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“Managers who are skilled communicators
may also be good at covering up real problems.”
- Chris Argyris
I first saw the ladder of inference (LoI)
in Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional
Effectiveness by Argyris & Schon which I think was
published in 1974, but I see a 1st Edition is now in print
(1992). For a while, it was out of print,
and I found that George Washington University Bookstore had
them because an instructor was using them for a course, back
in the 90s.
Senge presented the “ladder” in the 5th
Discipline, if I remember correctly, and I like the simple
version I created for several reasons:
1. 4 rungs, from bottom to top: data,
perception, judging, conclusion (matches Argyris/Shoen
original 4 rungs, FYI)
Conclusion
T - Judgment - F
S - Perception - N
Data
2. Perception can be a continuum from
Sensing to Intuition (Bringing in Jung's Typology)
3. Judging (or the processing of the
perception into a conclusion) is done with Feeling & Thinking.
This model is so simple and so useful,
it's so easy to explain why almost all of us have such a
unique approach to perception and judging of data,
experiences, and beliefs into what we think is now a truth.
Something that I realized in using the
LoI over time is that people who are dominant perceivers will
tend to place more emphasis on the data perception loop,
choosing less frequently to move through the rungs of the
entire ladder, before going back to get more data, thus not
needing to draw a conclusion. I call these
types "expanders" because they always want to enrich the
ladder with additional data.
Those with dominant judging functions
prefer to spend significant periods of time in the
judgment-conclusion loop, preferring less of the time, to go
back and get new data. I call this type a
contractor, because they always want to narrow the ladder with
less data, and more categorization, and judgment.
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