affecting my decision?
• What data have I chosen to use and what was left out?
• Why did I leave out some of the data?
Also take note of which rungs of the ladder you seem to skip the most often. This’ll help you change your thinking in the future.
Once, you’ve discovered where you deviated from the truth, facts and reality, you can start to work your way back up the ladder again.
Explain your reasoning to others
An excellent way of checking that your reasoning is sound is to explain it to someone else. Doing this will show up any flaws in your thinking process. This is especially important if you are expected to present your reasoning to others. You need to be able to answer any challenges to your decision by presenting a thorough, reasoned argument.
So there you have it – The Ladder of Inference. Do let me know if you try it and, if you have any other methods of making decisions that you think would be of help to other students, please email me or leave a comment below.
