practice · all tools
Ladder of Inference
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".
- 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)
Instructions
- Where
- systemsawareness.org — Compassionate Systems Framework (Center for Systems Awareness), open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — reachable
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Chris Argyris; popularized via Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline fieldbook — Action science / organizational learning; a core Compassionate Systems practice
In this directory via Compassionate Systems Framework (Center for Systems Awareness)
Related: What, So What, Now What? (W³) (pairs-with) · Iceberg Model (pairs-with)
status: checked · added 2026-08-26