Improve Your Communication Skills, 2nd Edition

52 Improve your Communication Skills
future observation, further limiting the range of the 
conversation. This is a ‘reflexive loop’; you might call it a 
mindset. 
The Ladder of Inference gives you more choices about where 
to go in a conversation. It helps you to slow down your thinking. 
It allows you to: 
• become more aware of your own thinking; 
• make that thinking available to the other person; 
• ask them about their thinking. 
Above all, it allows you to defuse an adversarial conversation by 
‘climbing down’ from private beliefs, assumptions and opinions, 
and then ‘climbing up’ to shared meanings and beliefs. 
The key to using the Ladder of Inference is to ask questions. 
This helps you to find the differences in the way people think, 
what they have in common and how they might reach shared 
understanding. 
• What’s the data that underlies what you’ve said? 
• Do we agree on the data? 
• Do we agree on what they mean? 
• Can you take me through your reasoning? 
• When you say [what you’ve said], do you mean [my 
rewording of it]? 
For example, if someone suggests a particular course of action, 
you can carefully climb down the ladder by asking: 
• ‘Why do you think this might work?’ ‘What makes this a 
good plan?’ 
• ‘What assumptions do you think you might be making?’ 
‘Have you considered…?’ 
• ‘How would this affect…?’ ‘Does this mean that…?’ 
• ‘Can you give me an example?’ ‘What led you to look at 
this in particular?’ 
( c) 2011 Kogan Page L imited, All Rights Reserved.

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53 Seven Ways to Improve Your Conversations
Even more powerfully, the Ladder of Inference can help you to 
offer your own thinking for the other person to examine. If you 
are suggesting a plan of action, you can ask: