practice · all tools
Ladder of Inference
Depth · what it can open●●○○2 — reflective
Holding · facilitation1 — host
Trust · group readiness★any
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional
Argyris's classic made practical: walk a charged conclusion back down the ladder — from the action taken, through beliefs, interpretations, and selected data, to the observable pool everyone actually saw — and discover where your rungs and someone else's diverge. Used solo for self-check or in pairs to unstick a disagreement about "what happened".
Hold with care
- Walking someone ELSE down their ladder uninvited is prosecution, not practice — the ladder is a mirror first
Practical
- Time
- 20-45 min
- Group
- 1–30 · individual, pairs, small-group
- Settings
- self-guided, in-person, online
- Materials
- Ladder diagram; a real conclusion worth examining
- Mechanisms
- cognitive-reframing, open-awareness, dialogic-encounter
- Change scope
- state → skill · recurring-practice (whenever a conclusion carries more heat than data)
Origin & where it lives
Chris Argyris; popularized via Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline fieldbook — Action science / organizational learning; a core Compassionate Systems practice
Instructions: open online
In this directory via Compassionate Systems Framework (Center for Systems Awareness)
Related: what so what now what (pairs-with) · iceberg model (pairs-with)
status: checked · added 2026-08-26